1. A configurable railroad locomotive having operating characteristics that may be selectively chosen to correspond to a mission objective of the locomotive comprising: a computing device carried on the locomotive; a plurality of locomotive operational input devices in communication with the computing device for generating operational signals for transmission to the computing device; a plurality of end use devices on the locomotive controlled by the computing device for performing locomotive operations; a configuration input device in communication with the computing device for generating a configuration signal different from the operational signals for transmission to the computing device; a first set of instructions accessible and executable by the computing device to control the end use devices in a first mode in response to the locomotive operational input devices when the configuration signal has a first value for establishing a first set of operating characteristics of the locomotive, and a second set of instructions accessible and executable by the computing device to control the end use devices in a second mode different than the first mode in response to the locomotive operational input devices when the configuration signal has a second value for establishing a second set of operating characteristics of the locomotive different from the first set of operating characteristics.