I suppose the History / Nostalgia forum is the appropriate place for discussing worlds that arent...
The Rev. Awdrys imaginary Thomas / Sodor world, seems to have cropped up a good deal on RailUKForums recently. That is a thing Ive never been into it didnt appeal to me, even as a child but as a (perhaps never properly grown-up) adult, I have quite enjoyed (not to addiction-point) the Harry Potter books. (Have basically not engaged with the films.) What Ive liked about the books, has been mostly the crazy world-building, as opposed to the IMO rather lame story-line and character-interplay. Being a railway enthusiast, Ive been particularly taken with the material about the Hogwarts Express; have done more thinking and speculating about it, than is likely appropriate for any supposedly sane person...
My rationalising of Hogwarts Express stuff, has come up with what follows : wonder whether anyone else has latched onto this theme, and developed similar or different theories (I gather that J.K. Rowling, though not a railfan as such, likes trains and rail travel thus, likely, having been prompted to include a train element in her Wizarding World).
With things in the WW operating on a fundamentally different basis from those in the Muggle sphere: I see the Hogwarts Express as being a magical simulation of Muggle steam trains -- not actually using fossil fuel to heat water to produce steam to propel a locomotive. Ive formed the theory that wizards centuries ago, used their powers to foresee the nineteenth-century invention and development by Muggles, of the steam railway, and thought re same, this is a really neat and delightful mode of transport; and thus created (well before the 19C) for their own purposes, their magical version of railways, because they thought it was fun. Not strictly necessary they have, as the books tell us, other magical means of getting from place to place but they just liked the whole idea, and adopted it as a means of getting pupils to and from the school at Hogwarts.
Other HP fans on Net forums have tended to the opinion that the Hogwarts Express uses with magical concealment and collision-avoidance existing Muggle rail tracks to travel between London, and Hogsmeade, railhead for Hogwarts those H venues generally reckoned to be somewhere in the southern half of Scotland. I prefer the notion that (with Platform 9-and-Three-Quarters at Kings Cross, an anomalous prankish flourish on the part of the wizards), the Wizarding Worlds rail system is totally separate and distinct from that of Muggledom magically hidden from the mundane majority of us.
Potter nerds have posed the question of, how come the Hogwarts Express runs only between London and Hogsmeade what about Hogwarts pupils from other parts of the British Isles? I theorise that in the books, we hear only about the Kings Cross HE, because thats the train used by the characters most central to the story: Harry and Hermione live in Greater London; and the Weasleys dwell in the countryside somewhere west of London, which city is their natural railhead. Rowling refrains from going into detail on all aspects of the Wizarding World if she did, every volume in the series would be thousands of pages long. I like to take it, that there are other wizarding rail routes from various parts of the British Isles, to Hogsmeade not mentioned in the books, because of the above. I envisage, say (wizards being free, in their railway construction, from constraints imposed by intervening bodies of water): one route from the far south-west of England, then taking in Wales and north-west England, and proceeding thence to Hogsmeade; another starting in south-west Ireland, covering the whole of that island, then proceeding into south-west Scotland and thence to Hogsmeade; and another starting in the Shetland Islands (maybe even the Faroes, unless Faroese juvenile wizards are catered for by Durmstrang School of W & W), running via the Orkneys, then through the north of Scotland, finishing at Hogsmeade.
Would be interested in thoughts from similar loons but am quite prepared for this post to be the first and only, of the thread...
The Rev. Awdrys imaginary Thomas / Sodor world, seems to have cropped up a good deal on RailUKForums recently. That is a thing Ive never been into it didnt appeal to me, even as a child but as a (perhaps never properly grown-up) adult, I have quite enjoyed (not to addiction-point) the Harry Potter books. (Have basically not engaged with the films.) What Ive liked about the books, has been mostly the crazy world-building, as opposed to the IMO rather lame story-line and character-interplay. Being a railway enthusiast, Ive been particularly taken with the material about the Hogwarts Express; have done more thinking and speculating about it, than is likely appropriate for any supposedly sane person...
My rationalising of Hogwarts Express stuff, has come up with what follows : wonder whether anyone else has latched onto this theme, and developed similar or different theories (I gather that J.K. Rowling, though not a railfan as such, likes trains and rail travel thus, likely, having been prompted to include a train element in her Wizarding World).
With things in the WW operating on a fundamentally different basis from those in the Muggle sphere: I see the Hogwarts Express as being a magical simulation of Muggle steam trains -- not actually using fossil fuel to heat water to produce steam to propel a locomotive. Ive formed the theory that wizards centuries ago, used their powers to foresee the nineteenth-century invention and development by Muggles, of the steam railway, and thought re same, this is a really neat and delightful mode of transport; and thus created (well before the 19C) for their own purposes, their magical version of railways, because they thought it was fun. Not strictly necessary they have, as the books tell us, other magical means of getting from place to place but they just liked the whole idea, and adopted it as a means of getting pupils to and from the school at Hogwarts.
Other HP fans on Net forums have tended to the opinion that the Hogwarts Express uses with magical concealment and collision-avoidance existing Muggle rail tracks to travel between London, and Hogsmeade, railhead for Hogwarts those H venues generally reckoned to be somewhere in the southern half of Scotland. I prefer the notion that (with Platform 9-and-Three-Quarters at Kings Cross, an anomalous prankish flourish on the part of the wizards), the Wizarding Worlds rail system is totally separate and distinct from that of Muggledom magically hidden from the mundane majority of us.
Potter nerds have posed the question of, how come the Hogwarts Express runs only between London and Hogsmeade what about Hogwarts pupils from other parts of the British Isles? I theorise that in the books, we hear only about the Kings Cross HE, because thats the train used by the characters most central to the story: Harry and Hermione live in Greater London; and the Weasleys dwell in the countryside somewhere west of London, which city is their natural railhead. Rowling refrains from going into detail on all aspects of the Wizarding World if she did, every volume in the series would be thousands of pages long. I like to take it, that there are other wizarding rail routes from various parts of the British Isles, to Hogsmeade not mentioned in the books, because of the above. I envisage, say (wizards being free, in their railway construction, from constraints imposed by intervening bodies of water): one route from the far south-west of England, then taking in Wales and north-west England, and proceeding thence to Hogsmeade; another starting in south-west Ireland, covering the whole of that island, then proceeding into south-west Scotland and thence to Hogsmeade; and another starting in the Shetland Islands (maybe even the Faroes, unless Faroese juvenile wizards are catered for by Durmstrang School of W & W), running via the Orkneys, then through the north of Scotland, finishing at Hogsmeade.
Would be interested in thoughts from similar loons but am quite prepared for this post to be the first and only, of the thread...