The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks/Headscratchers


 * What's Cole's motivation for reviving Malladus in the first place?
 * HE IS A DEMON. Seriously, he was probably one of Malladus' original servants.
 * He did keep calling Malladus "His majesty." He's probably trying to revive his king!
 * Probably something like Byrne's: Get power from the demon/get the princess out of the way so he can take over Hyrule and rule it.
 * How exactly was the Chancellor able to boss around both the guards and Princess Zelda? Isn't she the ruler? In one early level, you have to sneak her out from her own castle because he has her guards keeping her inside. How? They're pretty clearly not hypnotized, so shouldn't her authority overrule his?
 * Notice how she's the "princess" rather than "queen" despite the fact that her parents aren't even hinted at? That's not just for tradition. It means she's not been officially crowned yet, therefore she doesn't have her full authority. Until Zelda comes of age, she's basically regulated to ceremonial duties. Cole, as Chancellor and royal adviser, is the guy with all the practical power for the moment, which is why she couldn't directly act against him.
 * That's odd. Considering at the end she does the "paperwork"...
 * 1) Paperwork does not equate to actual authority to remove trusted officials. 2) This is after Cole is removed from power (and life). 3) She has Teacher alongside her.
 * You could also argue that Hyrule could've had a parliament in the form of Cole as well.
 * Here's the one thing that annoys me in Spirit Tracks: if all those people want me to get ice, cuckoos, fish, wood or whatever to them, why it's ME that has to pay for the cargo?! What kind of business plan is that, where the freight pays for the transport instead of the client?
 * You get pretty force gems as reward. You know, the ones that are made out of actual Life-Force. If that's not one payment, I don't know what it is!
 * Yes, but the problem starts when you reach the place where you have to buy the produce and you have no money to pay for it. Also, the force gems are not currency, but some sort of unintended consequence of the person's gratitude. Oh, and gratitude isn't currency, either.
 * I prefer to think of Link's non-profit transport business as a very elaborate community service/PR project. Not only does it repair the Hyrulian infrastructure, but the goodwill ensures a number of actual paying jobs after the whole Malladus business is taken care of. Besides, it's not like Link has to worry about fuel or repair material costs for a magical train.
 * Again, the problem is: that produce costs. If they at least bothered to give me the money to buy those cuckoos/ice/fish/wood...
 * Actually, this game is full of Money Sink Mechanics. Maybe it's because Hyrule is still in the process of being built, but everybody and their mothers charge you money for breathing.
 * They'd probably charge you for all the freight that you tend to lose due to sun damage, collisions, and enemy attacks if they gave you enough for the full "pallet" that you buy. You'd think that even if you can't convince people of Malladus's return that they'd at least recognize that you're the only engineer crazy enough to operate with the tracks disappearing and cut you some slack, but nope.
 * How is going though a puzzle filled passage quicker than just walking to the tower?
 * It's a shortcut.
 * There is a straight path to the tower outside that doesn't require various puzzles. Without some form of breaking every law of physics and common sense, the straight path is shorter. It's not a shortcut.
 * Shorter and takes less time by train. Trains go pretty fast, remember: it's not unreasonable to think that the overworld is a JRPG-style shrunken-down representation of the actual Hyrule, meaning that it might actually take several hours by train just to go from Hyrule Castle to the Tower over land, not to mention that the enemies roaming outside need to be hit with cannonballs to be taken down. Puny Link with a puny sword wouldn't stand a chance. It may be longer taking the tunnel, but it's very likely safer.
 * Assuming that Hyrule II is just as large as Hyrule I was and that Hyrule I took (and still takes) a horse in order to make it from the forest in the south to the castle in the north before nightfall, this is probably the best explanation.
 * But it's a straight line and the passage isn't. I can buy the safer argument, but the number of physic's laws you need to break to be shorter than a straight line...
 * You really don't seem to get the concept: the straight path is a much longer distance than the passage. Yeah, you can get to the tower in a minute by train in-game, but the "real" travel time could be hours to the characters. The passage, on the other hand takes maybe thrity minutes to solve if you're slow by passing through areas where the tracks simply didn't reach. Yeah, it's shorter.
 * It isn't even a straight line. You have to go round a corner.
 * Because the law of the realm in Hyrule II is that the only way to leave a town or village is by train. Walking from place to place is an offense punishable by death. This was enacted to keep the train companies in business, because they're, you know, too big to fail.
 * But by that logic, how do Farris and Beedle not get charged?
