The National Engines - The Train Set

The Train Set

The Starlight Express characters are the creations of a child's dream about his toy train set. The National Engines are ensemble roles, each with a caricature personality mostly portrayed through body language. The roles are physically very demanding of the cast, as the performers race at high speed while wearing bulky, heavy costumes and race helmets that give limited visibility, as well as performing rollerskating stunts to amaze the audience.

The names, roles, and number of National Engines has varied widely from one production to the next. Which engine gets to race in the final is a matter of the host country's politics, characters are replaced to relate to the audience, or cut altogether to save money.

The original London production had a distinct and different design from the Broadway and later productions. The National engines are prime examples of this divide. The London costumes suggest a set of six toy trains, identical apart from having been painted in different colours and quite arbitrarily assigned national identities. That Bobo is blue is logical, but Hashamoto being in yellow has no immediate logic. This emphasises that the characters are toys, and a set, that they are not representing literal railway engines. However the Broadway production (which was the template for all following productions) was redesigned, with a bigger budget and larger ideas. Now the National Engines are as close as possible to the genuine article. They now represent a replica train set, far more costly than a child's toys.