Dawnblazer Sucks - A Lighthearted Overly Niche Look at Locomotive Design in Dawntrail

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Dawnblazer is a little tank engine, who lives in a station in Shaaloani. It's a cheeky little engine with 2 big wheels, 4 small wheels, a short... stumpy... wait...

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https://64.media.tumblr.com/a5bcc275...3f2e8ce5d1.png

As far as fantasy trains go, the Dawnblazer isn't so bad; yet the uncanny resemblance to a real-world object is really hurting the immersion, at least for me.

What's so bad about our oil (ceruleum) burning friend?

https://64.media.tumblr.com/f38b0ae0...1440408a7d.png

This. Right here. See the two big wheels that beg to pivot around and steer, almost like a boiler mounted on a backwards kei truck?

In reality, a 0-2-4 like this is exceedingly uncommon. [Wikipedia tells me] that only four were ever known to exist, but why might that be?

Now there's plenty of locmotives with only two driving wheels, The [Sterling Single] not least among them. Without taking magic into consideration, this means ALL of it's force is applied to two tiny points each no larger than a single gil. The merest hint of debris on the track or the most gentle of slopes and the poor locomotive would be stalling before you could say "Rroneek!"

Now why the Sterling single works as a fast passenger train however is that despite the limited area it can apply force to, it has a HUGE design hack: Leading wheels.

These unpowered wheels help carry the weight of the front of the engine and more crucially, help it negotiate corners at higher speeds. Else the locomotive will want to ignore the track and just keep going with it's current momentum, on a one-way ticket to derailsville.

However that begs the question: There's 4 trailing wheels; what are they there to support?

https://64.media.tumblr.com/2ba4a5b3...6d60e8a3c2.png

The Lightest part of the locomotive? Traditionally they've a minor role in suspension for the crew, but more practically spread the weight of the boiler over more axels. Yet broadly speaking, it's all focused over the drivers!

https://64.media.tumblr.com/a6bd547d...6dde28a467.png

That said, the cab itself is HUGE. Out of context, you'd be forgiven for thinking this was a freight car, not the locomotive. This to me speaks of the need to design something to fit a camera inside, where you design for the poses and action you want, then build the rest of the vehicle around that. Get something that mostly works and hand-wave the rest with aether! Easy! :D

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So, if this design was used in the real world what could we imply about its route?

If a single-driving axel was chosen, that would imply they wanted a fast train over VERY flat and level ground with barely any curves. And remarkably the straight shot from Shaalonai Station, through the tunnel and over the plains into Vanguard supports that!!

Perhaps it's for the best the dome currently prevents access into Yyasulani Station and further; the speed over the bridge would have to be dramatically slow. Small wonder Wawlika is always raving about how good a driver Nitowikwe is; avoiding that much potential wheelslip would take serious focus!! Heck, it might even be - faster - on the return trips from Vanguard as there's no means to turn the locomotive, so the trialing wheels serve as pilots!

And now with the WoL delivering custom patterns and materials, they're free to drive this extremely niche design to the extreme!

Also without any running gear to animate, that simplifies the workload on the modellers immensely.

Thanks CBU 3, I hate that it works so damn well in the setting. Gwahaha! 2/2

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leading_wheel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driving_wheel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trailing_wheel


(Guess I got wheely distracted there, oh well.)

As a train enthusiast myself, it's more believable than those things Garlemald was using (those locomotives resembled streamlined steam locomotives with 'Baltic tank' engine wheel arrangement (4-6-4T), and yet... there was no connection to the wheels from the outside cylinders (it was missing the connecting rod from the valve gear to the driving wheels), and the front bogie had it's own cylinders to boot ('booster' engine perhaps?), and worse, as shown by the example inside Tertium Station... they were actually really diesel-electric locomotives (cereleum-electric?)! As in, no boiler, but a full diesel-like engine with cylinder heads and an electrical generator - to the point the 1st Legion were using it to power the aetheryte and lighting inside the station!

And then there was the carriages of the 'Runaway Train' that had derailed... which seemed to be missing some wheels on the carriage bogies! (Although I guess you could say that the train did derail, the carriages probably lost some wheels in the accident). So yeah, just train wrong on all fronts! :p

The 0-2-4 wheel arrangement (or at least locomotives with a single large driving wheel) incidentally was quite popular in the early years of steam locomotive development though, and is perfectly useful as long as there is enough weight for adhesion, so the Tural example isn't necessarily out of place.

I wish the Ul'dahan trains were shown, something tells me that they'd be even more crazier! ;)

So, translating for non-train-knowers: The Dawnblazer sucks, but it sucks in ways that actually make sense for the time period being evoked and the route we see. Meanwhile, the Garlemald trains actually don't make any sense at all as trains.

Good to know, I love this kind of super niche analysis!

If I can make a weird request: what about the Phantom Train in the Omega raids? That one's got several levels of excuses thanks to being several layers of 'not real' even in-universe, but it's the other big train this game's had.

