for historical and animist context (yes, you can just ask trains questions. A SEPTA train ghostwrote this post with me. Electric trains especially are very friendly to humans and straightforward, it’s harder to understand combustion trains in general unless you are a at least an amateur mechanic or maintenance volunteer. They are more complicated, anti-human, and don’t respect humans unless their livelihood depends on them.)
electric trains and steam engines just never had serious historical rivalry. Electric motors mopped the floor with them by the ragtime era, especially in commuter service and heavy freight because they are VERY good at starting/stopping vs steam engines, amazing uphill (steam engines are atrocious at this to the point it’s a repeated Thomas plot) and don’t have to drag their own fuel around. The latter two were very appealing to rich coal hauling railroads and mines, not dealing with hauling coal around to refuel dozens of steam engines vs one central power plant saves a lot of hassle (and maintenance makes it even more extreme)
Steam engines in the US are actually very offended by being seen as minorities, because they are demons who hated being alive and oppressors, not victims! Black culture is universally pro-train because rail was an opportunity for freedom since the mid-1800s, because of this they gloss over negative traits of steam engines because they’re all friendly trains to them. In the latter half of the 20th century, electric trains developed VERY similar economic and social politics to Black people because of their presence in cities left to rot or destroyed by “urban renewal” and car culture. They’re widely but covertly Black-coded in the news because of this (exaggerated claims of subway crimes, “welfare queen” adjacent rhetoric about transit funding). You could also draw comparisons to other minorities in the US, but in terms of real life, electric trains are way more Black coded than most think. Just look at Amtrak ads! Also note that transit advocates and enthusiasts are way more diverse than people into steam engines… it’s actually a huge issue that it’s almost entirely old white men and they’re struggling to expand their volunteer pool because they’re viewed as less accepting than they are!
British steam engines are kind of different spiritually and do see themselves with more of that victim mentality due to the engrained culture there. This is a VERY white and specifically British thing with few ties to Black American culture (other than some music). They’re more tied to industrial decline there, and hate Thatcher! There’s similar core issues of refusing to adapt post-WWII but some very deeply engrained cultural stuff with unions there that’s way out of my depth.
Electra works VERY well as a Michael Jackson figure who’s a celebrity who can’t often speak directly and is constantly threatened and slandered by media! Electric trains have VERY similar issues with media to a lot of Black celebrities in general, especially in the 70s-80s! It’s a shame the show and fandom rarely pick up on this, because it’s such a powerful and nuanced concept and a way to write Electra in a train-accurate way without slogging through all that history… you can largely write them as MJ with the serial numbers filed off and say a LOT! Electric trains WERE violently suppressed and destroyed en masse in the US and have suffered slow decay in… a lot of countries the last few decades and it’s very hard for them to reach audiences outside their historic regions, so a celebrity figure would be very powerful for them and irl electric trains LOVE getting photos taken and art made of them! Almost all public-facing trains do, but unloved ones get very desperate (SEPTA loves photos and will show you heritage units if you take pics of random stations and trains and speak positively about them)
Fuel isn’t even a relevant term for electric trains, they’ve always had a strong hydropower presence and could easily be powered by solar or wind vs burning things! They’re defined by power being directly supplied via electricity, from any source! This is a huge gripe I have with Wembley, we can basically eliminate the use of ALL fuels with trains specifically since they’re so easy to electrify. I also get pissed at the batterywashing of Electra but eh… at least they still have pantographs and that’s a genuinely huge deal with media, who gleefully erase those at every turn for nonsensical wireless all-battery situations.
