#but I didn't see that one as often in other MTAs

[mundanemeowart]

[1863-project]

So, the other day I was playing through my Pokemon Black copy, and naturally I made my daily detour to Anville Town to see what train would pop up on the turntable that day (the type is determined by the day of the month, so it's always a surprise to see which one I'll find), and lo and behold they show me an old train! (iirc this one still runs in Pastoria City's Safari Zone)

Here is the entire description, plus a close up of the train (courtesy of our friends at Bulbapedia):

I don't have as much knowledge of trains as you do, but perhaps if you could tell us a bit about that train and/or it's real-life inspirations, then we might be able to date how long the Battle Subway's been around? I believe that this dialogue implies that the Battle Subway may be as old as this model. And, if it is old enough, then our beloved submas may not be the first ones to have run this very cool facility :0.

// The route gates in this game also give us interesting tidbits of information, and I happened to stumble upon an interesting detail- that being that the Battle Subway was established by a Rail Fanatic who also liked to battle (or something similar to that, I forget the exact wording and I cannot find any of the Route Gate text online :<).

The singular "Rail Fanatic" is a rather interesting choice of words considering twins currently run the Battle Subway, don't you think?

Anyway, thanks to all of this corkboard and yarn talk I just have a hunch that in game canon, the submas didn't actually start up the idea of the Battle Subway. I'd appreciate some of your insights on the matter if you're up to respond :>!.

Thanks! (and also, sorry for making another massive ask I guess I just can't help myself haha ;w;)

Aaah, yes, I will be DELIGHTED to take this on for you!

I'm pretty sure that's definitely supposed to be the old car they use in the Great Marsh, looking at it more closely! But it does resemble a lot of our older subway cars here, too, which delights me. In particular, in color, it looks like our Redbirds!

The Redbirds were built between 1959 and the early 1960s, but they were given their red paint scheme in the 1980s to combat graffiti. They were retired by 1993, but there are still a lot that serve as maintenance vehicles for the MTA, and quite a few still exist in preservation as well!

Or, if you want to go older...before things went underground, the elevated lines often had old wooden cars.

(link to read about these guys)

The three separate companies that make up today's MTA quickly figured out that steel cars worked better, and that was that, but the old wooden ones are awfully pretty. Here's an example of an early steel car:

(Some of these guys served for a long time - from 1915 until 1969!)

Now, for that other information...holy SHIT, am I interested in knowing who that Rail Fanatic was. And given that we have a lot of historical cars that could fit the description of the old one in Unova, that gives us a wide date range! It could have been there from the beginning - the early 1900s - or it could have come in later, but that text absolutely sounds like it's saying the Battle Subway predates Ingo and Emmet themselves. I now absolutely know what I want a Unovan Legends game to be about, oh my God. Will I get this game? Probably not. Will I fantasize about getting it anyway? Of course I will.

Seriously, though, thank you for that information. I absolutely have to know more now and I am...so curious about who this person was. An ancestor of theirs? A former boss they worked for who they took over for when that person retired? Someone entirely unrelated to them from one hundred years ago? The possibilities are endless.