 * It might be for the same reason you must use a boat to get from Point A to Point B in WW and PH instead of swimming-- you'd get tired, beaten by gigantic monsters, and break sequence by walking through a meadow/ocean/forest/etc. Besides, if I knew that there were infinite hoards of monsters twice my size that need to be taken down with cannon-fire, I'd sure as hell want to drive the closest thing to a tank available, too.
 * How did Anjean fight Byrne, if she's riding a wheel-chair? Did she expect the spirits to accend and miracolously make her young and athletic again?!
 * The lady may look old and frail, but she's got enough magic to keep the seal on Malladus functioning and teleport both Link and Zelda effortlessly. She's far from weak.
 * If we have an actual passenger car for the train, why are we only allowed to carry one person at a time?
 * Because those passengers are total nitpicks, who'd probably just start a fight with every other passenger that comes along.
 * They all seem to be in agreement of Link's absolute dedication to the train signals, though.
 * Who ran Hyrule when the only three people known to do anything adminstrative went AWOL?
 * The same guys who ran it in the Child-age of Ocarina of Time after Ganondorf burned the castle down. Really, this is Hyrule, land of incompetent guards and pocket-civilizations, where the ruling monarch is either called King or Princess you exspect it's administration to make sense?
 * Exactly who thought that installing Phantoms was a good idea? Given that WW Link was the only person in New Hyrule to ever deal with them and how much they did to him, I sincerely doubt that he would readily recommend them.
 * Weren't they there before any of the descendants of the people from old Hyrule came?
 * It's heavily implied that the "power" that helped the spirits finally sealing Malladus was Tetra's Light-Force, since it seems to be the key to break the seal. Also, Light Arrows being the thing that defeated him. The only people known to ever use Light Arrows are Link and, especially, Princess Zelda. So I guess, Malladus defeat and the creation of the tower and the tracks occured roughly a week or so after the pirates first arrived on the continent. It was probably populated by the remaining hires of Hyrule a few months later, given that everybody states that the tracks and the tower have seamingly been there forever. Ah, anyway, to get down to the point: Anjean states that the Phantoms of the tower were originally animated by good spirits, rather than evil ones. Link probably thought "Hey, if the good guys are controlling them and not a life-force sucking monstrosity: Sure, why not?"
 * It seems like the UK got its own translation of Spirit Tracks, presumably because of the worldwide release, but it makes me so confused when everyone's referring to Byrne and Abado Village and whatever when I'm playing a game with Staven and... and I don't even know where Abado is, it might be Mayscore.
 * It's Aboda. And it's called "Outset Village" in the UK Version. Yeah, somebody figgured it would be a good idea to give the starting location the same name as the starting location in The Wind Waker. Creativity, were art thou?
 * Link named the village after the island he grew up in. Seems reasonable to me.
 * Another thing that bugs me is that Link and Zelda called their new land Hyrule, despite the fact the King pretty much told them not to. But I guess that was probably in case Wind Waker was the last Zelda game; since it wasn't, the new land had to take on the mantle.
 * It's probably a lack of creativity on the founders part, we have here. I guess the only other name Tetra and Link could think of was Lowrule, so they decided to rather stick with the original kingdom's name.
 * Fun Fact: Byrne/Staven's name apparently can't survive through any translations. In japan he is known as "デイーゴ" which is pretty much simply "Diego". Not exactly a tricky name in English so I have no clue why it had to be changed. It had me confused for quite a while though before the actual game was released. That must have been their goal.
 * It had to be changed because in the North American translation, all of the Lokomo (and Cole, for some reason) had train puns as names. Byrne = Burn. Like what you do to coal.
 * I may be mistaken, but I think that 'staving' a fire with coal is possible. It's still a train pun.
 * In German, it's even worse. He's called "Delok" there. It's supposed to be a "pun" (if this can even still be called a pun) on "D-Lok", the fastest kind train for regular passenger transportation in Germany (it still fails to be on time quite frequently, causing this name to become extreme Narm, exspecially when you realize that it was Byrne/Staven/Diego/Oh-God-Help-Delok, who kept Zelda and Link from being "on time".) Also, the name sounds uncomfortably much like "Warlok", giving some people thoughts on bad Fantasy shows, like Charmed. Anjean didn't get a much better treatment: Remove a "c" from the german word for "track"; "Schiene" and you got "Shiene". Exspecially awkward when they are talking about the Spirit Tracks and Anjean in the same sentence: "Shiene, wie haben die Schienen wiederhergestellt!" (Anjean, we restored the tracks!)
