The 80 is a nice engine but tends to slip a lot, and has a decent amount of power. It always works the fire in the rear left and front right corners of the firebox, and it seems sluggish to build steam from my experience. The bell takes 5 minutes to stop ringing after the valve is closed, and the throttle will open up on you in the wider settings.
The 81 is a great engine, but it's probably got the least character of the ones I've run. It's always good, has plenty of power, and fires great. The fireman's injector never seems to keep up quite the way you want, but otherwise it's a really nice engine. The cab sides are closer to the tender in the gangway which can be annoying, especially in the morning when the deck has a lot of coal on it and you are trying to keep the floor clean.
The 82 works water. It has more power than I think any of the others but it always pulls water up the whistle or in the throttle, even when the water is well below the top of the glass. The other 36's don't do this, and can be fired with the water right at the top of the glass with no trouble. It can fire very nicely, but will sometimes be finicky, and it always has a lot more lateral motion on the track than the others when I've been on it. This engine also makes a weird sound sometimes that sounds like someone is talking in a quiet tone across the cab from you, but when you look, no one is there or the other guy didn't say anything. The air on this engine smells like battery acid.
The 86 can be amazing, or scrap. It will steam great sometimes but the next day it won't. It also likes to slip in weird places without any warning. This engine has a great throttle, but the whistle valve is either wide open or off, which makes it sound goofy when some people blow it. The firedoors always seem to be troublesome, whether fixed the day before, taken off another engine, or whatnot, they never are quite right. When this thing stops being perfect, it is a bear. And it makes more smoke than any of the others.
