#I’ve seen “just clueless” versions that are really funny and enjoyable it’s just very easy to make him NASTY because of his associations

[catenary-chad]

My concept for an Americanized reimagining/revival of Starlight Express, based on actual US passenger rail history painfully relevant to the entire region around Broadway (the northeastern US)

ft. sacrilegious things like totally rewriting Starlight Sequence, roleswapping major characters, and cutting Rusty entirely (while also bringing Trucker Caboose and a heavily modified OLC Belle back) 

(long post btw)

I already made a whole long post about how a lot of “stupid and unrealistic” things about Electra (and Rusty) unintentionally take on a very different, deeper meaning in the context of US railroad conditions (and politics) of the 70s-80s.  But tl;dr, applying US rail context to the show bizarrely turns it into a colossal “immer pünktlich” sweater that you’ve snagged your nail on and the whole thing unravels into a weirdly specific and compelling allegory for US politics and railroads of the era in a way it was never intended to.  

Electra reads as a bizarrely specific conservative slander of Amtrak and the liberal policies that benefit it. And there’s weirdly convenient parallels for the social themes the original show tried to do. Electrified rail isn’t futuristic and bashing it isn’t punching up in the US, it’s actually been around since the turn of the century and perhaps the most visible and vulnerable symbol of how rail has been disadvantaged and “left behind” by the government in the US for DECADES.  And there’s actually a number of other things the show has attempted to do that click into place really nicely when you put them in this context.  Like Greaseball’s “coach sexism”- US railroads’ relationship with passenger services pre-Amtrak actually make a pretty good allegory for how “women’s work” is treated.  It had become monstrously expensive to run them without government subsidies and railroads tried to cut or downgrade them wherever possible- which is a solid parallel for how the likes of childcare and teaching are treated in the US.  

So you could actually do some really smart and meaningful things with an Americanized version of the show, it doesn’t have to be clunky pop culture references.  It’s almost kind of sad how well it works because most of the concepts are only relevant in the US, which has never taken to the show as much as the UK/Germany. 

While this is presented as an early 80s-era period piece, you only need to change some references to Control’s Grandpa and a few characters’ basis (Greaseball, Pearl, and Electra’s parental figure) to make it close to modern-day because 40+ year old rail equipment is so common in the US and a lot of the same problems exist on the modern rail system.  

If the theater is anywhere near NYC, there’s a high chance visitors will firsthand experience how old and ROUGH the surrounding rail infrastructure is and it doesn’t get more immersive than that.  There’s a major chance they ride in on a subway or NJT train old enough to have remembered the original Broadway Starlight run, and a considerable chance they deal with delays or cancellations due to aging infrastructure issues.  It’s like how Ruhrgold being “always timely!” is hilarious to anyone who sees the show in Bochum because they probably had an ICE run late just trying to get there, even if they’re a tourist.  

-Control is now used as a stand-in for the government/other rail authorities, whose complaints and praise about their toy trains mirror real-life sentiment.  Their “grandpa’s old trains and tracks” represent the oooold equipment and infrastructure Amtrak inherited/acquired at the beginning.  

-Greaseball is… unchanged lol he’s a solid representation of the conservative establishment hostile to rail investment and electrification.  Him being abusive to the coaches parallels US railroads’ mass downgrading and dropping of passenger services after WWII until Amtrak came in.  Him pulling passenger trains with UP’s livery in the 80s actually works out if you make him one of the corporate E9As in the Heritage Fleet.  Alternatively, just pretend Amtrak’s Rainbow Era (where everything had their chaotic original liveries) took a decade longer to end… it’s less anachronistic than literally everything about Rusty anyways.  

-Electra is now an actual threat to him he has actual reason to play dirty against.  As opposed to a switcher/shunter that would have a completely opposite skillset as him (engines like Greaseball went out of favor on US freight railroads specifically because they have no rear visibility for switching).  Not to mention the political divides associated with dieselization/electrification in the US and associated rural/urban divide. He should also be more deliberately group-oriented with his Gang- the first gen carbody diesel engines he’s based on were designed to run as several units attached together (and that’s still how diesel locomotives are used now). 

-Momma (now maybe just McCoy) is now the high-maintenance celebrity (Poppa would also work but I’m in favor of giving older women more roles). THAT is spot-on to the actual role steam engines had in the US (and UK) in the 80s, and still do today. She’s there to race to find out just what she’s truly capable of, since the real top speed of a lot of big late-era steam engines was never officially verified. She is not malicious, just accidentally causes constant confusion and delay based on actual mainline steam excursions’ issues in the 70s-80s US that led to them being heavily restricted (though you can probably use a lot of stuff from more recent ones elsewhere because it still happens a lot).  She can even get chased by paparazzi because people getting on the tracks to photograph famous engines has caused all kinds of problems!  Turn the components into the entourage railtours would have (head end power car/engine, various old coaches).  Give her Engine of Love. 