 * Nintendo of America and Nintendo of Europe do their own, independent localizations. Mostly US English vs British English. See Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon and Advance Wars Days of Ruin for more insanity.
 * I can get most of the chests on people's roofs in Hyrule Castle Town, but I just can't see how one is meant to get the chest on the building to the right of the Cucco store (second from the left, top row). None of the nearby roofs are near enough to jump to it, even with a Cucco. What am I missing?
 * Go to the roof East of here and use the Cucco to jump across the lion statues in the middle.
 * Thank you, my good troper. I never thought that the lions could be stood on.
 * Why didn't anybody consider building some new, non-magical train tracks to replace the disappearing ones? The problem did seem to have been going on for a good while before the game started.
 * That would be a rather large job requiring coordination between Mayscore and the Gorons for wood and iron which can't be transported because the tracks have disappeared...
 * To come back to the "Nobody seems how to know how to just walk"-issue once again: What's about horses? Or boars, since those were actually seen. Couldn't they just have used animals as means of transportations, when the Spirit Tracks faded?
 * Think of the trains as the Hyrule equivalent to the cars, buses and taxis in our world. People have gotten so accustomed to them, walking isn't really an option.
 * Does Mayscore = Whittleton? I'm usually not judgemental like this, but NOA picked much better names for stuff than the European branch. Aboda got an original name, rather than a recycled one from Wind Waker. Byrne got a name that fit with his species' pattern. And the town where the houses are made out of trees has a whittling joke, instead of something random. And there's the whole "Skeldritch" v. "Capbone" debacle mentioned below. Sure they're all Incredibly Lame Puns, but at least they make sense.
 * I don't know about walking, but hoses and boars take quite some time to grow to full maturity and carry human weight. Chances are, they'd been so reliant on the trains that there were only a few horses or boars of sufficient size and muscle to carry people, and not enough time to breed new ones.
 * Here's another one: what about other wheeled vehicles? You're plagued with tanks later on, so they obviously exist. Why not use one of them?
 * Those doors that require Phantom!Zelda's assistance to push open... are double doors. You're pushing on separate pieces. Why can't Link just push open one half himself, and slip on through?
 * Perhaps there are magnets in the middle of the doors, holding the two halves together. Pushing on one half isn't enough to break the magnetic bond, while pushing on both moves them far enough apart to actually open. Or, alternately, they're magic.
 * Coming from someone else with the UK trasnlation, what the f* bleep* is a 'Staven' meant to be? I know quite a few of the characters have Punny Names, but can someone please explain what kind of pun/noun 'Staven' is? Unless he's 'Staven' off hunger...Sorry.
 * Never mind Staven, what about "Capbone"? "Skeldritch" was a far better name.
 * At least you didn't play the game in Italian, where Byrne/Staven's name is Tristalpin. No, that doesn't even remotely mean anything in the aforementioned language, sounding more like French instead. Maybe the translators tried to make it sound sexy? The names of the other Lokomos are as lame puns, if not more, as the American version.
 * Apparently a stave is a piece of wood used when building railway tracks. It's either that, or his name is actually meant to be Steven. Which seems unlikely.
 * Does New Hyrule have the pickiest train passengers in history or do they simply not recognize that it's sort of difficult to follow all traffic signals while under tank attack? Where's Link's respect?
 * It gets even worse when you realize that Link is the only engineer brave enough to still use the tracks and therefore could charge his passengers a ton of money if he wanted to. They should be grateful about the fact that they are getting rides FOR FREE.
 * By that logic, Teacher has the right to bitch at you, at the very least. He pays you 300 rupees per trip, and takes like six of them over the course of the game.
 * This so hard. I wish there was some sort of button one could press to turn Link around and have him shove the Engineer's Certificate in his passengers' faces. "Hey, do you have one of these? No? THEN SHUT THE HELL UP AND LET ME DRIVE."
 * Oh geez, I wish that button was in.
 * Isn't there a problem inherent in the idea of gathering a large number of rabbits in one place, and then rewarding the person who brought them based on the quantity present? I mean, they're rabbits. "You've collected 21 out of 10 grass rabbits... wait a minute..."
 * Maybe they are Gerudo-rabbits?
 * In that case, will they forcibly claim the snow rabbits?
 * Incidentally, how can rabbits jump around on the surface of water?
 * Maybe they are Zora-rabbits?
