I have a thing for fast trains
By Chris Pattle
For as long as I can remember, I've been fascinated by trains. But not just any trains. Fast trains.
Every summer, until I was about 16, my parents would take my brother and me on a two-week holiday to northern France. We'd alternate between days spent cycling and days exploring by car. I used to dread the cycling days (which is funny, considering how much I love cycling now), but there was always one thing that could turn a miserable day on the bike into a great one: coming across a TGV line.
Whenever we spotted one, my brother and I would beg our parents to stop so we could wait for a train to come hurtling past. Sometimes we'd be standing there for ages, not knowing if one would even show up. But when one did, it was always worth the wait.
There's something incredibly exhilarating about watching a high-speed train go past. The anticipation as you stare down the tracks, the faint sound in the distance, the first glimpse of headlights, and then, almost before you've had time to process it, 180 mph of engineering comes thundering past you.
A few seconds later, it's gone. And I'd have happily stood there for another hour just to see it happen again.
I might have thought this was just a childhood phase. Every kid loves trains, right? But a few years ago, my brother and I went on a cycling trip to France for old times' sake, and we found ourselves doing the same thing. Here's a video I took on that holiday of the Eurostar flying past on its way to Brussels.
Digital experiences
Something I'm really interested in is "digital experiences", aka being able to spin up a 3D environment using an AI agent. I think this will be a growing trend, considering how good LLMs seem to be at Three.js and as I've discovered recently, both Astra and Opus 5.5 are very, very good at creating 3D models now.
Watching that video still makes me want to stand beside a railway line. But given that most of the trains I saw as a child have now sadly been decommissioned and replaced with more modern rolling stock, the only way I can recreate those memories is digitally. So I connected Astra to Blender and had a go at modelling some of those trains. I provided lots of reference images of each train and used a version of the prompt below to create the model:
Make a 3D model of an orange TGV Sud-Est train in Blender. I have included some images of how the train should look in tgv-1.jpg, tgv-2.jpg, tgv-3.jpg, tgv-4.jpg, tgv-5.jpg and tgv-6.jpg.
Make the train look as realistic and physically accurate as possible. For each iteration, use a critic agent to evaluate the model for its realism and accuracy. It should provide a score from 0 to 10. A score of 4-7 means it's usable, but it would not pass as a game asset. A score of 8 or above means it looks very convincing, exactly like it looks in real life. Loop until the critic agent gives a score of 8 or higher, up to a maximum of 3 rounds.
As with the other train models I made in this project, can you make the engine and carriages as separate models so that when I use these models, I'm not constrained by a fixed number of carriages?
Once you have finished the model, please export it and build a simple HTML page where I can view the train model and move it around.
I was completely blown away by the results, especially considering that a few months ago, LLMs struggled to create anything beyond fairly simple shapes in Blender. While they're not perfect (I couldn't get Astra to get the nose shape of the TGV quite right), they're probably at the standard of a AA game.
Below are some of the train models Astra created for me. If you click the "Flyby" button next to each one, you can experience it going past at full speed.
TGV Sud-Est
In my opinion, the best-looking train ever made. I only saw these trains a few times, as I think they tended to run on routes located south of Paris. The last of these trains was decommissioned in 2019, but luckily the train that set the 380 km/h world speed record in 1981 has been preserved and restored in its original orange livery. It's still used for heritage events, so hopefully I'll get to see it again IRL at some point in the future. Interestingly, there's also a LEGO set based on this train.
The 3D model will load when you reach it.
Thalys TGV
I used to see this one a fair bit, as it used to run from Paris to Amsterdam and Germany. Sadly, Thalys merged with Eurostar, so, like the Sud-Est, you don't see these anymore.
The 3D model will load when you reach it.
La Poste TGV
The White Whale. I must have only seen this train once in the flesh.
The 3D model will load when you reach it.
700 series Shinkansen
I've never been to Japan, so I haven't seen any of the Shinkansen bullet trains in the flesh, but this gives me a good idea of what it might look like.
The 3D model will load when you reach it.
L0 maglev
This train holds the current top speed world record of 603 km/h (375 mph). Crazy to see how fast it arrives, then disappears.
The 3D model will load when you reach it.
There's something very pleasing about being able to build a little place that exists purely because you want to spend time in it. In my case, apparently, that place is a field in France with an orange train going past.