"Let's build a railway track across the whole USA, Atlantic to Pacific."
"What about the bandits? And the hostile Indians?"
"The 7th Cavalry can deal with them."
"What about the trolls, the giants, the dragons, and what about that settler wagon train got killed when those conjurers summoned all those storm atronachs?"
"You know what, forget it. Lets stick to using the Oregon Mage's Guild teleporter."

The world in this series is older than our own modern world when it comes to civilization. Any arguments against technology are better phrased in a way where magic makes the technology redundant in my opinion. The society is certainly old enough to be at our real world's level of science, if not more advanced. The magic provides alternatives to our real world technology.

For me, the notion of a thousands of years old civilization that has absolutely no scientific evolution is preposterous to me unless explained in terms of magic advancement taking the place of science and technology. What does it say about the intellect of a civilization that doesn't advance for thousands of years? My answer to that is their magical advancements must be such that they don't need the technology. Otherwise they are pretty embarrassingly primitive and stagnant as a society.

Yea..., dont think trains will be in Skyrim, it would be cool though if there were train tracks way up in the mountains and having the ability to ride one.

My understanding of TES societies tells me if you travel 3,000 years into the past from # 4 or 3,000 years into the future from #4 the basic society/tech would be much the same. The same could be said about earth from 10,000 BC to 800 BC. Cities got bigger or smaller people, and people stacked stones higher or lower --- but the basic technology to do any of that was unchanged.

It's not that simple though. The transportation methods and health options in TES is far advanced to what we have in the real world. In Tamriel, they can use magic to transport people and goods across vast distances. What's an epidemic? Magic and alchemy can stomp that far more effectively than real world medicine.

I prefer to look at it as a totally different world. It's not necessarily inferior. It's just very different. Technology isn't important to them when magic takes its place.

The difference is that TES society can already build something like the Imperial City, they can craft high quality armors and weapons etc etc. It's hard to explain why their technology never advances. Not that it bothers me much, it's just a 'typical' fantasy game and imo should stay a fantasy game. But from a realistic point of view there simply is no explanation why the TES people seem to be stuck in their technological advancement. Other than metaphysical explanations like 'the gods didn't allow them to advance'.

Well actually, there is some indiciation that they advance technologically. Pelinal Whitestrake's armor was down right futuristic at the time of Alessia's slave rebellion, but now it is only by the virtue of the armor's enchantments and other supernatural abilities that the armor is noteworthy.

Judging from the crap-storm it kicked up, this idea will be modded into the game exactly 4.78586 seconds after release, approximately 2.47579 second after the first nvde mode, and precisely 1.05623 seconds after the first Furry-six mod.

I feel I should point out the steam powered machine in Oblivion. The one that was hooked up to the tree.

Just food for thought.

You know, gamesas's female character designs are down-right conservative compared to what the modding community does.

Mule trains or horse trains, as in trader caravans, yes. Machine trains with track type things, no.

I rather like what Tolkein did in the Silmarillion. He shows how thousands of years of the same technology doesn't necessarily lead to more advanced tech like Earth's history. It can be argued that the Numenoreans were the most advanced with their ships yet they still never made weapons other than steel and iron. And before somebody goes off on how this is TES and not LOTR, i'm just pointing to the fact that technological advances don't have to happen. I like the dwemer history and what Bethesda has done with the franchise but a magic train blowing through the countryside would literally piss me off.

Walk........Run.....What ever....what era do you think this is? They dont have trains.....

This.

Interesting idea. If dwemer can make a rolling mechanical robot, why not a train? LOL. I think it would be better in a mod instead of vanilla skyrim though. Not something everyone would want to see.

put me down for dwemer trains although they should be limited to underground railways between various dwemer ruins.

climbing would be awesome to pass trough the mountains, and it could give a more hardcoe feeling about the environment

Precisely my point. High magic settings eventually have to confront the question of "what is everyone doing with all that extra energy"? Seems the Dwemer found a way to make perpetually steam powered robots. That's why I don't find the idea of "trains" in TES as stupid an idea as some think it is, despite my aesthetic aversion to it.

I don't think that the Nords are capable of building anything so advanced. Certainly not in a time of turmoil. Unless the Dwemer built these trains, and they'd have been discovered beforehand and they would be in lore, then I don't see it happening. I don't think it would particularly fit TES anyways.

This. No no no no. No guns, No trains, nope nada nooope.

hmm i think it would be interesting to see a broken down dwemer train somewhere deep in the mountains maybe even with a shipment of now non functional animunculi i think it would be one hell of an interesting find

The technological line for the Elder Scrolls world probably advances really slowly compared to ours, such as 200 years for us in advancing technology would be like 2 years for them... which means... that someone else will have to do the math cause I don't have a calculator... Anyway, we could probably have trollies that can be moved manually =/
Also, society has to advance in technology at some point, even with magic... it may take the TES universe around 20,000 years to develop guns or explosives(Compared to us probably only taking 200), but it will probably happen eventually =/

how is bethesda gonna make money off of that? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHZnzFVZ3_o

Yea no chance there will be trains in Skyrim.

Skiing to get back down the mountain would be nice. Or even have a pack of huskies (or whatever other animal(s)) to pull you and your supplies on a sled.