 * There are two other ways to look at it:
 * 1) All the rabbits in this world are like sandhill cranes/swans/red-tailed hawks that mate for life, and when you capture a rabbit you're ripping it away from it's one true love for the sake of some creepy bunny fetishist. Forever.
 * 2) The bunnies are picky about who they date, and won't let anyone touch 'em until after a couple of bunny-dates. You're running a high class bunny dating center here, allowing the bunnies to mingle with each other until they meet their OTL/partner of the week.
 * I assumed the guy was counting them as you brought them in and adding it to a running total. Or does that make too much sense?
 * How was Chancellor Cole able to fool all of Hyrule of his intentions for years?
 * The same way Ganondorf and Aginham did. Hyrulean politicians have suffered from thousands of years of not being able to notice that sort of thing, why start now?
 * Hyrule isn't the only country to suffer from Evil Chancellor-itis.
 * True, but you have to wonder why Cole didn't use any magic to conceal the giant demon horns of doom, instead opting for the suspicious gravity-defying top hats.
 * Because he's eccentric! and doesn't understand human fashion, like wizards and muggles.
 * In addition to what's already been said, keep in mind that when Link first encounters Cole, he's about 95% finished with the phase of his plan that involves posing as a human. For all we know, he could have been much better at being discreet about his plans up to the point where it didn't matter anymore. Also, if you think about it, Cole very well may have wanted Zelda to realize that something wasn't right about him, so that she would try to take matters into her own hands and leave the castle, making it much easier for him to capture her body.
 * How can a little pinwheel made out of leaves and wood shift boulders?
 * Magic.
 * How are Nico and Alfonzo in the shape they are? It's feasable to say that this game actually takes place a couple of decades after PH, and I swear there's a point where Tetra mentions finding a new land to settle, and Tetra's obviously dead (you can see her image in the stained glass in Zelda's throne room). However, how is Nico, explicitly the youngest crewmember, an old man, and Alfonzo, probably one of the oldest crewembers in WW, looking exactly the same?
 * Alfonzo was never part of Tetra's crew; in fact, he wasn't even alive during the time of Wind Waker and Phantom Hourglass. You must be referring to Gonzo, to which Alfonzo is most likely his Identical Grandson.
 * A couple of decades? That'd make Tetra like... thirty. Centuries is more likely.
 * Exactly one century, to be precise. The only problem I have is that 100 years is actually Identical GREAT-grandchild territory, not Identical Grandchild.
 * Why does the Spirit Track leading past the Trading Post require you to get the bridge fixed, while all the other ones that go over water provide their own support? (And if it's just because there was loose wood covering the track, why would you need a professional bridgebuilder to move it out of the way?)
 * Because the bridge is badly damaged and doesn't seem to be a part of the "normal" Spirit Tracks. If you don't want to see how well your magic train floats, you'll need a repairman who knows what he's doing on the task.
 * Link is... An engineer? Who made up this plot? It seems like a pretty odd step. When you think of Link you think of free-range adolescents beating up things, killing Ganon, having adventures, meeting girls, and saving the princesses butt. Not something like engineers. Is it a technology thing? Hyrule is train based now so it moved from farms to the industrial age? That still doesn't explain why a kid is an engineer in the making..
 * From a Watsonian standpoint, he's an engineer because he had no idea of his big destiny, and, because of the slow industrialization of the Hylians, his training for a trade was for a more modern trade than the usual "farmer" or "unemployed peasant". From a Doylist standpoint, its because the gimmick of the game is trains, and without being an engineer, he can't very well drive a train, now can he.
 * What do the spiders in the forest hang from?
 * Overhanging branches from trees just above the camera's field of vision, probably.
 * It is made quite clear in the game that ST's Zelda is a direct descendant of Tetra, but... how on earth could there be another incarnation of Link without ST Link necessarily being descended from WW Link? At first the answer seems obvious; that WW Link simply must've had his own family, but... then who, if not WW Link, is ST Zelda's (great?)grandfather??? And if WW Link is ST Zelda's (great?)grandfather, then why the hell is a WW Link doppelganger walking around, who seems to be completely unrelated to ST Zelda??? I'm not sure whether or not that's just Fridge Logic or Fridge Horror... or something else entirely... Still, if we can figure this one out, we may be one step closer to understanding how reincarnation works in Zelda games...
 * A fairly common theory is that while each Zelda in the series is a descendant of a previous Zelda, the separate Links aren't necessarily related to each other. Basically, the Zeldas are a series of Identical Granddaughters, while each Link is an actual reincarnation, so the rules work differently.
