The Medes (Train)

I think the train is going to be fun but challenging to design. I want it to be visually interesting, but it must also be functional.

Functionally, the medes houses a very large crew, it must track, catch, and hunt blue whale sized creatures. Then it transports hundreds of tons of meat. It has a harpoons and chase cars and a balloon style crows nest.  

It is part pirate ship, part war machine, part semi truck, and part meat packing plant.

These are Russian war Trains Popularly used in WWII.

This last one feels like a good starting point for the angels. Alien and dangerous looking.

Here are some Existing trains and other transport vehicles. I like the variance of straights and curves in the trains and semi's. This might come into play, because many different nations are mentioned and each culture might have different aesthetic prefernces (boxy vs curvacious)

The scale and level of wear and tear on this ship match what I have in mind for a the medes. This is a working train, it's not meant to be pretty, or comfortable.

The book casually implies that the train is diesel powered which made me think of semi trucks. It might be an interesting design choice to add semi style cues to the train Especially the vertical exhaust pipes and catalytic converter.

Speaking of diesel engines...

Lastly I want to talk about Mad Max: fury road. It did a lot of things very well in terms of vehicle designs that I want to study. However, I think it would be too easy to borrow too much and become just a mad max with trains.

My favorite aspect of the design of the movie is that the vehicle contain design solutions. You can see that the characters in world had some sort of goal or problem they need to solve, and they built a vehicle as best they could to deal with it. And since everything is made of pieces of scrap sutured, it makes  the "stitches" easier to see. It gives the sense of a world built with the bones of an older world, and adds history. It also implies that there are limitations and boundaries placed on the inhabitants.

I also like how different tribes have different designs and different aesthetics.

And Gypsy house boats. Just visually interesting and hodge podge.