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Originally Posted by Enkidoh

As a train enthusiast myself, it's more believable than those things Garlemald was using (those locomotives resembled streamlined steam locomotives with 'Baltic tank' engine wheel arrangement (4-6-4T), and yet... [...]

And then there was the carriages of the 'Runaway Train' that had derailed... which seemed to be missing some wheels on the carriage bogies! (Although I guess you could say that the train did derail, the carriages probably lost some wheels in the accident). So yeah, just train wrong on all fronts! :p

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About that... I was thinking of discussing the Runaway Train in another thread, but I do have some insights on that. You're right, this is a Just Train Wrong thread, but for me the Dawnblazer is just too close to pass off as fantasy gwahaha!
Anyway short version:

• It's pretty difficult to get good reference images from the Tower of Babil, I'll have to look a bit more closely later on - I'd actually forgotten about that part until you mentioned it!
• Same with Tertium, although those were modified into living quarters - if the Legatus was in the engine's cab that must've slipped past me.
• If the EW Lv84 Mining Leve "Training Up" is anything to go by, 'The Runaway Train' has been scavenged for parts if not by the Garleans then certainly by the Ilsabard Contingent!
• I do recall being intrigued by the use of side rods on The Runaway; and it got me wondering if they took some level of inspiration from the Swiss' Krockodil, at least insofar as it being an electric loco with side rods and a sloped nose.

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The 0-2-4 wheel arrangement (or at least locomotives with a single large driving wheel) incidentally was quite popular in the early years of steam locomotive development though, and is perfectly useful as long as there is enough weight for adhesion, so the Tural example isn't necessarily out of place.

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That didn't come up in my research; could you show me some references please? My main gripe is that it's the single driving axel without any pilots to support it, which goes back to my impression of it being a backwards Kei truck :P

Literally any other combination of 6 wheels would be better I feel, or even an 0-4-0! - No really, this thing is so damn unbalanced to look at I can't stand it! XD

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I wish the Ul'dahan trains were shown, something tells me that they'd be even more crazier! ;)

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I feel like they'd be not too dissimilar to what we see out of Twine on the First; purpose built mining carts propelled in the local fashion. The use of cog rails is interesting enough though.

While it's used for transporting supplies and sneaky scions between Castra Centri and Meridianum, I don't recall seeing the XIVth Legions' train either?

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

So, translating for non-train-knowers: The Dawnblazer sucks, but it sucks in ways that actually make sense for the time period being evoked and the route we see. Meanwhile, the Garlemald trains actually don't make any sense at all as trains.

Good to know, I love this kind of super niche analysis!

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I'm being generous justifying the Dawnblazer, trying to give the devs all the benefit of the doubt I can. I still feel it'd be very dependant on aether / magitek to function, which is valid, just annoying when it's in this uncanny valley of design.

At the same time though... yeah that works as a tl;dr, thanks. https://xkcd.com/2501/

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If I can make a weird request: what about the Phantom Train in the Omega raids? That one's got several levels of excuses thanks to being several layers of 'not real' even in-universe, but it's the other big train this game's had.

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To be fair, we don't even know if the Phantom Train is from another shard, fiction, or even another shard's fiction etc etc. It's pretty faithful to the original sprite in FFVI, with the long acknowledged exception that you can't suplex it.

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/fi...20190521222452

I'll invoke Cool Train here, it's huge, it's menacing, it's clearly fantastical yet the sound and the experience is so much more engaging than what we get with the Dawnblazer. It's an unfair comparison really. There's probably someone much more familiar with FFVI that could talk to that, but I like it. Fun encounter, fun design, probably fun nostalgia, full marks.

And it has a set of pilot wheels. ;)

One last comparison - check out the different styles of the Bantam Train and the Lawnblazer minions. Do you think they'd work just as well in the others'?
https://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/w/imag...n%29_Patch.pnghttps://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/w/imag...n%29_Patch.png

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Originally Posted by crowwww

I'll invoke Cool Train here, it's huge, it's menacing, it's clearly fantastical yet the sound and the experience is so much more engaging than what we get with the Dawnblazer. It's an unfair comparison really. There's probably someone much more familiar with FFVI that could talk to that, but I like it. Fun encounter, fun design, probably fun nostalgia, full marks.

And it has a set of pilot wheels. ;)

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As someone who is quite familiar with FFVI (but again, not with trains), I think the two things I'd add that aren't necessarily clear in FFXIV are these:

1. The Phantom Train is explicitly depicted as a luxury passenger train; big Orient Express vibes, you go through dining cars, find individual passenger cabins, all that, even if it is weirdly haunted and wrong. That's not not present in the XIV fight, the interlude inside the cabin at least looks fairly nice, but the fight itself doesn't really focus on the cabin cars outside of the intro showing that there's clearly a lot of them. My gut says that the front engine car doesn't really read as 'luxury train', but that's without much knowledge of the subject.

2. The Phantom Train is essentially Charon's boat across the River Styx, scaled up; it turns up to ferry the souls of the entire kingdom of Doma after Kefka kills them all. That is to say, even in FFVI it doesn't have a manufacturer, a designated route, or specific energy requirements; it simply exists, running a route that mostly exists on a different level of existence than the world we know.

