Afterlife Express: Difference between revisions

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{{quote|''"Watch out, brother, for that long, black train."''|'''Josh Turner'''}}

A recurring element in [[Oral Tradition]] and fiction. A sinister (or at least mysterious) phantom train beholden to no earthly schedule, often times in charge of transporting souls to the afterlife. A vehicular version of [[The Grim Reaper]], then, minus the reaping (though that's not to say that the train that runs over people wouldn't be hilarious). [[Psychopomp|Its conductor]]--if not the train itself--probably [[Chess With Death|plays chess]], too. Interesting in that trains are a relatively young technology, regarding mythology<ref>Although it may be related to the Greek mythological concept of a ferryman(to be specific, Charon) of souls to the afterlife.</ref>, but they've acclimated extremely well. The spooky train whistle also helps.

A recurring element in [[Oral Tradition]] and fiction. A sinister (or at least mysterious) phantom train beholden to no earthly schedule, often times in charge of transporting souls to the afterlife. A vehicular version of [[The Grim Reaper]], then, minus the reaping (though that's not to say that the train that runs over people wouldn't be hilarious). [[Psychopomp|Its conductor]] -- if not the train itself -- probably [[Chess With Death|plays chess]], too. Interesting in that trains are a relatively young technology, regarding mythology<ref>Although it may be related to the Greek mythological concept of a ferryman (to be specific, Charon) of souls to the afterlife.</ref>, but they've acclimated extremely well. The spooky train whistle also helps.

May not actually be a ''train'', but you get the idea. Video games love these things. If it IS a train, it may qualify as a [[Cool Train]]. Sometimes overlaps with [[Ghost Ship]]. Has nothing to do with [[Soul Train]], though it is often referred to as a soul train.

May not actually be a ''train'', but you get the idea. Video games love these things. If it IS a train, it may qualify as a [[Cool Train]]. Sometimes overlaps with [[Ghost Ship]]. Has nothing to do with [[Soul Train]], though it is often referred to as ''a'' soul train.

~~===~~ '''As a [[Death Trope]], all Spoilers will be unmarked ahead. Beware.''' ~~===~~

'''As a [[Death Trope]], all Spoilers will be unmarked ahead. Beware.'''

== Anime and Manga ==

* ''[[Digimon (Franchise)|Digimon]]'' example: In ''[[Digimon Frontier (Anime)|Frontier]]'' (Season 4), Takuya found himself confronted by Dark Trailmon, a train Digimon, after getting annihilated in a battle. Dark Trailmon offers him a chance to avoid going to the Digital World, and takes him back in time to when his journey started. But the catch? He's running around the human world as Flamemon. (His wearing a [[Sleep Mode Size|"rookie level"]] version of his Digimon form is a way around the problem of [[Never the Selves Shall Meet|two Takuyas existing at once.) He eventually decides to allow his journey to take place]], and [[He's Back|returns to the Digital World]]. (And the bad guy they were fighting has ''long walked away'' to sort out his lost memories by the time he got back. Oh, well. Next time.)

* ''[[Aria (Manga)|Aria]]'' has the appearance of a ghostly train that appears to transport cats to some sort of afterlife. This is a [[Shout Out]] to ''[[Night On the Galactic Railroad]]''.

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* ''[[Galaxy Express 999]]'' has an encounter with a train full of ghosts in the vicinity of Filament, a planet that had been suddenly destroyed some time ago leaving the souls of its inhabitants to live on in that area.

* At the beginning of ''[[Grave of the Fireflies]]'' Seita dies in a train station. When the tin containing his sister Setsuko's remains is thrown away, her spirit is released and the spirits of Seita and Setsuko reunite. They then board a lonely train, and watch falling bombs, which segues into the story of [[How We Got Here|how they died]] with the bombings of Kobe.

== Comicbooks ==

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== Film ==

* ''[[Ghostbusters]] 2''

{{quote| '''Egon:''' Did you catch the number on the locomotive?

