Looks like they made it to the yards! Damn, that train took a long-ass time to draw.
The whole train culture aspect of Freewheel is something I have a really hard time properly researching. I mean, I can find tons of information but something about the actual act of drawing trains relatively realistically is very difficult for me. I’m not an engineer (despite the fact that my grandfather spent most of my life telling me I should be one) so I don’t understand how all the parts of the train work together, let alone what sort of order the cars are supposed to be in, which car does what, which cars wouldn’t be on the same train as other cars, etc. I try my best to be as accurate as possible without making myself crazy over details that wouldn’t really matter to the average reader. As much as I would love the train culture aspect of Freewheel to be perfect in the eyes of railfans and other railroad enthusiasts, I’m just never going to have the time to delve in depth into the inner workings of the railroad. Not as much as I’d like to, anyway.
But that’s not to say I don’t do any research! On the contrary, I do TONS of research! Every chance I get to watch a documentary about railroads or tramps and hobos, I take it! I also spend a lot of time following links on the internet, anything that seems like it might be applicable to the Freewheel universe. Recently, in my link-hopping adventures, I came across this pretty neat invention of a railbike!
Now that I know what it is and I’ve had a chance to look up the term, I’ve found all sorts of cool stuff, but this is the thing I found initially that I thought was truly rad:
photo from the Black Butte Center for Railroad Culture's site
I saw this on the website of the Black Butte Center for Railroad Culture’s site. Theirs was one of the websites I randomly came across in one of my many searches for railroad-related information and reference photos. I’m hoping at some point that I can use a railbike in Freewheel!
I also found a video of someone on a DIFFERENT railbike, after searching on YouTube I realized railbikes are actually a “thing.” Pretty awesome! This one has a cool steampunk feel to it and can be motor-powered as well as pedal-powered:
Also in my searching, I found that not only is the railbike totally a “thing,” it’s even got a name: the draisine! They were used in much the same way handcars were used in the U.S., but were used mostly in Germany, Sweden, Norway and Poland. Fun facts!
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Fables of Freewheel – $32 till the next page is posted!
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In North America, at least, they were usually called ‘velocipedes’ for the bike version, and ‘speeders’ for the powered ‘upgrade’ of the old handcars.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velocipede towards the bottom for a picture of the rail version, or do a search on ‘velocipede railroad’ and you can find some good links.
Oh course, you probably already found this out on your own during your own research! :)
I did not know that! Will the wonders of the internet never cease? Thanks for posting the link!