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catenary-chad · 9 hours ago

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Doublestack’s revisionist/historically accurate AU (masterpost)

In short, I can’t stand how factually wrong and backwards most of canon’s social metaphors are and I do not respect them. They were written by people who actively ignore train reality and I’m too engineer-brained to play along with that. Real train history and politics are so much more interesting and relevant, and they’re so unintuitive and weird that they solve a lot of common complaints about canon. Almost every choice I make has irl precedent and I will back it up with a specific source if desired.

I default to an aggressively American setting, specifically an early Amtrak engine trial circa the 70s-80s. It gives the most dramatic backstory and dynamics and explains almost all characters existing at once. Though I take a surprising amount of influence from modern British train politics and French sources. Heavy focus on the tragic and overlooked history of electric trains in the US, and 80s-modern train politics and economics in the broader Anglosphere. Harsh criticism of train media tropes and misconceptions, especially regarding steam engines. Despite sounding so serious and detailed, things often get wackier than canon because real trains are so unintuitive.

Nothing I write is short because it requires so much historical context and explanation. This post is around the 4.5k word mark and may have more added later

GENERAL SETUP:

It’s more like a political cartoon or Hetalia where things are more abstracted from actual trains, I fully embrace the cubist painting/interpretive dance aspect of Stex. It’s actually one of my favorite parts. But I may also write about “horizontal trains” or just human versions of characters, or even go the animatronic route on occaison.

Control represents the government and other rail authorities. An often cruel and fickle god who must decide whether to use their allowance to buy new tracks for their trains or toy cars/guns/etc. A giant hand that descends from on hand. Control also has several relatives (French Uncle with a fuckass mustache, stereotypical US railfan) that blatantly influence their views of trains.

Trains are best compared to employees of more “old school” companies, irl rail systems, or governments. Businesses that tend to hire for life and are open to retraining and favor promoting from within due to their specificity. This is also a meta joke about how Stex itself tends to be, actors have literally called it a “government job” in terms of stability vs other theater. I avoid all mentions of “ownership” or comparisons to livestock like the absolute plague. Living machine media has never been about slavery, it comes from the human tendency to assign personality traits to inanimate objects. This is the most elegant solution I can think of that represents the actual social implications I want. When retired or withdrawn they just kind of go away except when I actually want a character to “die on the job” for thematic reasons. Otherwise things get way too preservation focused, which is overdone as hell and I’d rather focus on relevant, everyday train issues others aren’t

The trains think they live in a very serious real train world and generally follow full-sized train logic, but the practical realities of model trains sometimes kick in. A giant hand will pick them up. Someone will get fried running AC current through DC motors (AC third rail does not exist outside toys). Everyone will be shocked by how a GG1 can come back from the dead since they have zero chance of restoration irl… but Control’s mom just stuck the old body on a new chassis. I follow a lot of train modelling conventions in general, like “catenary wires are invisible but treated like they exist” and “stretching prototypical reality to its limits but have real life justification for almost everything”.

The big race is an engine trial to decide the future of the line, stylized to fit the stage format. It’s a one-off thing vs major repeated part of society. Most of the time they just do other train things like haul oversized fruit slices on flatcars and parody serious national and international politics. I wasted ten years of my life running track and refuse to portray racing as anything but mindless number chasing that will inevitably lead to disappointment and leave you with nothing.

Time period and setting varies, but I default to early Amtrak circa the 70s-80s. Everyone but Rusty (who I remove anyways) has irl justification to exist around that time and we’ll just pretend the “Rainbow Era” continued longer than it did because everyone being the same color is boring. This also means the US is a post-apocalyptic wasteland for passenger rail. The government bankrolled highways and airlines in the 50s-60s but left passenger rail to die until it had to swoop in and nationalize it in the early 70s (Amtrak). Faced with repeated oil crises, but also a neoliberal president telling Amtrak to go fund itself despite billions of dollars in infrastructure repair needed. Whether to expand or phase out electrification is a legitimate concern (and then there’s American Coal Enterprises pushing the regressive idea of bringing back coal-burning choo choos and their 1% thermal efficiency). Private freight railroads like Union Pacific and diesel-electric locomotives rule 99% of the country with an increasingly ugly iron fist.

