3/23/2026 - after some intense surgery

3/19/2026 - with nut plates installed, the rudder can go back on.

Well, most followers of this blog have a regular or semi-regular internet access, which means, in general, that they have clothes on their backs, some food and most often a roof over their heads even if the situations can be more or less precarious and they can know various kinds of struggles, so I’d say the majority of us already know what it’s like to live in the middle class cars.

Now the big difference between the Train and our capitalist models of societies is that we are encouraged, or at least those on top make us dream of, changing our social status. See, the so-called “American dream” for example, its the promise that with enough work anyone can make it to the top, everyone has the same chances (haha!). It’s in the collective mind that if you work hard enough you can climb the ladder and become richer, have a better situation (“Whaddaya mean racial inequalities in the USA, Jay-Z and Barack Obama are rich, aren’t they?”). Sure, it can happen. But in capitalism, for it to happen, you don’t actually climb a ladder, you just stomp on people underneath you. A few people can get richer, but at the expense of poorer people, there can’t be people getting rich if there are no poor people to exploit, you can’t save money on the t-shirt you buy if it’s not made by extremely poor people in third world countries, you can’t expect such a cheap cheeseburger in your McDonald’s if the employees are paid an actual decent wage.

Anyway, all this to say, the middle class in most societies around the world is told that they can get a better status (and if they don’t, well, it’s their fault). But in the Train, where the motto is “know your place, keep your place”, I wonder if the system is exactly the same. Are the guards, the gardeners, the middle class workers given opportunities to move to the front. Can they get promotions? Are they allowed to dream to be in the front and enjoy its luxury (just as Edgar and Curtis did in the beginning, saying how they would act when they would be there, just as we all say sometimes “When I’m rich I’m gonna do this, or do that”) or are they trained to stay in their lane because that’s the way it is and that trying to change things would be chaos, as Mason puts it? The tail section is taught that everyone should remain in their preordained position, this is something Mason and Wilford both repeat, so we could think that everyone stays in their place and there are no possibilities to ‘move to the front’, unlike in our society.

However, there are a few examples of tail-sectioners having gained a better social status: Paul the guy who makes the food, and Gerald the violinist (and it’s interesting to notice that both ended up fully collaborating with the Front, probably because they didn’t have a choice). So maybe in the Middle there’s also a system of rewards, maybe they let the workers think that if they’re good enough they can get a better situation?

The Tailies...