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I have another random Electra headcanons post in progress but I think my fav is that they’d probably be good with kids in a more human verse. Terrible as a parent and even babysitter but really good at getting along with and amusing them. Probably has a high tolerance for bright, obnoxious kids media and has no shame in playing along with silly games. They just like a lot of bright, bold, kid-friendly stuff and kind of like how nonjudgmental and weird they can be.

I think they’d be a weirdly good tutor for a lot of things since they tend to be good at explaining complex, esoteric, or counterintuitive topics in engaging and approachable ways. The type who thinks dissecting a busted toaster is fun and makes it so or can get a kid hooked on Balkan folk music or free jazz because they can explain how they actually work. Almost the kind of person who’d be perfect for Drag Queen Story Hour but they’d get pissed at the anti-electric sentiment in the Railway Series and annoyed by lack of electric train books.

(a lot of this is exclusive to me leaning towards a much brighter and more outgoing Electra vs many others, I’m not opposed to them being a colder character but this is the way I lean for various reasons. Tbh this goes along well with the popular headcanon that the characters are reflections of Control’s family and Electra is the kid’s uncle or something)

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I think the real divide between steam and post-steam era engines isn’t whistles vs horns, it’s design philosophy and individualism vs conformity.

Steam-era engines tendencies (includes earlier electric engines and diesel engines made by former steam manufacturers like Baldwin):

Steam-style wheel arrangements with larger drivers and/or unpowered wheels, long engine hoods/“noses” to parallel boiler proportions, greater individualism due to one-off designs and difficulty/inability to MU/work together, often larger individual size due to that,

post-steam engine tendencies:

Usually Co-Co or Bo-Bo wheel arrangements with no unpowered axles, short “bulldog” hood/nose, more uniformity in design and greater ease of MUing/working together so they tend to be more communal and cooperative, tend to be smaller

Whistles and horns are actually not that clean of a divide. Horns tended to be easier to hear at high speeds so there’s a number of ICONIC steam engines that had them, see the Milwaukee Road Class As and SP 4449. The GG1s were also very steam-brained electric engines design-wise but also have horns. Meanwhile the New Haven Railroad used air whistles on more modern-style diesel and electric locos well into the 50s as a PR thing.

This post brought to you by a funny story about how GE got a foothold in the diesel locomotive industry by Alco refusing to make a design with a pony truck because “we ain’t making more effing steam engines!”. Honestly I reject canon’s schtick about whistling being some discouraged old fashioned thing because it’s romanticized to hell in train media. I think it’s more akin to Rudolph Valentino-esque hand kissing if anything. It’s the more practical effects of steam vs post-steam design that tend to create more divides (and this was a major thing in the history of early US diesel engines and very visible when you look at early electric engines worldwide)

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I’ll eventually do that post on why Greaseball is almost timelessly great as a train villain ft. the history of EMD, first gen carbody diesel locos, and US freight railroad bullshit.

But I think the funniest thing so far is that most of those engines were underpowered for their size and designed to work in groups. And going off the most successful and iconic option (that’s probably closest to his helmet), you either get the relatively “lanky” E-units or really short F-units that would lead to him being even smaller than my already small vision of Electra. Those things were roughly the same height/length as AEM-7s, which are a good 10-20 feet shorter length-wise than most US road engines.

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There’s a lot of US and UK rail youtubers with strong regional accents and ngl it makes me sad that Wembley did away with most of that aspect. It’s just more realistic

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I think Electra is fine with bugs, totally chill with rats (they work around too many big cities crawling with them) and not too phased by snakes or reptiles since they’re not statistically scary. But large hooved mammals? Terrifying and unpredictable, largely alien things to a city slicker, that statistically are about the most dangerous animals in the US. Larger dogs are probably a nope too, but big furry things going bump in the woods or getting way too close will guaranteed make them flee.

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”electra and greaseball go camping” has so much comedy potential but also inevitably will show how hard I’ll diverge from canon on some things. Electra may be a city slicker but they’re far from worthless in more rugged settings… if the infrastructure exists. In a lot of ways they “work smarter” than Greaseball but have the hilarious issue of being an absolute trail mix gobbler. Much like diesel locos, Greaseball can carry his own food fine for hiking but Electra will just keep going faint if they’re more than a few minutes from a convenience store.