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* ''[[The Mummy (Film)|The Mummy]]'' (1999) has a phantom chariot that comes for Imhotep's soul.

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== Literature ==

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== Literature ==

* The Hugo Award-winning short story ''That Hell-Bound Train''.

* The train in the fifth ''[[The Dark Is Rising]]'' book, ''Silver on the Tree''.

* In Maire Philips' ''Gods Behaving Badly'' Angel Islington Underground station is a gate to the Underworld of Greek mythology, with the dead taking Tube trains to the afterlife.

* One of the ''[[Choose Your Own Adventure]]'' books centered around this.

* In the conclusion of "Changes", [[The Dresden Files (Literature)|Harry Dresden]] is about to die when he hears the sound of an oncoming train. In the very beginning of "Ghost Story", we learn that there IS a train coming for him, and he has to be dragged out of the way to stop it from hitting him. This is described as a "southbound train", one that presumably leads to Hell. The [[Big Bad]] of "Ghost Story" is finally brought down by a rush of spirits so direct and forceful that it is itself described as an oncoming train, and when said Big Bad screams in terror, Dresden says that her scream was drowned out by [[Dragged Off to Hell|the "sound of a southbound train".]]

* In the conclusion of "Changes", [[The Dresden Files (Literature)|Harry Dresden]] is about to die when he hears the sound of an oncoming train. In the very beginning of "Ghost Story", we learn that there ''is'' a train coming for him, and he has to be dragged out of the way to stop it from hitting him. This is described as a "southbound train", one that presumably leads to Hell. The [[Big Bad]] of "Ghost Story" is finally brought down by a rush of spirits so direct and forceful that it is itself described as an oncoming train, and when said Big Bad screams in terror, Dresden says that her scream was drowned out by [[Dragged Off to Hell|the "sound of a southbound train".]]

* In [[Graham McNeill]]'s ''[[Warhammer 40000]] [[Ultramarines (Literature)|Ultramarines]]'' novel ''Dead Sky Black Sun'', Uriel and Pasanius are dragged off a spaceship onto a Chaos-warped train that runs on the "blood-tracks" and carries them into [[Mordor|a Chaos Space Marine capital world in the Eye of Terror]].

* In the third [[Marla Mason]] book, ''Dead Reign'', by T.A. Pratt, Marla journeys to the Underworld via a train made of the thighbone of a leviathan. She takes this train from a subway station in San Fransisco.

* One of [[Manly Wade Wellman]]'s Silver John stories, "The Little Black Train", has the local [[Rich Bitch]] trying to escape a curse that the train will come for her (by removing all the local tracks). "A black train runs some nights at midnight, they say, and when it runs a sinner dies." It comes anyway, but she repents and the train retreats.

* ''[[Fire and Hemlock]]'' by [[Diana Wynne Jones]] has one of these.

* ''[[Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows]]'': The place that Harry visits in his [[Near Death Experience]] turns out to be King's Cross Station. It isn't made clear whether this is what everyone sees, or whether it's just Harry. And Dumbledore gives him the choice between going back and going on -- by boarding a train.

* ''[[Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows]]'': The place that Harry visits in his [[Near-Death Experience]] turns out to be King's Cross Station. It isn't made clear whether this is what everyone sees, or whether it's just Harry. And Dumbledore gives him the choice between going back and going on -- by boarding a train.

* In the ''[[Star Trek (Franchise)|Star Trek]]'' novel ''I, Q'', Q, Picard and Data ride a miles-long train of livestock cars filled with listless people. In this surreal story, what is actually going on is slightly unclear, but they know it will carry them to their doom.

* In ''[[The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (Literature)|The Rime of the Ancient Mariner]]'', it's a ship, not a train, but Death and Life-in-Death play dice for the crew's souls.

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== Live Action TV ==

* ''[[Tales From the Darkside (TV)|Tales From the Darkside]]'': The second season episode "The Last Car" had five souls trapped for all eternity on an [[Aferlife Express]] with nothing but a box of sandwiches and eternal boredom to keep them busy. Whenever they go into a tunnel, they turn into skeletons and black out.

