Train station

While this is really "January 1943. "Freight operations on the Chicago & North Western R.R. between Chicago and Clinton, Iowa. The journey ended, conductor John M. Wolfsmith walks to the little passenger station to wait for a suburban train to take him home to Chicago." ", for my purposes, it can be just about any small train station, almost anywhere.

a view inside a train yard

Trains

i know its a model train, but its a beautiful picture

A little bit of shelter from the snow

January 1943. "A Chicago, Milwaukee, Saint Paul & Pacific Railroad train just arrived at Chicago Union Station." 

Medium format nitrate negative by Jack Delano for the Office of War Information

Another view that could be just about any train station in the world - while this one is really Chicago Union Station, it could be substituted in as a station somewhere in Europe.

Repairing a train car

November 1942. "Chicago, Illinois. Jacking up a car on the repair tracks at an 

Illinois Central Railroad yard." 

Medium-format negative by Jack Delano, Office of War Information. 

Its a timeless view, that could be seen anywhere around the world in a train yard.  A maintenance mechanic repairing some worn out equipment.  Perhaps the players train is delayed because of a maintenance issue?

Interesting photos of Train Stations, and the Countryside

Interesting Photos of the train at stations, and the Simplon Tunnel

Brig Station, Switzerland

The Simplon Train Tunnel

A train in Constantinople

An English Train Station

A few photos from an English train station.  To kinda give Keepers and Players a sense of whats going on inside the train station.

 The Golden Arrow was a luxury boat train of the Southern Railway and later British Railways. It linked London with Dover, where passengers took the ferry to Calais to join the Flèche d’Or of the Chemin de Fer du Nord and later SNCF which took them on to Paris.

The Flèche d’Or was introduced in 1926 as an all-first-class Pullman service between Paris and Calais. On 15 May 1929, the Southern Railway introduced the equivalent between London and Dover. The train usually consisted of 10 British Pullman cars, hauled by one of the Southern Railway’s Lord Nelson class locomotives, and took 98 minutes to travel between London and Dover. Because of the impact of air travel and 'market forces' on the underlying economy, ordinary first- and third-class carriages were added in 1931. Similarly the first-class-only ferry, Canterbury, was modified to allow other classes of passenger.

A painting that I really like

All apologies for being late posting today.  I thought I had a couple photo sets queued up, but.... I didn't.  And I was out late last night, so I didn't double check until I had to run out this morning.

Theres something beautiful about Trains

Im planning to use this photo early in the campaign, when the players are going to investigate the toy train that Mehmet Makryat sold, and they head out of London.

A British Railways Standard '4MT' ten-wheeler, number 75078, visiting from the nearby Keighley and Worth Valley Railway, and a ten-coach train cross the Brooksbottom Viaduct of this preserved railway operation, closed by BR in 1972 and reopened between Bury and Rawtenstall by 1991.

Snowbound Train

One of my favourite scenes in "Murder on the Orient Express" is the train plowing through the snow and getting stopped.  This isn't the Orient Express, its a German train.  But its a beautiful picture.  And I don't think my players (or yours) will mind so much.  Particularly if you plan to have the train stopped by the weather at some point.

Also, where I'm at has been experiencing high temperatures as I post this, 

so looking at the snow... cooling

Just a train similar the Orient Express

Say what you like about Mussolini; he made the trains run on time.

This is a week of printable props, eh!

Today: two different ways to make a train schedule.

1) print this .PDF Printable Schedule out on a "Legal" sized sheet of paper, trim the excess and give it to your players as a handout  (then trim the excess and give it to your players as a handout).

2) decompress the .ZIP Train Schedule Folder, and adjust the times/locations to fit your needs, then print it out on an "Legal" sized of paper (then trim the excess and give it to your players as a handout).

In making this prop/handout, I started with this 1939 schedule as an example.  I'll admit, I pretty much just copied it.

I modified some of the locations to better fit with my view of the Horror on the Orient Express Campaign, and left other destinations intact, to show some of the alternative destinations that players could elect to visit for whatever reason. Some of the locations I just plain and simply couldn't read, so I used my best guess and a healthy dose of Google to try to figure it out.

Now why is this schedule interesting and worthy of your attention?

The last time I played Horror on the Orient Express was the mid 1990s, and I was a player.  The keeper didn't want to deal with the issues of time keeping, so the train was always just there waiting for us to board.  For that group, it worked.

For my campaign, I’m planning on assuming that the players bring their belongings with them when they exit the train, and I’ll have a clock on hand that I can adjust the time easily on to show the players what time it is in the game so they have to plan to make it back to the train.  Perhaps they’re being pursued by cultists and the trains not due for another couple hours so they cant just disappear onto the train with a wave and a cat call of "au revoir...." as cultists shake their fists at the rapidly departing players, instead they have to play a cat-and-mouse game of hide and go seek in a town that the cultists are intimately familiar with…. Or perhaps they’re hiding from cultists on one side of town, and the trains just about to leave on the other side of town….  The tension of watching the clock tick.

Tick....

....Tok

Tick....

Oh, and that bit about Mussolini and the trains....  
....Snopes says its a bunch of hooey

A train crossing a bridge

Found this over on Shorpy, and while its an American train, in the 1940s..... I think it makes a really neat stand-in for the Orient Express crossing a river somewhere.

January 1943. "Freight operations on the Chicago & North Western R.R. between Chicago and Clinton, Iowa. 

The train crosses a long steel bridge." Medium-format negative by Jack Delano for the Office of War Information.

Just a view of a river, trees and the sky

My sister took this photo while we were on the Dinner Mystery Theatre Train ride .  Its just a view of a modern diesel train (and thus, normally outside of the scope of this blog) about to cross a bridge as the cars pass a river.  But, I really like this photo, and wanted to share it with 'the class', because its part of that not-horror part of the game that makes the horrific parts that much more horrific.

As the players are traversing Europe, they'll look out the windows pretty regularly, and see things just like this.  Serene wilderness filled with trees, rivers and bridges.

And then something will happen that will shake their sanity.

I'm going to try to dig up some good photos of various countries countryside to post up over the next few days.

Traversing the English Countryside

Just a view of a train traversing the English Countryside, going from London to Dover

Trains, Dinner, Mysteries and other shenanigans

Heres a picture of a painting of a train going from Calais to Paris.

This could be a handy "postcard", with a clue written on the back.  Or a fake-clue to throw the players off the main quest.  I just like how it looks.

As a side note, I've scheduled this post to appear at just about the time that I'm proposing to my girlfriend on a train.  We're on a Dinner Mystery Theatre train (Mt Hood Dinner Mystery Train), enjoying a silly goofy mystery, while having dinner with my sister and step-mother.  Wish me luck, eh!

Domodossola

 An electric train pulling the Orient Express out of the Domodossola side of the Simplon Tunnel

And the outside of the Domodossola train station in Italy

Simplon Tunnel

I thought I had enough articles queued up while I was out of town, but I was wrong.  *sigh*

Here you can see a SBB locomotive at the Simplon Pass, and in the background you can see the SBB electric engine which hauled the train through the Simplon tunnel, Iselle in 1906