(Greaseball then demands Electra’s nice techwear pants/jacket as reparations and they… vaguely stay up horizontally but fit like a crop top and capris because they’re so much shorter and have a ridiculously stubby torso)

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Oh no I finally saw the dumbest “diesel stronk” argument I’ve ever seen, using a GG1 vs vaguely modern SD70 and forgetting the rest of the world exists

(most of that misconception comes from the US being abnormally unelectrified and having much longer freight trains than most countries)

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I really like to AU-ify McCoy (neutral term for now non-parental Momma/Poppa) into the “neutral but obstructive high maintenance unreliable celebrity” role. I think going the weaponized nostalgia route of “I don’t remember this so I don’t care about it” route would be fascinating. Deliberately glossing over the bad parts of the old days and acting like everything new is terrible (and not caring about context about why it’s become that way). Not intentionally malicious, just backwards and prone to causing drama and breaking things and hogging the spotlight from more relevant issues.

It’s particularly fascinating if you turn Rusty into a boxcab or other early electric engine (which often still ran into the 80s) and McCoy acts like he’s a liar or alien because “all old engines are steam, of course”. “You’re just one of those infernal modern contraptions trying to pull the wool over an old fart’s eyes, I’m not that stupid”. Whether it’s intentional erasure or genuine ignorance or forgetting on McCoy’s part, it’s an accurate view of how those engines have largely flown under the preservation and history radar and a widespread viewpoint among older railfans. Even with myself in the past, it’s common to check out of anything non-steam or after the 60s when you’re mostly into choo choos because that’s what’s charismatic and accessible.

(Electra takes the “Fairy Godmother” role in this AU and is a whole separate can of worms. Greaseball is unchanged because he’s a timelessly effective train villain who has even better reasons to be hostile against electric traction and steam excursions getting in his way)

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I genuinely think a lot of things about US rail preservation are for purely practical reasons. It’s very hard to run anything larger than a steeplecab in terms of electric engines because there just isn’t anywhere to do it on mainlines and building the wires and infrastructure needed is a huge cost for museums. So you just end up with a weird static display piece that most people won’t recognize because they’ve become a token in train media since about WWII and it’s not appealing to preserve and display them. 40s-50s era diesel engines and cars dominate because a lot of them were built like tanks, have a ton of parts available, and look “old enough” while still being in decent shape.

But then you end up with the “look at how glamorous things used to be compared to Amtrak!” and “all old trains are steam engines who were axed before their time!” without the context of WHY any of that actually happened, and what that hides is so politically convenient. You don’t see how the funding of highways and airports and antiquated rail regulations made the business a money pit that only forced nationalization when it was on verge of collapse (and the same was true of smaller commuter networks). Meanwhile most of the countries lauded for their trains today were nationalized postwar. The people dogging Amtrak also rarely seem to realize how underfunded and screwed by freight railroads they are. You also don’t see how electrification projects bankrupted multiple private companies and just how old, versatile and widespread electric trains were. And how influential those early ones were elsewhere in the world, where more successful projects were government-run with much greater economies of scale.

“privatization is almost always awful for passenger rail and electrification” and “there’s a versatile and long-established EV infinitely superior to cars” are such repeated and obvious underlying messages but man you have to read and go out of your way to dig for info to find them. Because the surface ends up skipping them over.

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an oddly specific but intense headcanon that I have is that Electra sucks at arguing because they almost instantly lose any veneer of calm politeness and go full “owning the conservatives with facts and logic” when provoked. And the facts and logic are overwhelmingly on their side. But they are just so combative and don’t even try to warm people up and they come off as uncompromising (when ironically they’ll probably accept the compromise, they just push things as far as possible expecting they’ll get cut back because that’s how things have gone for electrification and infrastructure improvements for the last 50 years or so)

It’s one of those things heavily based on public transport activists. There’s a massive sense of frustration and knowledge that they’re right and nobody else can see it, that just makes them snappier and argumentative vs convincingly persuasive or more broadly palatable. Funny enough this is also really fitting to how electric motors are infamously strongest at lower speeds and known for rapid acceleration (partly why I’ll lean into Electra being emotionally erratic, for better and worse)

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The SNCF CC 40100 (and its Nez Cassé relatives)

Thought I’d do an info/context post on these engines since a lot of the fandom doesn’t seem to know much about them.  It’s more or less implied canon that this is the engine Electra is, his replica helmet is based on SNCF 40104 specifically, complete with number plate.  Further down I also go into how I like to incorporate/interpret some of the history of these engines with the character.  

For those of you totally new to trains: SNCF is the French nationalized rail system.  The CC 40100 came out in the mid-late 60s as the first of the Nez Cassé line of locomotives, probably the most iconic French trains until the TGVs.  They were a line of express passenger/fast freight locomotives that came out between the 60s and early 90s that all had a distinct “broken” front silhouette that looks very 80s despite being first designed more than two decades before Stex came out.  