-She’s “Grandpa’s old choo choo and friends… ugh come on, you guys used to be great!  You were my favorite!  Why do you keep derailing and messing stuff up!”.  

-She’s far less politically written vs Electra and Greaseball, and mostly railfanservice, which fits how steam was pretty much off in its own preservation world by the 80s and not relevant in the much more bitter mainline revenue train politics.  Greaseball could be moderately hostile towards her to represent railroads becoming fed up with excursion incidents, but it’s for pretty legitimate reasons.  Electra probably just doesn’t care about her presence either way, unless she gets in the way.  As additional historical context for why Electra is steam neutral- the Pennsylvania Railroad, who built 41% of surviving electric lines today, phased out steam engines from the newly electrified southern Northeast Corridor in a relatively peaceful way, just moving them to other lines and not replacing them with more.  It’s a way more pleasant scenario than most irl jobs that have been outmoded and faced with mass layoffs.  And basically the hard opposite of what British Rail did in the 50s-60s (which is substantially featured in the Railway Series and probably where the original show got the “steam oppression” idea from… but it just was NOT that way by the 80s and when it did happen, diesel engines were a much newer and more experimental thing than electric ones… this is why I have so much beef with the original show’s premise as someone familiar with the RWS, which was generally really realistic) 

(I have my own idea of how to make a REALLY hateable Reagan figure steam engine but the above would be more palatable to a broader audience and require less modification)

-Pearl is also largely unchanged.  Make her a then-new Amfleet coach, maybe a converted Metroliner.  Now she can be both new and naive and indecisive and REALLY want to go fast.  As a bonus, the Amfleets were among the first coaches to be electric vs steam heated and she would not be directly physically compatible with steam or older diesel/electric engines without head-end power.  Perfect fit for a reverse Cinderella. 

-Since Electra isn’t a terribly romantic character, I think it’s more compelling to frame Pearl’s arc as being about discovering your real orientation after years of the media saying what you should be attracted to.  She’s had steam romanticized her whole life but it just physically isn’t compatible or appealing to her.  Tbh this is a possible reason to make McCoy male instead.  

-Bonus: style Pearl like a flight attendant and have her make passive aggressive jokes about air travel (there are no middle seats!  Please leave your tray tables down and seats in the reclined position) in reference to the Amfleets being deliberately styled after planes, and Amtrak ads of the time mocking airlines

-Dinah needs very little change herself, other than being aged up to 30s-40s to reflect being an older car.  Pearl Twirl makes a lot of sense with Pearl being clueless about the depth of such things and reflecting how older passenger cars were replaced with new Amfleets around this era.  Rather than get back with Greaseball at the end, she runs off with McCoy’s entourage in reference to old cars like her getting a second life in museum settings. 

-Lotta Locomotion is less demeaning in the context of Amtrak’s motive power crisis of the 70s-early 80s.  They had oooold stuff and struggled to get functional new engines so it really is something coaches would be concerned with.  

-Freight as an argument perfectly suits the tensions between freight and passenger service in the US since WWII (relevant in the 80s, still relevant now outside the NEC).  Tl;dr passenger trains got painfully deprioritized because freight made way more money, and freight trains becoming absurdly long and physically unable to move over and let passenger trains through has wrecked arrival times in more recent decades.  I don’t have really hard ideas of how I’d tweak most of the Freight characters, I think you could mostly carry over the originals, but you could also work in aspects of industrial decline or unions’ relationships with railroads at the time. Honestly you could do a whole separate musical about the woes of US freight rail, they go deep, just not in ways that work into the other themes in this rewrite.

-Power cut before AC/DC- Control complains that “the new train I got for Christmas sucks!  It doesn’t even work!” and their mom interjects “No, it’s your grandpa’s tracks and wiring from the 30s causing problems, let’s try and clean them up.  Maybe you can ask for some new ones for your birthday instead of more toy cars.”

-Electra is now the new AEM-7s Amtrak ordered in the late 70s-early 80s.  Make them as aggressively small as possible for maximum realism, those things were infamously tiny (~50 feet long).  Making Electra genderblind would be very appropriate for this version.

-Rather than unconfident, Electra is incredibly defensive, yet smug about knowing what they could do in proper conditions and kind of a bitch.  Self centered and prone to changing their mood on a whim.  Actually not that far off their canon personality, but now in a light that explains just why they make such a big deal of being electric and seem so short-fused- they’re a minority that’s been overlooked and screwed over for years.  Greaseball also treats them as hysterical over any legitimate complaints and dogs them for constantly asking for money.  There’s an almost endless well of “damn liberals” jokes for him to use against Electra.  It’s a bitter, much more even rivalry compared to Greaseball vs Rusty.

-Other than making the Japanese Engine less egregiously offensive, the Nationals can be largely unchanged, I think they’re all electric models anyways and at the time, all from nationalized rail networks.  

