The Hogwarts Express

Steve Vander Ark vderark at bccs.org
Fri Jun 22 12:17:36 UTC 2001


No: HPFGUIDX 21297

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "Eric Oppen" <oppen at c...> wrote:

> This would have to be a fairly major passenger train, and unlike 
(forex)
> automobiles, trains have to be fairly coherently scheduled to avoid
> accidents.  Also, they require upkeep, maintenance, and crews.  How 
is all
> this done?  

The Hogwarts Express is not a steam train. It does look like one and 
it acts like one in certain key ways, but it isn't one. It's a 
magical device. It borrows its form and it's intended function from 
real steam trains, but it isn't one. It's like the Ministry Cars, the 
Knight Bus, and Wizarding Wireless, which also borrow their form from 
Muggle technology but which are magical devices. 

Wizard "machines" aren't Muggle machines. They don't work on petrol 
or coal, they work by magic. In some cases, such as the Hogwarts 
Express, they are copied from Muggle machinery (and in this case it's 
clearly a copy of a Muggle device, since many parts of it would have 
no function in the Wizard version, but there they are, clearly copied 
from the Muggle original without an understanding of what those parts 
were for). The Hogwarts Express, powered by magic, goes where it's 
supposed to because that's what it's supposed to do. Magic is more 
than anything else intention made reality. The Hogwarts Express chugs 
away up north because it is magicked to do so. 

So what about the track? Someone on this list some time ago came up 
with a perfect and wonderful solution: the Hogwarts Express uses 
existing track for most of the journey, but just squeezes past the 
other trains on the line or cars at the crossings. It follows the 
same pattern as the other magical transportation devices we've seen, 
the Knight Bus and the Ministry Cars, and just somehow manages to 
jump/squeeze/slip through. It's not heard by Muggles because, as Stan 
Shunpike points out, "they don't hear nuffink, do they."

The driver (engineer to us Americans) and the guard (brakeman? 
porter?) and the lady with the cart are the equivelent of Ernie Prang 
and Stan Shunpike: trained to operate magical devices using magic, 
but not really understanding the technology from which their devices 
are copied. Ernie shifts the wheel back and forth but doesn't really 
steer the bus along the road specifically, he's making the magic 
work. One turn could send them to the left side of the motorway or 
halfway to Torquay, depending on what he intended it to do. 

The train itself looks like a train from the outside and pretty much 
looks like a train on the inside, although I think it's likely that 
it adjusts it's interior dimensions for the task at hand (there is 
always one more compartment, but never an extra, it seems). Unlike 
the Knight Bus, which looks fairly similar to a bus on the outside 
but nothing like a bus on the inside, the Hogwarts Express seems to 
be to most appearances a real train. But it isn't. It's magic.

Steve Vander Ark
The Harry Potter Lexicon
which has a page about the Hogwarts Express
http://www.i2k.com/~svderark/lexicon





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