 * That doesn't remove the problem of the identity of Zelda's grandfather. If WW Link is Zelda's grandfather, then there is a massive mountain of squick potential when you consider that Zelda is crushing on someone who looks exactly like her own grandfather. And if WW Link isn't her grandfather, who the hell did Tetra dump WW Link for?!? Ugh. It adds a whole new realm of possible fanfic pairings to become... confirmed. * shudder, shudder*
 * Oh calm down. He may look like her Grandfather, but he is probably genetically different enough to avoid issues, and I doubt Prince-Consort Link is that young in any of the family photos or paintings, so its not like Zelda would even recognize.
 * As mentioned above, all Links are reincarnations, but are not necessarily descendants of each other. Zeldas, on the other hand, explicitly are descendants of each other BUT are also reincarnations. I'm pretty sure that it is mentioned that Tetra was ST Zelda's great-grandmother. Therefore, the gap is three generations. With that in mind, if WW Link and Zelda got together (and there really isn't anything more than usual in a Zelda game to suggest that they did) then what is really playing out is that they've fallen in love with each other again in their next lives, making this romantic (which is more blatant with this Link and Zelda than any others). If WW Link and Zelda did not get together, then they're getting a second chance, making it possibly more romantic. There, I just removed the Squick.
 * At the very end of the game, how did Zelda get I mean, only Link could see her in ghost-form, so I highly doubt  would get around that.
 * Link had somebody take a picture of the train for him, making sure Zelda was in position. Presumably, the two of them can see her in the photo the same way Link could see her in person; to other people, it's probably just a photo of a train. As to how... Magic flashbulbs.
 * I assumed she just got an artist to make a picture. After all, she's a princess, it's not unreasonable that she'd be able to get a good artist who can make a realistic picture and add her ghost to the picture without asking questions.
 * Isn't it a more common trope that photos can detect ghosts that the eye cannot?
 * Ferrus took it.
 * I always thought it was a drawing. Sure looks like it and the princess can hire an artist. Something to commerate the adventure after all.
 * When Anjean and Bryne are in your passenger veichle, shouldn't they be visable when they transport people around? By proxy, does that mean that Link can't take anymore passengers but gets to for our sake? Do they entertain the passengers? And what would Teacher's reaction be seeing the "Sage" of the Tower out and about?
 * Who fires the cannon? Link's busy up working the engine so it can't be him.
 * There's probably a button or something up there where Link is that can aim and fire the cannon. That or Zelda did it.
 * The stupid blowing into the mic for music thing, I`m out of breath after 20 minutes of trying to properly do the sand-temple song and I STILL don`t have it right.
 * This kicked my ass for awhile too. Try waiting until the camera is on Link before blowing. The game doesn't do a very good job of making it clear when your part starts.
 * No no no! You are supposed to listen to the MUSIC that is being played. It goes down when you are supposed to play (piano, music lingo. Means play silent. Pianissimo means play so silent only you can hear it.) and you can also follow the beats and music to know when you are supposed to play. Still even if you are used to playing music in an orchestra the songs still are hard if you have problem getting the notes right. /rant
 * WHY isn't there a bypass button for blowing into the DS mic? On most old DS models the mic is the first thing to break, and yet here we have a game that literally cannot be beaten without using the stupid gimmicky thing. Not to mention how unbelievably stupid one looks sitting on the bus furiously blowing air at your gameboy.
 * Not to mention the utter havoc background noise will cause. This troper primarily plays gameboy on the commute to and from work, which consists of two bus stops and a ferry ride. Both the sound of the bus engines and the rushing of waves on the ferry will cause the DS mic to pick up a constant "blowing" noise, making the pan flute impossible to use.
 * This troper had to quit the game around the fourth or fifth temple because the scrappiness of the flute sections got so bad.
 * WHY are people STILL complaining about Spirit Tracks, when we now know, that ZELDAS FREAKIN' SPIRIT is going to be the next "Navi"?!?! People should be chanting hallelulja choruses by now, exspecially the ones that usually claim that Zelda is a too passiv character!!!!!!
 * Presumably because, Midna aside, the helper characters have a tendency to be minor annoyances at best. Most people simply want to play as Zelda herself instead of a Phantom Expy.
 * Why doesn't anyone else here seem to be even slightly distrubed by the fact that the Evil Chancellor is trying to revive a MALE Sealed Evil in A Can within the body of a 12-years old Princess Classic?!? Squick-much anyone?!
