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Are there any railfans in our midst ?

I was wondering whether anyone has identified the locos and trains that have featured in the variuos Tintin books.

Are there any railfans in our midst ?

Yep.

I was wondering whether anyone has identified the locos and trains that have featured in the variuos Tintin books.

Nop. Not that I've tried very hard, but no, I haven't so far. It would be interesting to see if someone can identify the trains, or if Hergé just made up the trains.

-Gustav

Good to see that I'm not the only Tintinologist who looks at railway-related stuff.

I had the general impression that Herge made up the trains. In "Tintin in America", for example, all the trains have European bumper-and-screw couplers, even though American rollingstock aren't joined together in that matter (here I think they're just called "couplers"). I have also seen the same European couplers in China in "The Blue Lotus" and in Peru in "Prisoners of the Sun", even though actual photos do not show trains with such couplers.

As for the trains themselves, I have not been able to find actual photos of those in Tintin, even though there are definitely locomotives in those countries that very closely resemble them.

There's essentially one train that features throughout the series - the one in Tintin in America and The Broken Ear, for example. There might be some variations, I haven't got the books to hand. Curiously, I read about that just the other day, but I'm not sure where. Apparently the design is based on an actual locomotive, of which only nine were built (I'm doing this from memory, if I find the source I'll cite it). Hergé had a technical plan of the train and therefore used it often. If anyone wants to try and find it, please be my guest. I thought it was in Hergé, ou le secret de l'image by Pierre Fresnault-Deruelle, but I've looked through it just now and can't seem to find it.

Incidently, that book draws a parallel between the train sequence in Tintin in America and AM Cassandre's 1927 poster design Étoile du Nord (personally, I can see a greater similarity with Nord Express). Cassandre's work may be of interest to Tintin fans, since not only were he and Hergé contemporaries, but their poster design work was similar, and Cassandre's travel posters evoke the same sense of movement and adventure that Tintin embodies. Good stuff, but perhaps a bit off-topic, so I won't go too far down that road (or railway line).

The carriages in Prisoners of the Sun seem to be very much like the actual ones still in use on Peruvian railways, except the actual ones are red. There's a photograph here or you can see a full-page image in the book Tintin, Grand Voyageur du Siècle. I don't know what kind of couplings are used, but I think I saw a photograph once of a steam locomotive that looks very much like the one in the Incan story.

There was another locomotive in "The Blue Lotus" that did not have two things on the side of the front, so there must have been at least three different types of locomotives being featured in Tintin; this, the one in "Tintin in America" and "The Broken Ear" (wait, was there a train in that series??), and in "Prisoners of the Sun", which I think may have been based on real Peruvian trains based on photographic evidence. There was another loco in "The Seven Crystal Balls", but I can't remember what it looked like; that could have been different, too.

snafu
(wait, was there a train in that series??)

For those who don't have the books to hand, here are some sites that can also help to compare Herge's engines' models between each other:

http://cheminet.free.fr/tintin.php

http://membres.lycos.fr/chclaute/H/Herge.html?

http://www.freewebs.com/sntintin/archives.htm

Oops! Good catch.

Yes, all the locos looked very similar, but didn't all long-distance steam engines look fundamentally very similar (same thing with aircraft)?

It is still hard to believe that the Master would use the same loco type for every country (an obvious inaccuracy; even the best artists make subtle mistakes like the one involving the couplers)...

Hooray ! Found the info again, actually from an eBay listing.

The train that appears in The Broken Ear (when Tintin escapes in the car and crosses the railway line) is a 'type 5' from 1930, of which only four were built. It's cited that Hergé used the train a few times in the series - Tintin in America, p32 ; The Black Island (1943 edition), p3 ; The Seven Crystal Balls, p1 - with some variations.

The drawing in The Broken Ear was based on a technical plan Hergé had archived, probably coming into his possession due to a commission by the Chemins de Fer Belges for a brochure entitled «Renseignements pratiques au sujet du transport de marchandises» (essentially a brochure on goods transport via rail, for what it matters).

I'll see if I can dig out the photo of the Peruvian engine, if a) I still have it and b) I didn't imagine it.

You should be able to find a photo of that Peruvian engine. I had one from a guidebook for locomotives that was in print in the States over ten years ago. Unfortunately, it's 100 miles away. No, I doubt anything is being imagined. When I first saw the locomotive, I thought it was either a precise representation of what was shown in the guidebook or something closely based on it.