They do. Just not for passengers.

The whole thing is the 'actual train'.

It's a production design, not an in-game picture. They often put muds in to designs in order to give a sense of the scale.

They're cargo trains, not passenger ones.

Anyone else think that the back of the train looks like it's mixing dough or something similar?

I can only assume that if the trains are automated that there is a compartment for people for maintenance reasons. If the train breaks down for whatever reason then there is somebody on board to try and fix it.

Hey its abe he just takes the train and goes woot woot train incoming! But meh i guess some trains are automated and some not driven by sligs i guess.

For the Oddworld Forums, you guys are taking this surprisingly seriously.

There could be a driver, looking from the top part (or 'radiator', as you call it). Maybe when he drove past Abe and the other mudokons, he just couldn't get them. And perhaps Abe hides with the Cargo so no one finds him. Just thinking...

Well if the drivers cab is that observatory pod on the top. Judging by where the Mudokon is standing in the concept art picture then I assume that Abe sneaks on board.

Recon it's a slig wired into the train the same way they're usually wired into their pants.

Now I have an image of a slig with a steering wheel making "choo-choo" noises to himself.

+ Rep

Heh, what can't they do with their tails? :)

Then again I suppose there has to be some compensation for not having their own lower limbs.

Why would a train have a steering wheel? :p

In case you want to derail the train.

Oh, I thought it was a microphone.

It's a steering wheel the doubles as a microphone. And it needs a steering wheel to get around the corners.

Then that must be the way trains work in Oddworld...............

Yeah, because lord knows trains fixed to single track have alot of maneuverability.

As silly as it sounds, this seems like a fluke on OWI's part. They probably had to work in the plot device of the bone falling out of the train cart, and theemudokons discovering it, but the only way to do it would be to have them walking and it falling over them. They probably didn't take into account which direction the machine was going in relation to the cargo. Happens a lot in film.


That, or, knowning Lorne, he may have had some kind of sky side-plot he never finished involving them getting bones from other parts of Mudos. But it was probably just a fluke.

1) I presume you don't mean "fluke".

2) I presume you don't mean "OWF".

Maybe fluke wasn't the right choice in word, and OWF was just a brain fart on my part, sorry. You get the point. I hope.

I'm not sure whether this is what you meant or not, but it always bothered me that the bone would fall out of a train going towards Necrum Mines. Surely the muds should have followed the tracks away from the train?

The bone had probably been caught in the machinery of the train.

That's what I was thinking, seems pretty absurd to bring bones to necrum, so it might have been a bone caught in some mechanism when unloading the bones at bonewerkz and that fell during the train's way back to necrum. This also would explain why the bone fell.

I'd never noticed how fucking stupid that was. Way to disillusion my view of Oddworld, guys.

Makes me wonder if the bone really needed to fall out of the train. Abe and the others would have clearly seen the train going to the huge massive building ahead.

We don't know how much distance was covered between the dropped bone and the mines appearing on the horizon. Presumably it wasn't within sight, or they wouldn't have given up hope entirely at that point. Some spare, misplaced bone falling out of the otherwise unloaded train on its return journey to the mines makes sense, but the Muds couldn't have known it was unloaded. Why didn't they assume it was filled with bones and reason that it was travelling away from the mines? Answer: Muds are stupid.

Well, that settles that.

No it doesn't.

From the proportion of the stairs on the trains "head" I estimate each carriage to be about 15 x 8 metres; about 120 m^2. 120 x 1500 (the bone density of humans and we assume mudokons) = 180,000kg.

F=MA, where M =180,000 and A = 98 (OddWorld gravity)
F= 176,400,000

Industrial engineers must be fucking geniuses if they can construct train wheels that can withstand 176 MegaNewtons of downward force.

That's assuming a perfectly filled cuboid of bones. Given that they're being transported whole, the bones' rigid structure and shape will, to some extent, hold them away from each other and result in a packing density significantly less than 1.

Also, we're yet to have any confirmation that Oddworld gravity is 10x Earth gravity. Also also, even if it is 10x stronger; given that every structure, object and creature is structured similar to Earth equivalents, we must assume that materials are also 10x stronger.

Also also also, since Mudokons are descended from birds their bone density is probably less than that of humans.