Why the Hogwarts Express Annoys Me - A Mild Rant

This week I decided to do something different and go on a mad rant about how the Hogwarts Express makes no sense and annoys me

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[TrainFactGuy]

That's right nerds, Train of Thought said M*ggle with the hard M

[AzureWolf-]

A GWR loco painted red that's forced to pull trains out of King's Cross... I imagine a certain GWR panier tank would be frothing at the mouth if he knew.

[Kashi-K]

not to mention that in Hogwarts Legacy (game takes place in the 1800s)

the Hogwarts Express is in that, a engine from 1937

and its FUCKING BROAD GAUGE

[Nicoya]

Remember that these are the same wizards who shit in their robes before stealing toilet technology.

[liamastill]

The main thing that really annoys me about the Hogwarts express is the fact that it ONLY stops at Hogsmeade and London! Even in the books one of the students says his father took him all the way down to Kings cross to experience the Hogwarts express, despite living in Scotland. Was it really so difficult to have magical platforms at York, Newcastle and Edinburgh Waverley? Very odd.
On another tangent, why did they adopt steam engines but not, for example, a fountain or ballpoint pen. Ink blots and spillages occur very often in the books despite the magic, you'd think they would have upgraded after 300 years of the problem.

[fhm]

Well, if the wizard expert on non-magical technology is confus3d about a rubber duck, I would not be surprised that the wizard community did not realize the difference between an express locomotive and mixed-traffic engine

[RodericCeorlred]

The British ministry of magic seems to be cost-aware. They stole a cheaper engine instead of a more expensive Castle Class or even a HST train. They even are stealing at Aldi because it's cheaper there 😛

[Austin-cnvh]

Lets be real.

It was both.

Wizards not knowing jack all about how train works and failing to contact local train experts on how to run an express.


And your average film producer likely does not think about it much beyond "Old Train looks old"

[georgeoliver]

What I want explaining is how platform 9 3/4 is a magic place but the engine runs on the real
Main line as shown in the film. So at what point does it just spawn in on the main line ? Are signal box workers not confused about an engine not on the schedule. And on the return journey at what point on the main line does it vanish. Must go through the magic buffers

[mayoroicjre]

My issue is why WB didn't just use an engine from the LNER. You know, the train company that served King's Cross, not an engine that served Paddington.

[bow-tiedengineer]

Actually, I remember hearing that they had a very good reason to not use any of those three Castles. None of their owners were willing to let some film crew paint their precious Great Western engine gaudy red for a movie, so they just shrugged, found a different Great Western 4-6-0 who's owners were fine with it, and relied on the fact that the GWR's engines do look so similar to pretend it was a castle. They did actually try to get a Castle class, they just didn't care enough to not dress a Hall up as one when they couldn't.

[ThomasG_]

The whole "history of the hogwarts express" thing is a great example of how the endless expansion of franchises eventually ruins storytelling. The Hogwarts Express exists because the concept of an old-fashioned steam train hidden at a secret platform in the heart of London which whisks you away to a remote magical castle is FUN (and also because it fits with the tropes of the boarding-school genre Rowling was drawing on for the early books). Trying to go back and rationalise it in-universe years later just draws attention to the fact it doesn't make sense; every new piece of explanation raises a dozen more questions.

But the franchise is popular and always needs more content to keep people interested, so you're getting your bizarre fan fiction whether you like it or not.

[metropod]

The thing that always bugged me about this operation is the train runs from London to straight to Hogsmead… what if you lived closer to the school than to London? Are there other trains and we only see the one?

Do they actually make stops we never see?

Do other students just use other methods to get there?

Or is this just another example of Moldymort’s inconsistent writing ability?

[pacificproductionsofficial]

I think I heard somewhere they actually tried to get a castle class for the film but none of the preservationists who owned one didn’t want to part with their engine, and that’s probably for the best considering Olton has been on static display for 10 years at warner bros studios tour london the making of harry potter until the lease expires, when that will be? Who knows! Ngl that’s what really depresses me about this locomotive, like why does warner bros even need the engine for literally ten years, they’re not even using it anymore in later films

[NewController]

It's worth mentioning that there are now 2 Olton Halls now, one of which is formally Dumbleton Hall renamed and sent to Japan.

[krisb]

A few of my favorite bits of dumb HP lore

1, gryphondor doesnt have a gryphon on their crest, its a lion

2, ravenclaw doesnt have a Raven on their crest, its an eagle

3, using 2 two wands makes a spell twice as powerful
Yet somehow no one is running around with 50 wands tied together with twine, to make a wands bazooka

[obelic]

Breaking news!
Dumbeldore arrested in the afterlife for Grand theft loco!

[laurencefraser]

Nicking the engine and building their own carriages actually makes a fair amount of sense: the carriages are very straightforward and simple to understand, especially if they're already working with road-type carriages. 'make the wheels this shape, and put them on a pivot if the carriage is long enough to have difficulty with corners' is basically all they'd have to get their heads around on that front.

The Engines, on the other hand, are a decidedly more complicated prospect, and if the wizards of the day were as useless about steam power as 'modern' wizards are about electricity, just not even Trying and instead nicking one from the muggles would be entirely in line with their usual behaviour.

[ssokolow]

Purely to play devil's advocate, the difference between Lovecraft/Dahl and Rowling is that Rowling is still alive to profit from people enjoying her work.

[NeasCZ]

JK Rowling is known for not caring about having plausible dates for anything, she just uses numbers that sound vaguely correct in her head as she writes. Magical congress of the united states is older than the united states for example. You'd think she'd put a little more effort into it, being the biggest writer in the world an all that.