Future Trains?

[Just Crazy Jim]

If there were to be made a future set of rolling stock (ex., year 3,000 and beyond), what theme would you prefer to see?

Retrofuturism

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Retrofuturism - based on classic sci-fi and "world of tomorrow" art of the 1910s-1950s

Mad Max

Mad Max - The world has gone wrong, make it yourself from whatever parts you can find.

Snowpiercer

Snowpiercer - sleek, fast, and a lot like the DD 080-X

Ghosts of Mars

Ghosts of Mars (2001) - heavily armored, blocky design, a sort of perpetual war theme

Walt Disney's future

Walt Disney's vision of the future - nothing but traffic jams and monorails

There is only steam

A coal-dust-powered steam locomotive for the Baikal-Amur line, Luigi Colani, 1979

[Gumboots]

Look up "Cosmic Motors". I'd be taking inspiration from that lot.

[Just Crazy Jim]

I'm familiar with Daniel Simon's designs, they're phenomenal. But I haven't seen any train/rail designs by him yet (and I looked) or I'd have included him. Sadly, I'm the "have to see it to make it" sort, so more the draughtsman than the artist. So I went with what I could "see" to make :D

[Gumboots]

Ok. Well the "Martian rails" thing looks ridiculous. I'm kinda over Mad Max at the moment. Ghost of Mars doesn't appeal. Nothing but traffic jams and monorails sounds horrible. The Colani thing looks ridiculous too.

That leaves Snowpiercer as the best of the bunch. But I'd do it with a view to how such a thing would actually work. That's the problem with a lot of concept art: it's so divorced from reality that it doesn't produce results that look like functional machines. So I'd style along Snowpiercer lines, but without doing anything obviously stupid.

[Just Crazy Jim]

Yeah, concept art is usually full of the impractical and downright silly.

The prosecution rests...

The retrofuturist stuff covers a wide spectrum of looks, that's just one at random. The New York Central Mercury and PRR S1, for instance, are full-on retrofuturist in design. But then you run into stuff like this:

[Just Crazy Jim]

And there's always Supertrain (1979 US TV series)...

A nuclear-powered bullet train, who doesn't want one of those?

Then again...

The toy company Mattel came out with a series of trains sets, Mattel Hotline, about the same time with a pair of jet engines on the locos with a similar look.

They weren't terrible popular with train fans, so you don't see them very often offered by vendors at train modelling shows, but they do have a small fan base.

[Hawk]

I still like Mad Max. The vehicle designs, that is. The movie was OK but I always like the vehicles.

[AMD 103]

While I'm a little late to the board, I'd side with Gumboots on this. I didn't like any of the poll choices because they don't reflect how real rail equipment would look. They just all seem too...off.

The most reasonably futuristic locomotive in RT3 would have to be the E88, with its clean crisp lines, sans either the extra flares of the Trans-Euro (A very dressed up Eurostar), or the big maw and pointy front of the DD-080X.

Speaking of which, anyone remember the TBX-1 Maglev from Railroad Tycoon 2? It looks an awful lot like the running shoe shape modern HSR trains have.

(Colorized version made from Black and White Render.)

Regardless, it's a nice, futuristic shape which could be turned into a typical locomotive without too much effort.