 * Seems pretty tame, really.
 * If it makes you feel better, Zelda's on your side.
 * Remember the Spirit Tracks tutorial where Alfonzo gives Link his "final exam?" Shouldn't he have brought up the track signs, seeing as this is basically a driving school test?
 * You mean Alfonzo, the guy who said that I passed "with flying colours", despite almost ramming two other trains and doing a emergency-stop several times for no other reason than not wanting to reduce the spead the regular way? Oh, please. He's about as competent at teaching people how to drive a train, as his ancestor & co were at pirating.
 * Story and Gameplay Segregation. In accordance to the story, Link was not supposed to suck at it.
 * Story and Gameplay Segregation is the best answer. The road signs and such are only used for a handful of times, only one of which is mandatory. Most players wouldn't even pay attention to them in normal play, so they just weren't brought up in the tutorial.
 * Track signs are only meant to be blown out with your bombs. Yeah, train travels can be pretty long.
 * How the heck is Niko comfortable with having a clone of his old swabby living in his house?! Shouldn't he like, have been really freaked out when the boy turned 10 or so and it slowly became obvious that he'd turn out to look exactly like TWW Link one day? His reaction should not be limited to handling him TWW Link's shield and some old scroll he wrote, darn!!
 * Well, he did seem to be weirdly accepting of weird things in the previous games. Things like Link having a telepathic rock or his captain secretly being a princess pretty much gets a "Wow, cool!" from him.
 * Is Teacher actually his name, or his title?
 * The hookshot whip target bars on those birds. Who put them there? Why? And how come the birds don't get freaked out by a ten year-old flinging a whip with a snake head at their throats?
 * The Gorram Pirate ships. Seriously, how the funk do they go through the train tracks? I mean, seriously, wtf?
 * Bombs do it too.
 * A relatively minor one, I admit, but still...notice when you're in a town, Link's train is just sitting on the tracks, left unguarded. There is only one set of tracks; no cut-off for other trains to pass. Especially noticable is Hyrule Castle, which can have a Phantom Train pass by. So, what? Whenever the Spirit Train isn't moving, Phantom Trains don't move either?
 * They just want to kill Link, but are restricted to the tracks. They can't kill Link when he's in town so they don't even bother. They don't care about destroying the train, they just want Link to die in a crash. That's how I interpret it. Or Gameplay and Story Segregation.
 * That just give me the funny mental image of Link walking back to the station after purchasing something in Castle Town, only to find that a Phantom Train hit his while he was away, and all that's left is a big pile of burning wood and twisted metal.
 * The Dark Ore. Melts in sunlight, okay, sure. So WHY DON'T THEY JUST PUT A TARP OVER IT.
 * Why is the stained-glass window of Tetra depicting her in her young age? Why aren't there any pieces of art depicting her as an adult? It just doesn't make sense to me. For that matter, how come no one seems to acknowledge Link's status as the Hero of freaking Winds? You know, that guy that saved the entire Great Sea from Ganon's rule? There's not even a statue of the guy anywhere to be seen. That's just disrespectful if you ask me...
 * It could also be that Link, modest as always, strongly opposed their building anything so grand as a statue to him, so they had to find a more discreet way to thank him. So they decided that to honor the guy who'd defended their princess in times of peril, the guard's uniform would look like his clothes, essentially giving the impression Hyrule Castle was guarded by an entire army of Links.
 * The Phantom/Dark/Bomb Trains. If you're careful (or lucky/panicked and desperate to get away, no matter what the path) you can trick them into riding the same rail, headed toward one another. Nothing comes of this.
 * This Trooper found out that if they collide, They simply stall for a second before switching direction.
 * The first time you go out in your train, there's three other trains riding about which you have to avoid hitting, which suggests that there's at least three other engineers around. And then once you reach Castle Town... that's it. The trains vanish for the rest of the game, and everyone acts as if Link is the only person who can even use trains anymore (except Alfonzo, but he doesn't go out much). So what happened to the other three trains and their engineers?
 * This troper got the impression that,as the trains transformed into the dark/bomb/phantom trains, the drivers were still inside, so, when people said "only engineer", they meant "only surviving engineer"
 * Oh My God...
 * Just how old is this land? The flute was given to Zelda by her grandmother, and just about every character is maybe two generations away from Phantom Hourglass. And yet in less than a hundred years people manage to forget the whole Sealed Evil in A Can thing?