The CC 40100 was a funky, relatively experimental model designed to take four different voltages so it could travel over most of western Europe on the new, high-end Trans Europ Express services.  In both the northeast US and much of Europe, electrification was done piecemeal over several decades by different companies/nations, resulting in a patchwork of AC and DC lines running different voltages and/or frequencies, as well as both third rail and overhead wire.  Dual voltage electric engines have existed since the turn of the century, but demand for triple and even quadruple-voltage electric trains didn’t develop in Europe until the rise of the EU and border-crossing trains like the TEE that would otherwise need an engine change or use diesel power to run on multiple countries’ systems and standards.  There were a number of triple and quadruple-voltage engines and MUs developed in the 60s for this purpose, but the CC 40100 was notably stronger than many of them, to work heavier trains and due to anticipated use on mountainous lines in Switzerland.    

Technologically, the CC 40100 had DC traction motors, technological limits restricted the use of AC ones until the 80s-90s.  They ran at 1500 V DC, could also take 3000 V DC by changing motor connections, and had transformer and rectifier equipment for taking two voltages and frequencies of AC power.  Unusually, they had four pantographs, many multi-voltage engines were built to work on third rail lines and a more common setup was one or two pantographs and a “shoe” collector for third rail.  They also never ended up using their fourth 15kV 16 2/3 Hz AC voltage for German/Swiss running in regular service and it’s a little hard to find out why, I’ve heard both technical concerns with equipment getting hot or political factors. 

It made the CC 40100 relatively complicated, unreliable, and expensive to run (and the weight of the equipment is why it had six axles in a Co-Co arrangement vs the more common four—axle Bo-Bo setup).  There were some interesting features like a gas-filled vs oil-filled transformer to save weight, and corrugated stainless steel body panels like American Budd railcars. They never got used to their full potential for various political/practical reasons and the quad-voltage capability became a delicate overkill, so only ten were made. TEE also fell out of relevance into the 80s as business travelers moved to planes and the market for first-class trains declined.  They had a more limited use and service life than other Nez Cassé engines as a result, though 25-35 years is still a decent run and comparable to other TEE multi-voltage engines of the era.    As a fun bonus, one was restored and runs excursions today (40110) and there’s lots of video on youtube!  Apparently the group that runs it also has a steam engine and I can’t help but wonder how maintenance compares.  

Canon Electra accurately reflects a number of traits of these engines (though I take issue with them being picked as a representative of electric traction because they’re pretty specialized and atypical).  AC and DC are both okay by them, they almost exclusively ran first-class TEE services, and were prone to overheating and catching fire.  Not exploding though, THAT’S almost purely the domain of steam engines.  Bidding the Nationals farewell in “No Comeback” in their various languages and not having a clear country of origin also tie in well to the 40100’s intended use as a pan-European engine.  As a very fun cultural link, the Kraftwerk song “Trans Europ Express” mentions David Bowie and I can’t help but wonder if that’s why they chose this engine as a basis for Electra.  The song definitely has a similar vibe to the character, though the CC 40100s never ran the exact route mentioned in the song, since they never ran in Germany in general.  As an even more fun cultural link that was probably unintended, this song and Kraftwerk in general were really popular in early hip hop and techno circles…. which also checks out to the direction Electra took in the actual production.  

From the illustrious sources of reddit and translated youtube comments, French railfans really like these engines, even if a lot of the Anglophone internet thinks they look weird.  They have a status akin to the Concorde as a symbol of attempted European collaboration and unity.  They could also be compared to a more modern Santa Fe Super Chief, in terms of being a flashy luxury train that was popular in model/toy form.  The Nez Cassé classes in general seem to have an E/F-unit esque “iconic colorful, glamorous old engine strongly associated with a specific country” reputation on general.  “The TGV is numerically better but these are SHINIER” is a common sentiment.  They were physically loud in service between the motor whine and loud cooling fans, there’s some good cab ride footage on youtube where you can hear it.  “Diva Electra” is a lot closer to their reputation than the eerie lifeless zombie of the workshop.  There are/were eerily silent electric engines, but those with DC motors rarely were, they brake with giant resistors that get hot like a space heater or toaster and need loud, powerful cooling fans. 

