#owl express

He’s hoping to see actual owls

The large Vehicles in A hat in Time take many large, in my au I want to give some more technical aspects about them or even make some pretty drastic changes to the lore about them.

These concern the Owl and science expresses, The Trains in the metro, Ol' Stella and the SS literally can't sink which has been abrieviated to LCS(and by extention its younger sister the SS Absolutely Will Not Sink or AWNS).

The Owl Express:

The railway the Owl Express travels on was built in 6478 ATB by an independant railway company in the Confederation of Avian States (C.A.S), the Owl Express isn't the only train in 1HT but it is the first and only mainline transcontinental service. Its quite a surprise how it hasn't been taken over by the goverment due to how many unautharised stops are made each journey, it is also a miracle that the locomotive and rolling stock are in peak condition especially with its use in films and regular incidents.

The Owl express runs on a 1435mm railway gauge and has a consist of around 5 wagons and a caboose being pulled by an oil-burning tank locomotive capable of reahing speeds of 75mph, The wagons pulled by the owl express are around 55.5 feet high and are around 10.7 feet wide albiet the interior is quite a bit larger than the exterior.

The locomotive is an oil burning 2-6-4t which can rumble at speeds of up to 120kph and with its rather sizable boiler can generate enough power to go at these consistant speeds, the reason why an electric horn was the original steam whistle was shot off during production of the 3rd Conductors 1st movie. The current conductor has been trying to recover it ever since. It was built at around the same time the railway was finishing construction

There have been 4 conductor's since the trains construction, including our current one.

The Science express:

Basically 2HT's version of the Owl Express but unlike the Owl express was more serious and made use of many advances in experimental technology, causing the Alice in Wonderland size shennaniganry. The science owls use this train for their experiments and also for transport.

The train is ran by Gregg, Walter and Redd as well as 2HT's version of the Conductor, externally the Science and Owl expresses are almost exactly the same but internally there are many differences which make both of them stand out.

The Science Express was the development location of New Earth's KL-11, an alternate version of the Korean K11 assault rifle , which was rejected by the Metro's police force because of its cost in favour of the KL-7 (K7) Submachine gun, Caitlyn recieves the original KL-11 prototype after she stops the Shapeshifter's rampage.

The external dimensions of the Science Express are the same as those on the owl express.

The locomotive of the Science express uses an experimental steam-Diesel hybrid system, it looks like it's working to since a more conventional locomotive hasn't replaced it yet. (the system exists irl look it up).

Shapeshifter is Natalie's shadow but had been originally contained in the Science express and experimented on for most of her life, when he escaped she decided to go on a murder spree before being kicked into the firebox of the Owl express.

The Metro Trains

Run on a hollowrail system, a system created in the metro seperate of the original railways, originally these rails were served by more conventional diesel-electric Multiple Units on more conventional rails but concerns about hygene and the carbon emmissions caused a full conversion to Hollowrail which started in 6544 ATB and ended in 6611 ATB but due to them being unable to purchase specially built rolling stock and lacking the material to make their own they instead removed the engines and genetically created these giant fuckoff cats to run them.

Can average the same speeds as your average London Tube train while being similar scale to the most up to date New York Subway units, the cat's aren't very fast when pulling the trains but can hit 100Kmh if pressed and without a burden.

The Empress has some say in what funding is put into the Metro since the Nyakuza was originally created by workers running the original Diesel Electric multiple unit's who grew disatsfied but due to several anti Union laws passed at the time they had to form this group to get their opinions and points across, violently.

The Metro's technology far outstrips the rest of the planet unless you count Caitlyn's ship as part of the rest of the planet.

Sirius Model yacht MK 14 conversion 'Ol' Stella'

The above is the full designation of Caitlyn's ship, since it is the 14th conversion of the Sirius Model Yacht.

Caitlyn built this out of a decommisioned Sirius Yacht and whatever shit she had lying around on hand to weild or bolt on which included starfighter engines and a bomb bay in the engine room, turned out to be surprisingly durable which was placed on full display when a prototype starfighter colided with it and Ol' Stella casually strolled away with little to no damage.

Stella's top speed in atmosphere is mach 54 and can has a 7 second accelaration from standing still to lightspeed.

Stella is armed with several pairs of plasma cannons and can be converted into probably the scariest close air support/ground attack platform ever due to Caitlyn's insistance that cluster munitions because they aren't forbidden by any intergalactic treaties.

Due to Stella making so many long distance high speed trips the Time Piece vault was expanded and modifed to feed into the core fragment tank in order to refill it without having to stop anywhere.

The events of A hat in Time were indirectly caused by Caitlyn neglecting proper maintenace on the vault door and the window due to her being far away from anywhere and hoping to get it fixed up at the next space station, while Stella has no interior defences it has an alarm system which can often be either too effective or next to useless. She got hell for it when it was discovered and was banned from flying for a whole Terran year while Stella was retrofitted with the newest technology.

Caitlyn dislodging her friends with a broom is a courtesy not given to many, if the system hadn't activated the emergancy stop the ship would have shot into hyperspace killing all those hanging off (except the Snatcher) in pretty nasty ways.

Low flyovers are not advised.

Literally Can't Sink class (SS LCS and SS AWNS).

The SS LCS was built in 6600 and was originally christned by the Walrus Captain's hero figure, the ship was 128.3 meters long and could carry up to 470 passangers on cruises up to the arctic circle, it weighed in at 6,690 tons and featured technology donated by the Metro. Both the SS LCS and its successor can reach 19 knots in a calm sea.

Its sister ship the SS AWNS was built in 6628 and was originally going to be called the SS Hat Kid but evidence of Caitlyn being the one causing the sinking was found, fortunetally the company who ran the ship decided to cover up this actual reason because Caitlyn rescuing everyone and then saving their collective arses at Times End was enough of a repayment but even so extra security and safety measures were poured into the new ship. SS AWNS is bigger and heavier than SS LCS and has more to pack in its relatively small shell with it carrying an onboard motorboat for recovery of things like Time Pieces as well as two more lifeboats.

The name SS Hat Kid went to the most modern recovery ship built which ended up being a massive help when the calamity occured.

Both the LCS and the AWNS are used as junior crew training ships for younger crew.

The AWNS is famous for the infamous arctic flyover when a Time Piece spotted and collected by the seals as a present for the captain ended with Stella showing up and scaring the hell out of everyone.

Another commisison for my dear friend Urutaa! He asked me for the Conductor and my bird searching for clues together. Thank you so much Uru!! 

Hey there everybody!

A Hat in Time’s Owl Express Makes For a Terrific Level

If A Hat in Time is meant to echo 3D Mario platformers in terms of gameplay, then this portion echoed the Excess Express section of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. And combining the gameplay of Mario platformers with the writing and creativity of the Mario RPGs (pre-Sticker Star, anyway) is an idea we can all get behind. 

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