The National’s losses are explained by sabotage by Greaseball, inability to cope with the HORRIBLE physical state of US rails at the time, and/or McCoy’s bumbling or a certain out of place steam switcher’s deliberate attacks on infrastructure

Exact plot structure varies, but keeps to the 4/5 race setup of canon with major plot beats… just massively revised framing and lyrics. This ranges from wildly rearranging things, to just keeping the show as-is and turning the steam engines a more blatant symbol of Reagan and his anti-train politics, making it into a tragedy of them spreading worldwide and killing other countries’ systems by defunding and privatization (Light At The End of the Tunnel is everyone dying and being in train heaven)

The Starlight Express is more a tall tale or idealized image of trains than literal god. The bootstrapping and “needn’t ask the world to turn around and help you” get pitched for being quietly anti-train neoliberal dogwhistles. In favor of “you alone are an engine, not a train” because ~the power of friendship~ is the corny message that actually fits the nature of rail.

I have various takes on extended lore for the 80s-on. I will often get alternate timeline/mildly sci fi about the present day to be less depressing and because this topic has so much speculative fiction potential. Pretend the US actually electrified more since the 80s and has a vaguely passable, nationalized rail system. Pretend Reagan hadn’t been shot so he wouldn’t have had near-martyr status and be rightfully deposed after his first term.

I don’t write about Wembley much but see it as a more ambiguously European setting

I’m an engineer, not a theater kid. I don’t have much to say on stuff like lighting or staging or vocal ranges because it’s just not something I’ve ever been involved in and probably never will (I don’t coordinate well with others). I love most of the visual and physical conventions of the replica productions pre-2018. Other than adding some pink and purple and reinventing some things as needed, I don’t mentally change the physical setup or costume conventions much. I skew towards the earlier gritty industrial look (because it’s accurate) but otherwise I like both early London and Broadway/Bochum style for different reasons

I play off some of the practical realities of the stages and parallels to real train physics that arose per Michal Fraley, they’re more interesting than the show’s intended plot. I have some experience with skating and will incorporate some aspects of that. It’s live action with physical people in my mind because that element is very important. This might be the single piece of media I actually prefer live action to animation on.

Singing and dancing on the job is accepted precedent for trains. It’s an only somewhat abstracted reflection of them making rhythmic noise/motion irl. The only reason I don’t write everything in song form is because I’m much better with prose vs poetry.

CHARACTERS

MOLOCH- can a mythological figure be an OC? the real big bad, represents the auto industry. Literally a dude in a cow skull mask and rubber boots running around bribing Slick and/or Caboose. This blog has an official car hate policy. I can have a nuanced conversation about steam engines’ unwarranted media dominance, but cars get the cartoon villain and relentless mockery treatment. You will never see a road racing AU or any positive depictions of cars from me, they are satan spawn and the greatest threat to train society in this verse.

Greaseball- Unchanged. He’s the one thing the show got absolutely dead-on. I’ll expand on him and make him nastier based on real-life precedent, but it all ties in really well to his established traits. He represents the private dieselized freight hegemony in the US and all the problems it’s caused since the 70s. I go all in on him being sexist and awful because it’s an accurate comparison to how freight railroads like UP treated and continue to treat passenger trains.

Wembleyball- She just doesn’t work as well conceptually, but I find her an interesting enough challenge to want to try to rework her eventually. I skew towards making her an American export model diesel.

Electra- See the first part of this post for full backstory and context because there is too much to explain. Some kind of European-style electric engine being trialled by Amtrak, living in the near-ruins of the Northeast Corridor. Trying to rebuild an indispensable service and justify their existence in the face of a government who wants them dead and unsympathetic public who blames them for systemic failures. High profile but desperate vs rich and only superficially glamorous, paint is a cheap way to put lipstick on an underfunded mess. Notably short and thick vs tall and thin, because it’s most accurate to electric trains. See my Mykalectra bias in general. I write replica Electra in a couple flavors but most are based on him ft. WILD extrapolation from train history.

Koffilectra- Electra but even more heavily based on Michael Jackson and Prince because it becomes even more compelling with historical train context. The other main flavor of replica Electra I write.

“Jet McGinnis”- AU based on the New Haven EP-5s, more openly tragic psych/prog rock Electra with Momma/Poppa’s plot role, unexpected comrade to electric boxcab!Rusty.

Agent Inox- workshop Electra/Elton. French “magnetic spy” out to hypnotize other countries into buying their trains and hiring France to electrify their lines. Campy Bond villain who threatens you with a great time. Somehow based on actual rail geopolitics…

Wemblectra- Modern BEMU, gets in funny spats with Electra about battery vs direct electric politics. Very good at napping.

McCoy- Excursion steam engine who’s now the out of touch, high maintenance, unreliable celebrity. Not malicious, just forgetful and bumbling and prone to accidentally causing big messes. I don’t feel strongly about this character being male vs female, I think there’s good reasons for either.