-Have Electra fail in the first heat due to powerline failure, Greaseball’s sabotage, or McCoy’s genuine bumbling, and go full No Comeback and blame themself for it when it was due to outside factors

-How do the comparatively mediocre US engines win?  Mix of Greaseball/McCoy doing the above, and the race being on tightly curving tracks in notably bad condition that a lot of the Nationals wouldn’t run well on. Cue Control being in constant dismay at how many trains keep derailing or failing and getting mad at them too.  

-Also made a previous post about this, but in place of where Momma/Poppa usually is… bring back the general concept of OLC Belle the Sleeping Car, and turn her into Belle the GG1.  That was the nearly 50 year old electric loco class that largely ran the NEC until the AEM-7s.  The Ella Fitzgerald angle aligns perfectly with them working out of NYC starting in the late 30s and being known for a sense of effortlessness.  The “fallen star” narrative also works with their full history, they were the symbol of what US electrification was posed to become- and got cut off by WWII and the railroads’ fates afterward.  They also ran their absolute last excursions in 1984 and her blowing a transformer after her win exactly matches what happened to one of them.  In a much more morbid twist, there’s no question of her faking it, the GG1s were on their absolute last leg and so trashed physically at the end that they’re one of the least likely engines to ever run in preservation.  

-This is a BOLD choice (that would NEVER work in Bochum), but turn Dustin into a uranium flask (concept art here).  I’ve gotten the impression that Hydra wanted to be nuclear-coded because he’s alternative energy, green, and seen as scary and untrustworthy.  But while nuclear submarines and boats are long established, nuclear steam engines are far less practical on rails so you can’t really go that route… unless you make it about nuclear power plants supplying electrified lines.

-Uranium flasks are HEAVY and being quiet is a main PR policy of the nuclear industry, so Dustin’s size and shyness is a super fitting trait.  They also have a really fun history of being crash tested to play with.  They smashed a whole diesel loco into one in the UK and it was totaled but the flask was fine.  You can even give them There’s Me because “I may not be the one you want to see” and “I am always there” are a funny double entendre for nuclear power’s negative rep but constant generation.  Also free opportunity for a female or genderblind freight role if you call them Curie.  

-Slick and/or OLC style trucker Caboose would both work really well as saboteurs.  The oil industry sure doesn’t want to move away from diesel engines.  And road vehicles are the #1 enemy of ALL trains in the US.  Also, while Caboose acting like a British brake van gets laughed at, cabooses were and still are used to remote control trains irl (Locotrol), so there IS some justification for him to control an engine’s braking!  And even better/worse?  What do you get when you combine one of those with a bunch of oil tankers?  The Lac Megantic Disaster.  

-Greaseball and those two deliberately destroying powerlines and other infrastructure to sabotage Electra and basically any of the Nationals both works on a practical level and a symbol of “government not investing in things so they fail” just like irl Amtrak

-Bring back Dinah’s Disco but with lyrics explicitly revealing that the “whistle” thing Electra lacks is… steam heat to keep her warm at night because she’s an older style car!  That mismatch was a legitimate issue at the time.  An earlier passenger diesel engine like Greaseball would have a heating boiler so it’s still compatible with him not being an actual steam engine.  Slick/Caboose can still attack Electra and throw the uphill race riding with Greaseball or McCoy.  McCoy could think Slick will get her but the tanker goes after Electra instead, because she “could be converted to an oil burner… remember the Big Boy on the Union Pacific” and is therefore not her enemy.

-Right Place Right Time also works on a much deeper level when the Rockies are turned into SEPTA Silverliner I/II/III EMUs, they’re from the infamously underfunded transit system of… Philadelphia, which fits the movies.  Being mean but genuinely helpful is also kind of a Philly stereotype too.  You’d have to reshuffle the freight/components a bit for this version so eh, throwing in some quick-change costumes for this isn’t out there.  

-Yeah, the Starlight Sequence’s lyrics need a massive redo.  I go into it in the initial Electra post, but it just inherently preaches themes associated with the politics that repeatedly hampered electric rail in the US.  Make the new lyrics be about that “you alone are an engine, not a train”, joining together as a group is how you actually make systemic change, not bootstrapping and individualism,  One of the major advantages of rail IS how much you can link together and move at once.  Which is a nice segue to Electra reaching out to uranium flask Dustin for the final.  

-As a nod to Jeffrey Daniel, a shortened version of this song is a perfect Electra/Pearl duet instead of the ballads. 

-Instead of the control and conversion speech, the trains all get together as Control discusses what to ask for their birthday “Slot cars?  Tanks? Planes?” and the group together yells “TRAINS” and Control goes “yeah TRAINS!”

-Belle the GG1 miraculously comes back as Control’s mom whispers “don’t tell anyone I just stuck the old shell on a whole new motor and frames, they were beyond saving” as a snarky reference to what would be needed to actually run one again.  

-How to make Light At The End Of the Tunnel mostly work: return the duet aspect, where McCoy starts praising steam and the newly revived GG1 Belle finishes the lines to be about… steam power plants and electrification.