So ironically, Electra’s “face” is an engine more akin to an electric, European equivalent of Greaseball culturally.  Actually very dated technologically, if anything most of their problems were because they were designed well before computers.  Hardly threatening and if anything more seen as a symbol of optimism and progress.  Which ends up reflecting a lot when it’s demonized by media from a country with infamously limited electrification progress vs mainland Europe (the more I learn about British train politics then and now the more I can’t take Stex at face value).  

OTHER NEZ CASSÉ CLASSES

These videos give a great overview (in French but have English subs)

Co-Co (larger) models:

Bo-Bo (smaller) models:

First of all, if you ever want a cheap idea for an Electra recolor OC, there was a Belgian equivalent to the CC 40100 that looks just like that.  These ones actually ran services in Germany!

I’ve joked about it before but there was also a very successful diesel Nez Cassé, the CC 72000, which is basically the French equivalent of Greaseball.  Big (by European standards) mixed traffic fast freight/passenger engine that lasted about 50 years, covering the increasingly few non-electrified lines in France.  

There were also a bunch of more typical 1-3 voltage electric Nez Casse types built for use in France and a number of other countries (Portugal, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Korea… and some failed systems in Morocco and Brazil).  Most of these worked notably well and ran for 30+ years, quite a number still run today in Slovenia, Portugal, and on some low-end French trains that haven’t been replaced by EMUs.  I would broadly describe them as very typical European-style mixed traffic engines capable of passenger or faster freight services, their role is comparable to something like a Siemens Eurosprinter or Bombardier TRAXX today.  Ironically NOT a dedicated high speed train power car and a relatively antiquated but durable and versatile style.  Locomotive-hauled trains have become increasingly uncommon in Europe in favor of EMUs with the decline in rail freight, among other factors.  People seem to really like the old loco-hauled French trains still running since they use really comfortable older coaches and are pretty cheap, lower-speed options.  

I’m prone to swapping Electra’s basis a bit to the related CC 6500 and its variants because it opens a lot of interesting history and is a more “typical” electric engine.  These were a beefier, more versatile first-gen Nez Cassé model also used on pre-TGV fast trains and later heavier freight trains.  There’s some amusing youtube videos of them pulling big gritty tanker trains with their pretty flashy looks.  They also weren’t used as long as the later smaller Bo-Bo electric models since they’re a bit overkill for most uses, EMUs have gradually taken over passenger services, freight services declined, and the Co-Co arrangement can be tougher on track.  Their freight-oriented close relatives in Slovenia are still going though!  

But they have the VERY interesting link of one (X996) being trialled by Amtrak in the late 70s as a replacement for the 40+ year old GG1s that were physically falling apart, and the freight-derived GE E60s that couldn’t manage the speeds required on the Northeast Corridor. Sources seem to vary on just how hopeless and ill-advised the endeavor was, but basically, X996 didn’t work well due to the terrible track condition of the Northeast Corridor vs typical French lines.  To summarize a very deep-seated and messy issue: it was cobbled together from several 50+ year old, often poorly maintained mainlines and has been underinvested in since until VERY recently.  They went with the X995 instead, a Swedish Rc model that worked a lot better since Swedish rail conditions are generally closer to the US.  And also a design that dated back to the mid-60s.  The AEM-7s based on them ran until the late 2010s, the last one actually got retired right around the time Electra got de-toothpasted in 2018

This alternate timeline aspect is what got me into Amtrak history and eventually American electrification in general.  I doubt any of the creators were aware of X996, but the context behind a Nez Cassé style engine running in a vaguely US environment changes a lot.  It implies an alternate timeline where the NEC was improved enough for it to actually work practically and opens the door for some tragically attainable sci-fi about “what if neoliberalism hadn’t taken over and the US invested in a passable passenger rail system?”.  It makes me imagine nearly 50-year old funny nosed French trains running  grimy fast freight trains in Pennsylvania or dragging on New Jersey Transit commuter trains in their twilight years.  It feels weirdly natural with just how violently 70s they look with the Amtrak livery, they’d blend right in with how violently 70s many US trains look today, that’s how old they actually are.  

