Locomotives Slowed by Missing Equipment?

[protista123]

Lately we have been getting markers on many of our trains stating that "Locomotive Slowed by Missing Equipment". What is going on? What can be done to remedy this?
Any information or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Of course maintaining speed is very important with regard to Express and Passenger and Mail train revenues.

[Empty1958]

Most of the time when I see this it is out of water, oil or sand. If you see you are going to have to add supply towers. This issue seems to grow as the years grow.
Mark

[Bugs Bunny]

Supply towers is your issue, make sure every train route has access to them, the more the merrier.

[protista123]

OK thanks! Will build many additional supply towers!

[chaney]

You don't need too many of them, they cost money. From my guide:

"Another building is the Supply Tower. They are placed on tracks to supply trains with water, lubricant, and sand (for traction.) If you select a train, then click the Manage Train button, you get a screen showing the train picture at the center top. To the right are three gages showing the three supply levels on the train. When one is running low (always water!?!) the train stops at a Supply Tower to stock up. If supplies run out, the train will slow down. Testing thus far suggests that the slow down is fairly minor - imagine a steam train running without water! To use these towers, put one on each train route. Longer routes (over half a map long) may require two towers along the route. If you build more than one parallel track, the Supply Tower will automatically resize to cover all the parallel tracks at its location."

I tried to cover basic mechanics like this here:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1293183195

It's a long read, but does cover lots of basics and undocumented features. It doesn't cover everything, but I think it is up to date except that Warehouses now have a range of effect to collect and distribute goods - they didn't do that when I wrote it up.