* In an episode of ''[[Seriously Weird]]'', Harris and all of the customers of the diner find themselves trapped on a ghost train (the diner originally having been a car from this train) with a ghost conductor determined to drive them to their deaths and down to Hell.

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== Music ==

* The [[Chuck Berry]] song "Downbound Train" (no relation to the [[Tom Waits]] song of the same name) features one of these headed to Hell and driven by Satan himself, whose passengers have all lived lives of vice.

* The Chris de Burg song "Spanish Train" is a story about a train carrying the souls of the dead to the Underworld. God and the Devil are playing Poker - gambling with the souls. Naturally, the Devil cheats and wins the game.

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* "[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfxoM6trtZE City of New Orleans]" puts a spin on this. In this song, it's the trains themselves that are headed to the proverbial afterlife, not their passengers. Steve Goodman wrote the nostalgic song about air travel [[Truth in Television|driving passenger rail service out of business:]]

{{quote| ''All the towns and people seem

To fade into a bad dream

''To fade into a bad dream

And the steel rails still ain't heard the news.

''And the steel rails still ain't heard the news.

The conductor sings his song again,

''The conductor sings his song again,

The passengers will please refrain

''The passengers will please refrain

This train's got the disappearing railroad blues.'' }}

''This train's got the disappearing railroad blues.'' }}

** Amtrak actually still operates a passenger train called the ''City of New Orleans'', but the rest of the song's predictions are spot on. Effective rail service has almost completely disappeared from the USA.

** Amtrak actually still operates a passenger train called the "City of New Orleans", but the rest of the song's predictions are spot on. Effective rail service has almost completely disappeared from the USA.

* [[Johnny Cash]]'s "Redemption Day":

{{quote| There's a train that's heading straight to heaven's gate, to heaven's gate

{{quote|''There's a train that's heading straight to heaven's gate, to heaven's gate''

And on the way, child, man, and woman wait, watch and wait, for Redemption Day }}

''And on the way, child, man, and woman wait, watch and wait, for Redemption Day.''}}

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== Newspaper Comics ==

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== Newspaper Comics ==

* Lemont Brown of ''[[Candorville]]'' sometimes dreams that he boards a train from Earth to outer space, where he converses with recently deceased celebrities. For instance, he spoke with [[Apple Macintosh|Steve Jobs]] in 2011 and shooting victim Trayvon Martin in April of 2012.

== Oral Tradition ==

* Railroad folklore says you should never mimic the sounds of a train whilst on the railway tracks, especially at night, lest you summon said Soul/Ghost Train.

* There's a Stockholm urban legend, that probably started in [[The Nineties]], about Silverpilen, a subway train coloured metal that traps people in weird ways.

* The United States has many Ghost Trains but the most famous is the one that has been carrying Lincoln's coffin back to Illinois for a hundred and fifty odd years now.

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== Tabletop Games ==

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== Tabletop Games ==

* ''[[Wraith: The Oblivion|Wraith: the Oblivion]]'' features the Midnight Express, a train traveling through the Shadowlands that serves as neutral ground for all the rival factions of the afterlife -- including those serving [[Eldritch Abomination|Oblivion]].

* ''[[Exalted]]'': The Midnight Express also shows as a mysterious soulsteel and moonsilver train that travels through the Labyrinth, conveying passengers to and from the Mouth of the Void. The Deathlords are interested in taking control of it; to date, they haven't succeeded.

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* The Black Engine in ''[[Deathwatch (Tabletop Game)|Deathwatch]]'' campaign ''The Emperor Protects''. It's a daemonic entity in the form of a train, which follows rails designed to allow it to become incorporeal and exist outside real-space. In exchange for it's services, transporting psychic individuals so their souls can be drained, it's fed human slaves on every round-trip.

* The [http://yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/Tour_Bus_From_the_Underworld Tour Bus From the Underworld] from the [[Yugioh Card Game]].

== Theatre ==