Ol’ Smokey- Rusty, but historically accurate and evil. Parody of “overpowered steam switcher” cliches made accurately a nuisance. A new build steam engine built for an amusement park with the cushiest job of them all. Has wildly inaccurate romantic conceptions of the outside world based on old songs and inserts himself in places where he’s cartoonishly unqualified and ruins things for everyone when it’s not about him. A literal cowboy actor and Reagan-esque figure, sometimes warped into representing an even uglier pro-coal orange who hides behind the “underdog” label when he’s just criminally unqualified. Pro-private business and unregulation as a reflection of the actual status of steam engines in the 80s. Destroys infrastructure as another reflection of neoliberal ideology.

Boxcab! Rusty- What OLC Rusty should have been to begin with. An actually forgotten and left behind old electric switcher that brings attention to an era many have forgotten vs promoting the same inaccurate steam cliches. Has a despair vs hope dynamic with Jet McGinnis. Usually set a couple decades earlier, closer to the late 60s

Belle (the GG1)- Literally just OLC Belle but turned into a GG1 locomotive and based even more on Ella Fitzgerald (link). Electra’s equivalent of Momma/Poppa.

Caboose- Canadian caboose with an over the top “aboot” accent. Used to carry radio train control systems and can remotely control others that way. In kahoots with the trucking industry knowing he’s on his way out, but also just really loves crashing. Mainly based on OLC “trucker” caboose.

Slick- Scheming cartoon villain and pawn of Big Oil, basically a rebadged Devious Diesel and the total opposite of canon. Minion of Greaseball but notably not hostile to steam engines because they can burn oil too!

Pearl- ex-Metroliner EMU turned Amfleet coach, has been out of circulation but also technically “new”. Doesn’t understand engines because she was always self-propelled but wants to go fast because she was built for it. Lost most of her memory in the Penn Central computer system fiasco. Almost fully canon-compatible… except the Amfleets were notably not steam heated *cue Shalamar- Right In the Socket*

Dinah and other coaches- largely unchanged, represent legacy fleet Amtrak inherited. Their engine fixation is a literal reflection of Amtrak’s power shortage of the time.

Flat-Top and Dustin- largely unchanged, used to reflect woes of de-industrialization and what comes next. Flat-Top is an ambiguously Rust Belt punk, Dustin is a hillbilly

Rockies- I’m prone to turning them into subway cars because it fits their messaging so much better. Actual personality is unchanged, still train Oompa Loompas.

Boxcar Rockies/Hoppers- I still like having them exist because this is a US-based setting and we need a LONG heavy freight train.

Curie- OC, nuclear flask that’s an edgier Dustin figure, parody of “just be quiet” PR strategy of nuclear power and “I’m may not be the one you want to see/But I am always there” aspect of There’s Me

Components: used to represent fast freight or head-end cars that would be associated with the Northeast Corridor

Hertz (Krupp)- experimental German diesel engine who hauls Electra through unelectrified areas. Or a repurposed caboose used for security on high-value/military trains.

Purse- one of the very last Railway Post Offices, or a 90s-era Material Handling Car. Represents a very profitable business for rail that often carried high-value items (and celebrity fanmail). HE HAS A GUN!

Volta- unchanged, refridgerated cars are and were used on fast freight trains.

Joule- heated boxcar to complement Volta, vaguely based on the famous Bangor and Aroostook ones… hilariously used to carry potatoes

Wrench- self-propelled crane, the truest neutral. Zamboni Guy energy. Little loyalty to Electra, just wants a job.

Nationals

Hitachi- Shinkansen, technically an EMU and not an engine but they’re capable of pulling an unpowered coach so they work in the race format. Incredibly anxious and cautious and high strung, shakes a lot, notably great at giving massages. Opposite personality as canon because irl shinkansens have an INCREDIBLE safety record and being “reckless” is an inaccurate as it gets.

Prince of Wales- Oh no it’s APT apologism time. Sometimes replaced by Flying Scotsman as a British rep because the jokes available are endless.

Bobo/Coco- largely unchanged but have more friction with Electra due to the history of TGVs replacing Nez Cassé engines. Lean more into the “striking, burning cars, and guillotines” side of French stereotypes

Espresso- secretly Canadian

Others- largely unchanged

I’m just not into Wembley enough to have thoughts on the champions. I’m willing to give any other side characters the time of day. A lot of things get mixed and swapped due to the major roleswaps but tbh I like most secondary/tertiary characters in the show.

