Recovered: Quick “Trainstorm”
Skerples proposes a collaborative dimension-hopping train. This is a quick brainstorm about trains, to help myself and others get started.
Illus. Charles Delon, Public Domain, via the British Library collection on Flickr.
Plan
- Listen to Steve Reich.
- Read Wikipedia.
- Discuss on Chris McDowall’s OSR Discord server.
Types of Railcar
and maybe some thoughts about how they exist in an interdimensional infinite train that never stops (unless it does sometimes).
- Refrigerator cars. Unironically called “reefers”.
- Various maintenance cars. The clean the ballast, rearrange the ballast, clear the snow, distribute lubricant and herbicide, and measure the track geometry. Consider how these tasks change when the ground underneath the ballast is unknown and can change suddenly.
- Rail ambulances. Provide services to remote areas, but on an endless non-stop train, they more likely act as hospitals.
- Specialized cargo cars. Coil cars are designed specifically to carry rolled-up sheet metal. Slate waggons are designed specifically to carry slate. On a train that could be carrying any kind of exotic material, what considerations would the car carrying it need?
- Stock cars. Carrying a bunch of exotic animals across dimensions doesn’t really need much explanation I think. It raises the same questions as all cargo does, but is more immediately gameable. Possibly it would act more like a zoo or a farm though, given the circumstances.
- Schnabel cars. The cargo forms an integral part of these cars, without it they’re just “ends”. Use this as an excuse to make the middle of a car be anything you want.
- There are all kinds of tanks and hoppers and boxcars for general cargo. Other than the futility of regularly transporting cargo on the Indefinite Express, I’m not sure what to do with these. I guess instead of regular shipping from one location to another, you might have powerful dimensional merchants who trade their wares as they can, possibly lording over several cars just for cargo. This all presupposes that the train will make stops though.
- Railroad cranes. Ostensibly used for maintenance, these ones could easily be used to snatch interesting things while thundering past them.
- Mail cars. I did not realize that the mail is actively sorted while in transit, so that it’s ready to ship out when it arrives. I don’t know what to do with this though.
- Dining cars. Probably more like farms or shopping malls here.
- Sleeping cars. Where people live? Possibly unremarkable.
See Also
I would like to be sure that nobody thinks this is final in any way. I’m just trying to pretend that my Wikipedia binge was useful. I would hate for my interpretation of something to step on the toes of anyone else’s great idea.
This post was first shared on March 24, 2019.