#and think it should be thematically bigger because rail economics are fascinating

[catenary-chad]

my take on train money (caveat: I am a huge revisionist on many things in the name of being truer to real train economics)

I treat the rail systems as similar to how older heavy industry or government jobs tend to work- often prone to holding onto people for a LONG time, relatively open to retraining them to other tasks because they’re familiar with the specific intricacies of the company/industry. Irl rail is often this way, and Stex itself as an institution is bizarrely similar (at least in the past, people on the alumni podcast have called it a “government job”)

Engines tend to symbolize leadership and managers, coaches pink collar workers, and freight blue collar ones. The leader/follower thing is based on how Michal Fraley described the dynamics of skating in trains and how some people were better/more comfortable at one or the other. Freight rail’s fortunes otherwise closely parallel heavy industry and it’s infamously heavily unionized so it makes sense for them to parallel those workers. Freight being shown as poor irks me because rail freight is a very profitable industry and just doesn’t care to spend on appearances because it’s not as public facing. They’re more like skilled trades who don’t care about appearances because they’ll get dirty anyways and take a certain weird “masculine pride” in not caring about appearance and being “fussy like that”. Stuff like unreasonable working hours and unsafe conditions are the major modern labor issues in that sphere, especially in the US. Freight trains are lower priority than passenger trains for good reason- they mostly serve less time-sensitive industries these days and a load of rocks or iron being several hours late isn’t an issue vs passengers. You see more fast perishable goods transported by rail in passenger-heavy countries and areas where freight HAS to move fast to fit in the schedule and it’s more practical to move stuff like milk or fruit that way.

Passenger trains as pink collar isn’t as clean of a comparison since actual workers on those trains are often as highly unionized as freight and highly paid. But I think there’s a compelling thread in how passenger rail is rarely profitable (I’ve heard $30k net for a fully loaded passenger train vs $500k net for an oil train in the northwestern US, and this doesn’t count infrastructure expenses) and has to be heavily subsidized because many societies would collapse without it, much akin to caring jobs and much of “women’s work”. It’s also inherently far more public-facing and service-oriented and has to maintain at least some standard of cleanliness, quality, and comfort because of its human cargo. There’s also a very boomer “I hate my wife” vibe to how people talk about faster passenger trains “keeping freight trains in line” schedule wise.

Man that was long. Anyways I think Greaseball paying off Slick or Caboose makes sense since replica Greaseball feels very Electro Motor Diesel-coded and that company was a subsidiary of General Motors for years and used many auto industry-like strategies, making him a good standin for it. Caboose being aligned with trucking early on is my fav direction, and I think Slick would be more compelling if auto-aligned too. Alternatively I just like to stick Moloch in as a representative of that industry because it’s hilarious to imagine a guy in a cow skull mask bribing sleazy trains. Electra cheating against a steam engine is just stupid given the material realities of both forms of traction as early as the turn of the century and I maintain that they would be a neutral character who maybe gets pissed at Rusty for genuinely thinking he threw the race on purpose.

Greaseball is a well-paid PR guy for UP. Electra is a government worker constantly groveling for grants and funding and realistically, their glamor is skin-deep and a PR thing with weird parallels to respectability politics because electric trains are so associated with dirty and pedestrian public transport. The Components are their wider team. Momma/Poppa make more sense as high-maintenance out of touch celebrities than Electra. Don’t even start me on how Rusty could “just get a job” because mechanically functional small steam engines are very desirable to tourist railroads. The intricacies of how I think the social dynamics of traction SHOULD work based on reality are a separate rabbit hole.

tl;dr I treat them like embodiments of various industries ala political cartoons and treat them as employees of them. Electra would ironically not be rich and I could go on and on about how much their framing pisses me off for weirdly serious train reasons. But I think Purse would be the type to take a sketchy briefcase full of cash somewhere because I see him as some kind of mail car and those often carried high-value things. Electra can and would buy a croissant if they could actually eat one. I think they would hate AirBnB for political reasons because electric trains are actually the least tech bro thing there is but that’s also a whole separate rabbit hole.

I was thinking(crazy right) in Starlight Express money seems to have actual value to the characters as evidenced by Slick and Bv being motivated by money to crash trains, the existence of my glorious king Purse in the first place, and the components bringing up Electra is rich in the beginning of AC/DC, among other things.. Realistically what do the trains use money on?I mean I guess like oil or whatever they need, repairs, a new paint job maybe, but like what else… Unseriously too, like imagine Electra and the components buying a train air bnb or like a train croissant🤤 I’m sure someone else has brought this up but like what do you think they use money for be it serious or not 😭