Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom player builds breathtakingly convincing steam locomotive
In a feat of Zonai engineering, a player of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom has created an astonishingly realistic and fully functional steam locomotive, complete with carriages. Their video demonstrating the train’s smooth journey along the rails is almost romantic, although there’s the occasional cannon fire going on.
In homage to The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, r/HyruleEngineering member Welkinian names their locomotive “Spirit of Kakariko.” The armed locomotive goes miles to achieve the look of a classic old-fashioned steam engine, with a Zonai Frost Emitter emulating smoke coming from the smokestack, and a Zonai Hydrant acting as a boiler.
The locomotive doesn’t disappoint in performance either, as it maneuvers along the winding rails of Death Mountain’s descending loop line without stopping or derailing. According to the creator, it can also drive forward and in reverse. The locomotive has a mounted cannon on its top part, but apparently faces the risk of blowing up when it comes to close-range fire.
Welkinian’s impressive build was inspired by an earlier project of Redditor HS_Seraph. As seen in the post above, HS_Seraph had also engineered a fully functional train in Tears of the Kingdom, applying unique ideas such as using Cooking Pots as hinges to attach the train’s carts to each other. This creative solution makes the connection between carts smooth and prevents rigid snapping when cornering.
Welkinian adopted this Cooking Pot+Mine Cart combination and added it to the front of their locomotive, which fixed the issue of derailment. They have mentioned that they are in the process of making further improvements to their locomotive, such as looking for a more convincing boiler and overcoming the high part count of the build.
From functional flying broomsticks to jet aircrafts and electric cars, the high degree of freedom of building in Tears of the Kingdom has brought great technological advancements in travel, but the addition of trains is a particularly awe-inspiring novelty.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is available for the Nintendo Switch.