SOCIAL DYNAMICS

Type of rolling stock is more akin to career vs caste- there’s almost always some ability to become something else, though some conversions are easier than others. Conversions are INCREDIBLY widespread and normalized, broadly comparable to major life changes. They aren’t stigmatized at all unless they legitimately affect performance, at worst they just get poked fun at a bit (ex: being called Florida Man from originally being from there)

Freight equipment is usually slower, stronger, heavier, more rough and tumble and less concerned with appearance because they’re not public facing. Passenger equipment is generally lighter and much faster, and has to be gentler and cleaner because they handle living cargo. This is not a hard dichotomy, fast freight and slower passenger trains also exist, and mixed trains are not unheard of, especially the older or poorer you go. Freight is usually a profitable business, passenger rail is hard to turn a profit on and almost always heavily subsidized or nationalized as a public service. It can be VERY vaguely characterized as “masc vs fem” but ultimately comes from different origins and isn’t really the same.

Freight vs passenger relations vary wildly between countries. Much of Europe is passenger-dominant and freight trains that do exist have to be fast enough to keep up with timetables. The US is 99% freight trains and freight railroads actively hostile to passenger rail, which is mostly the domain of underfunded government systems.

The freight are STRONGLY unionized and work as a group. The coaches too, but not quite as strongly.

The engine/coach binary has been bullshit since the trolley era and EMUs/DMUs are bog standard. Belief that they are “not real trains” and general belief in this false binary in general is considered an incredibly backwards thing, mostly in rural areas with few passenger trains.

I define traction divisions by their associated politics. On an individual basis, I may code them as certain things if it matches the perception of that form of power.

I am the least revisionist about diesel trains. I love British depictions of them as cynical compromises that became engrained… but still were a big step up from steam and an even bigger step up from cars. I’ll give Greaseball an American veneer and reputation because he’s so true to the US perception of them as “manly and strong”. Diesel trains in general are associated with rural areas, unstable conditions, private rail networks, and shorter-term thinking. Because I write this as a US-based setting most of the time, they are the hegemonic, conservative establishment (conveniently has the same politics too) that crushes electrification projects AND is increasingly hostile to even steam excursions.

Steam engines represent the even older, pre-diesel conservative establishment thought dead and laughable by the mid-20th century. At best, they are irrelevant, out of touch, but not really malicious celebrities and historical re-enactors. Socially almost akin to the Amish. In a few very poor, technologically restricted areas with cheap labor and fuel, like rural China, they lasted longer… but they ultimately thrive where there is infrastructural neglect and backwardness and poor labor conditions, and have an entrenched interest in maintaining those.

They are also the equivalent of cowboys in media vs the reality of the “wild west” in the US (and similar conditions exist in Europe). Representing the glamorization of the terrible old days and their lack of regulation, poor labor conditions, and filth and pollution. The media dominance of toxic, irrelevant nostalgia clouding out the truth of what was and what could have been. Steam is so profoundly unsympathetic the more you learn about its single-digit thermal efficiency, body count due to carbon monoxide poisoning in tunnels, and how much it genuinely sucked performance-wise compared to almost everything but first-generation diesels. They’re an atrocious sympathetic social metaphor and I hate how so few people question or criticize that, but I think they have incredibly untapped potential as hateable villains representing the worst of Reaganism and how much it gets whitewashed in the US.

(Fireless engines are a different story because they have legitimate utility as a niche thing ala mule drivers in the Grand Canyon)

Worldwide, electric trains are most common in high density and/or state-funded routes that value train travel. That’s… the only real commonality, things vary a ton between countries, from them being a near 100% majority in Switzerland and India to very much a minority in the US. In the Anglosphere they face widespread ignorance and lack of care, have their history ignored or outright erased, and fight an uphill battle against austerity politics and underfunded, even decaying infrastructure. Often framed as hysterical or uncompromising for just wanting the bare minimum and treated as a threat when they’ve been the ones on a knife’s edge for years. They broadly represent how liberalism has been slandered since the 80s and are very ambiguously minority-coded in the US.

Hydrogen and battery trains are closest to diesel trains in usage/status. Kind of a crappy compromise, often used to impede widespread electrification, albeit with some legitimate purposes (like battery engines in mines).

Because I usually set things in the US, diesel and freight hegemony is massive and widespread. Electric trains are confined to only a handful of routes and there’s barely any passenger service beyond the northeast. There is an absolute gauntlet of infrastructure problems there due to much of it dating back to the late 1800s-turn of the century. Passenger services are largely underfunded and freight railroads only care about cost:revenue ratio, encouraging stagnation and inaction.

Class divides definitely exist among trains but do not follow any concrete traction or service lines and vary WILDLY throughout history. In the US it isn’t a huge factor, the broader interests of dieselized, private freight vs government-run, heavily electrified passenger services override it. Passenger trains are virtually all considered common to low-class and freight railroads are more powerful than the government in some ways.

