The train picks up food in the towns. It picks up coal and water—useable only for watering crops—in Coalfield. Sometimes they’re lucky and they pick up fresh water when the side roads open up and a river of cold mountain water flows through.
Inspiration
1. C.W. McCall: Great Big Rollin’ Railroad (web site)
2. New Riders of the Purple Sage: Glendale Train (New Riders of the Purple Sage)
3. C.W. McCall: The Silverton (Black Bear Road)
4. Larry Groce: Muddy Boggy Banjo Man (Junkfood Junkie)
5. Rod McKuen: Train to Quivira (Scandalous John)
6. Arlo Guthrie: Last Train (Last of the Brooklyn Cowboys)
The Glendale Train follows the High Road to the chasm at the end of the line. It runs on coal, very efficiently. It’s a coal-burning steam locomotive, a variation of the streamlined Challenger 4-6-4 with an art-deco front and long horizontal straight lines along its dark sides. The engine itself is partially magical, which is how it can run so efficiently, though even that has been winding down. If a sorceror listens to the engineer talk about how the engine works, or reads the dog-eared manual, they can make a Reason roll to realize that what’s being described sounds a lot like magic (the roll is at +4 if they’re reading the manual).
Most folks know this train as the Glendale train, because that’s where it ends in this direction. But Peco knows the old name: Metroliner Hermes. The other end doesn’t even have a name any more, it’s just coal fields in the mountains. The train has 25 cars, not including the engine and the caboose. There are three Pullman sleepers, two open coal hoppers, four grain hoppers, eleven boxcars and seven flatbeds.
The train will only respond to someone designated to drive it. Currently, those people are Peco the engineer and Jon the fireman.
The train needs about a quarter car full of coal to go from Caulfield to Glendale or back at normal speed. If it runs at normal speed, its water supply will last from Caulfield to Glendale. If it has had to move at high speed for half an hour or more, it may have to stop sometime between to refill the water tanks.
Peco the engineer
The engineer can take them anywhere on the line for a shilling a person or a pound for a whole car. If they’ve proven helpful, he may also hire them as bulls to guard the train from raiders and hungry townsfolk.
The train goes up to Glendale station, and then turns around.
“Can’t pay you anything but coal dust. But if you want a ride anywhere on the line we got an empty car for your horses, and a genuine Pullman sleeper with a mattress and clean sheets.”
“My father drove this train to the other side of the mountain; my grandfather drove with Big Jim all the way to the city. That track is closed now, but we still remember. In its heyday this train could do 90 miles an hour carrying everything from oil to gold, crops from Greenfield through Phoenix Meadows all the way to the city itself. When my grandfather drove the Phoenix Meadows route, High Road 49 was one of the main roads to the city, and these rails were the backbone of the world.”
Jon the fireman
The train carries extra coal to Glendale in case it ever runs short due to theft or other loss.
Sidewinders
“You’re looking for the city? Can you still return home, sidewinder? There is no city.”
“We’re railroad men, but we’ve picked up a few walkers. If you seek hidden ways, look for flowering trees flanking a path or door.”
“Every once and a while there’s a stream of fresh water when one of the side roads opens up.”
“That way is gone. You can’t get there from here.”
Central Station
“It isn’t just the raiders, though they’re likely to get the train sooner or later. I can’t keep running from ’em. The more stress I put on her, the sooner she breaks down, and you can’t find parts for this girl any more. Bailing wire can’t hold under boiler pressure and even bailing wire is hard enough to find. And the mines are slowly but surely all shutting down.”
“The three great trains of the Eternal City, doing ninety miles an hour in ten thousand-mile spokes down the crossroads.”
“No, this isn’t one of the big three. You’re riding Metroliner Hermes, nonstop service between Phoenix Meadows and the Eternal City.”
“No, we don’t go to the city today. The city’s on the other side of the end of the world. Across the end of the world, across the mountains, the trains still run between Phoenix Meadows and the City. Phoenix Meadows itself is a great city, sometimes called the Second City.”
“When the world ended, central station told three engineers to go on to the other side. Reliable service to the end of the world and beyond, that was Central’s motto. They sent over Big Jim the Engineer, Little Joe the Warrior Chief, and Noble Philomenes. Philomenes brought over the legendary Isanta Express. Little Joe drove the Avielen Airstream all the way from the Silver City. They came through the mountain with the darkness draped over them and the creatures of the abyss crawling the rails.”
“Today the Isanta lies half in a dead zone, and the Avielen provides parts for Hermes here.”
“Go into a dead zone, and the train just sputters. You ever pushed 400-tons on a dead line?”
Getting places
The train technically has a top speed of 90 miles per hours and a safe operating speed of 70 miles per hour. Nowadays, though, it runs at 40 miles per hour, or 1,000 miles per day. It will take 27 hours to get to Greenfield (assuming nothing happens), since Greenfield is 1,080 miles away.
“How’d that song go, Jon?”
“We’re a great big rollin’ railroad, one that everybody knows. We deliver your great cargo and come rollin’ home for more. We’re a million miles of history a shinin’ in the sun. We’re the Metro-Pacific and our story’s just begun.”
“From the green fields of the prairies to the City on the shore we were born of gold and silver spikes ten thousand years ago. Down the high ways of the crossroads feel our coalfired engine power. We’re the Metro-Pacific doing ninety miles an hour.”
If you google “Great Big Rollin’ Railroad” you can get the melody of it; it’s the Union-Pacific ad.
“Green fields of the prairies? We’re coming up on Greenfield next stop. That’s the first prairie station.”
Peco and Jon might decide to show off if they’re inspired by the player characters. They’ll be able to get it up to 90 miles per hour before the train starts failing and the coal furnace begins to bulge from the pressure.
Red hot power coruscates through the furnace. The engine appears to breathe—or gasp—with the ebb and flow of the deep red light.
The Glendale Train: The circus
“No, the circus never rides the train. The circus takes its own time moving down the road; moving off into the side-roads once in a while, coming back with new people. But it never takes the train.”
“Circus heirlooms are the closest thing to treasure we have.”
Related Pages