I was just curious what sort of similar logic could be applied to it, that's all!

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Originally Posted by Enkidoh

I wish the Ul'dahan trains were shown, something tells me that they'd be even more crazier! ;)

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Originally Posted by crowwww

I feel like they'd be not too dissimilar to what we see out of Twine on the First; purpose built mining carts propelled in the local fashion. The use of cog rails is interesting enough though.

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I think Ul’dah’s train is a little more beyond just propelling minecarts since I feel like the infrastructure is a little over-engineered for that. There are water towers and raised platforms for loading/unloading cargo where I feel like minecarts would just dump their load over to the side or in a chamber beneath. But I’m no expert on that or trains. All we know is that they use steam engines according to the sightseeing log.

I think the same tracks go through the Hidden Gorge Rival Wings map and we see a full-on goblin train there with a center wheel at the front using the cog rail.

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

I think Ul’dah’s train is a little more beyond just propelling minecarts since I feel like the infrastructure is a little over-engineered for that. There are water towers and raised platforms for loading/unloading cargo where I feel like minecarts would just dump their load over to the side or in a chamber beneath. But I’m no expert on that or trains. All we know is that they use steam engines according to the sightseeing log.

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Fair enough! I did say "in the local fashion" but I honestly was expecting a draught Chocobo given they never have a need to touch on them during the MSQ. Maybe they thought they would, which is why they used them as such prevalent decoration, but so far no dice.

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I think the same tracks go through the Hidden Gorge Rival Wings map and we see a full-on goblin train there with a center wheel at the front using the cog rail.

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Oh snap, the gobbie train from RW!! While that's just a gobtank modified to run on the cog rails, it isn't trying to be anything but peak heavensward skypirate / gobbitek and I respect it. Then again it's in RW and outside of mogtomes that rarely seems to pop gwahaha!

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

As someone who is quite familiar with FFVI (but again, not with trains), I think the two things I'd add that aren't necessarily clear in FFXIV are these:
[...]
I was just curious what sort of similar logic could be applied to it, that's all!

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And that's pretty much what we see in Sigmascape V1! There's no further need to speculate on the route or purpose; it's clearly meant as an express passenger locomotive; designed for a slightly more stylish trip across the Styx into the afterlife.

I suspect the somewhat unusual 2-4-4-0 / "Mallet" configuration was likely chosen more to sell the otherworldly aspect of it rather than picking something resembling the Orient Express inspiration, but either way it fits as a heavy / fast passenger locomotive.

It's design purpose is fairly straightforward, unlike our poor Dawnblazer!

Glad I was not the only one who thought the Phantom Train's locomotive was supposed to be a Mallet (or at least some other kind of articulated locomotive)! :D

Getting back to your earlier query about why Dawnblazer's 0-2-4 wheel arrangement did not appear to be that common in real life, if I can further indulge my inner railfan (puts on 'Casey Jones' cap), it was probably just pragmatism - locomotives with a single driving wheel would be rather small by design so having more than a single unpowered axle at the back would be wasteful (more wheels equals greater expense for the builder/owner after all). Given Dawnblazer was meant to be an experimental design, and also how big it's cab was, chucking a four wheel bogie at the back was probably for the best (also, looking at the thing more closely, I wonder if it was meant to be actually some kind of geared locomotive like a Shay or Climax rather than using conventional side rods - at the very least it's motion and cylinders seem to be internal (between the frames), and a single driving axle would be more suited to using gears/universal joints like a car transmission.). Or maybe I'm just overthinking things again!

Also, my comments in my earlier post were in hindsight not entirelly accurate, I was more referring to locomotives with a single driving axle were quite common in general, rather than the 0-2-4 arrangement specifically (which, as you noted, was very rate) - ironically the 0-2-2 arrangment was more common, especially in the early days of steam - Robert Stephenson's famous Rocket being a perfect example of the later arrangement. Single driving wheels soon became something of a niche arrangement, as the prevailing design trend as locomotives got bigger, longer and more powerful, they needed more wheels to compensate, although single driving axles did continue to see some use - the famous 4-2-2 'Single' express locomotives of the British Great Northern Railway for example. But yeah, eventually locomotives went with two driving axles/four driving wheels as minimum for pragmatism's sake.

Meanwhile, in Hydaelyn, Dawnblazer's designers on the other hand... seemed to have missed that memo! ;)

Thank you for your insights Enkidoh! My rail knowledge begins and ends much, much more close to home, though it's the collective passions of people abroad which help carry enough interest in their collective histories and stories.

Given the Garleans' penchant for warmachina, it wouldn't surprise me if my references to the Kei truck weren't entirely off, at least as far as internal combustion road vehicles go! I'll have to do a run of Tower of Babil in Exploration mode and report back with what comparisons I can make; ever since they were brought up earlier, I've a sinking feeling that Dawnblazer is quite possibly the same model and rig as what's used in the background, just given a solid polish for it's moments in the Shaaloani MSQ and 7.1