It’s also where my more unhinged and sacrilegious opinions flipping the steam/electric dynamic and rejecting canon’s framing came from.  Because it totally flips the circumstances of rail transport and gives a cohesive explanation for many“stupid and incorrect” aspects of Electra.  Now Electra is more a business-class train at best, running on a notoriously run down and underfunded network in an era where electrification looked like it would finally expand but never did (due to the party and politics of “needn’t ask the world to turn around and help you”).  No Comeback goes from a shitty tantrum to pretty tragic in light of the US resoundingly turning to fossil fuels in the 80s and even steam preservation doing better than electrification did then.  And in the context of a country that’s 99% unelectrified that was running electric trains from the 30s and even as old as the 1910s… suddenly a 60s-70s era engine is actually pretty futuristic and being electric is an important selling point and being proud and defensive of it makes sense.  Electra skewing Grace Jones at times even works out well because being unappreciated and running off to Europe fits the rejection of X996 and expanding electrification in general. I think early Amtrak is a compelling setting for the show in general since there was a chaotic mix of secondhand equipment and trials of foreign engines to explain the races, and basically every character could feasibly coexist besides Rusty (and my fundamental problems with him are their own even longer post).  

Electra as a more “typical” Co-Co Nez Cassé is also why I gravitate towards a lot headcanons/preferences that are far removed from the original or typical character choices.   Tall and thin?  The Northeast Corridor has fairly low clearances, it makes sense to be medium-short, modernish electric engines usually aren’t that big anyways, especially compared to other US rolling stock.  X996 would be a bit smaller and comparable speed-wise but actually stronger than Greaseball.  Internal combustion was still fairly competitive with electric traction speed-wise in the 70s-80s, you still had attempts at high-speed turbine trains and the TGV had originally been planned as one pre-oil crisis.  Ironically, the big advantage pure electric engines had (and still have) IS strength and power (especially per weight) because they don’t have to carry their own fuel source and massive electric motors were established long before effective high-horsepower rail diesel engines were.  I really can’t overstate how weirdly impressive it is that Mykal is the most train-accurate Electra and I love that he ends up being a lot of people’s first exposure to the character due to being in almost all the English legal video.  The hotter/bolder personality vs being delicate and anxious. The jarring mix of being a glamorous diva train but ridiculously beefy physically is so dead-on to how French people describe the 6500s and Co-Co models in general.  Even being unusually old and increasingly visually beat up while slapping a coat of glittery paint on it is so dead on to struggling passenger networks running sometimes absurdly old trains and putting on a sparkly veneer to improve PR.  

Anyways, this has been an exploration of the irl engines behind Electra and their often underappreciated yet widespread significance.  This also explains a lot of the method behind my madness and contrarianism with this character.  Go forth and make an army of funny nose French trains in any color and country you want.  Seriously, this style was so widespread and generally beloved you can justify them almost anywhere and even some of the old diesel units are getting moved to secondary markets today.  

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My new favorite piece of Nez Cassé lore is them being reportedly baptized and someone on youtube saying their mom or grandma was the godmother of one. Not exactly a reputable source but I’ve heard enough funny instances of blessing machinery to believe, especially in a country that has wine chillers in the cabs of some trains.

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It’s hilarious lurking European train circles online and hearing them absolutely trash diesel trains for being stinky and filthy or having intense loco-hauled vs multi-unit arguments. Living in the future indeed.

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I should do an info post about the CC 40100s and Nez Cassé classes in general because they’re fun and it seems like a lot of the fandom doesn’t know a ton about them.

In short: probably the most iconically French train behind the TGV, outside of the 40100s they were generally very reliable and long-lived and pretty much all of them had some degree of mixed-traffic ability. They’ve been notably used outside of France in several countries. The DC motor ones sound like vacuum cleaners because they use giant resistors for braking/control and those get hot and need a lot of ventilation. French railfans seem to love them because they look cool. There’s also a number of diesel versions that I’ve already made “French Greaseball” jokes about.

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if anyone wants a specific headcanon/topic request or amazing/terrible real life context or concepts for OCs I am open.

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I know I’ve mentioned it multiple times but I will never get over the tourist railroad that tried to pass off two B-unit (cabless brick of engine and motor) diesels as “baggage cars” to push an increasingly weak steam engine around. It’s so absurd (they even rigged up a crude throttle system in the cab to control them) but also kind of brilliant.

Imagine if Carrie was secretly just a B-unit in disguise and nobody has figured out except that she smells weird and keeps getting grease stains on people’s bags. Honestly would be a funny twist villain (or ally)

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something I want to flesh out eventually is how trains tend to be very cheap/thrifty in ways that are relatively antiquated and not as common in human society now. Execution and degree varies between places, lines, and “cultures” in general but a lot of them act like grandmas that lived through the Great Depression, reusing things into oblivion. And then you also get some that are genuinely lazy and only do the bare minimum because it actually is the most economically efficient in some systems in the US especially (some commuter lines do weird one-way trains and have them sit around until the rush hour crowd heads back home, Precision Scheduled Railroading in general)