Xenophobia is VERY much a thing, rail is a very nationalist business and opposition to foreign models and influence is big Probably the most 1:1 with the human equivalent actually. Racism is not, it’s a deeply weird human concept with no real train analogue. On a case by case basis, relations can resemble this, (especially economically, see modern electric trains in the US) but there is no wide scale equivalent and the longer history just does not work.

There is no equivalent to sex or gender in trains. There are multiple forms of physical compatibility (or lack of) like coupler, heat, head end power, or brake type… but the details aren’t appropriate for this blog (lol). They do not reproduce, they are just… spawned from on high by Control’s hand. They can fuse and be frankensteined together though. Trains technically aren’t gay or straight, trans or cis, but sometimes I can arrange things to parallel the feel of these (Caboose coming close to being the coaches’“gay best friend” but for deeply train-related reasons). Honestly you have far more “gay” engine/engine and car/car connections than ones between engines and cars in the wild. Rebuilds and modifications are just too widespread to be stigmatized, I think the struggles to adapt some freight equipment to passenger service and vice versa comes the closest to being trans. This is all kind of the ultimate example of “they occasionally parallel human issues, but it’s almost always for very alien train reasons”.

Weight preferences exist, but for VERY different and utilitarian reasons vs people. Weight in train culture is actually a very fascinating and unexplored topic, highly dependent on region and time period. In general, slower, heavier trains on more crudely-laid track with fewer safety features will skew heavy and overbuilt. The US is a VERY prominent example of this, notorious for overbuilt passenger trains built to withstand more frequent collisions and ballasted freight engines. Faster trains on higher-quality tracks with extensive external safety features tend to be lighter. And then there’s all kinds of shades in between. It’s best compared to height- being tall is great for basketball, but being short is vastly preferable in gymnastics. Joking about it is a lot more lighthearted and it’s regarded as a lot less changeable.

It’s a very, very broad topic but in a lot of ways trains are surprisingly accommodating and less ableist. There are exceptions like France, but many countries, including the US, do desperately try to find a place and role for dysfunctional, old, or physically limited equipment. Never underestimate how “waste not want not” US rail culture often is, they will reuse things into the ground… to some wild results that I’m fascinated by and love to incorporate. Many things do take the cure vs accommodate path due to how easily modified/fixed machines are though. There is a heavy concerted effort to make everyone at least “functional”, even if actual maintenance is often poor in the US.

On a similar note, trains are generally very thrifty in a rather antiquated way, hate throwing things out and love getting things cheaply or reusing them.

POWERS AND WEAKNESSES

Electric trains without wires (or third rails) are like marionettes without strings. They won’t die, but won’t be able to move themselves. They are very vulnerable to infrastructure damage to catenaries, both by mechanical and weather-related means. They don’t suffer from low oxygen environments and are notably safe to work with in tunnels. That second statement also applies to battery trains but they aren’t prevalent in this AU. They have very limited range and utility outside of light EMUs and switchers.

Combustion engines (internal and external, regardless of fuel source- so all steam, diesel, turbine, etc) require oxygen and emit fumes and smoke that can choke living things in tunnels. Even idling outside in one spot for hours and days can be physically unpleasant for those nearby.

Diesel and electric engines spontaneously combust on a surprisingly regular basis. Steam engines are capable of exploding, far more rarely. Both can happen if they get REALLY mad, or just by random happening.

Steam engines are particularly rough on infrastructure due to hammer blow and impacts of fire/smoke/heat. Also prone to damaging particularly low overhead wires depending on the design. Particularly heavy trains in general aren’t good for tracks and there are some rough-riding electric and diesel engines too, but they don’t come close to reciprocating steam (and jackshaft electrics were all gone in the US at this point)

Coaches, cabooses, and any animal-carrying cars will suffer and collapse from things like suffocation, lack of heat/cooling. If their cargo would suffer, they will suffer. The latter is also applicable to refrigerated/heated boxcars if their generators fail.

Multi-unit control exists on almost all electric and diesel-electric engines and all EMUs. It’a basically mind control but hard to do unconsensually, like requesting access to remote control someone’s computer. It allows a leading engine or MU to control others behind them to act as one (but I’m willing to flex things slightly and make it a little more fantasy mind control)

American rolling stock is generally very heavily built and can take a hit well. Yes, coaches and freight can use roller derby blocking tactics against engines. Enough of them hitting the brakes (or just being too heavy to pull) can stop one in their tracks. Some cars like nuclear flasks are specifically built to take a hit and newer locomotives in the US have notoriously high crash requirements (requiring them to be built like bank vaults).

#my headcanons #doublestack au masterpost

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