The Deeprun Tram is the most powerful strategic asset on Azeroth

Lore Story Forum
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Because I hate myself, I’ve been thinking about logistics in this comic book fantasy universe that makes no sense, particularly as far as military stuff would be concerned, and I realized that the Deeprun Tram is extremely undervalued as a strategic asset.

First off, some basics about the speed and length of the Deeprun Tram in this video:

The Deeprun Tram is approximately 1.47 miles in length in-game.

Its speed from one end to the other is approximately 90 MPH

We have no idea of how to calculate gamescale to “lorescale” so for the purpose of this post let’s say that everything in-game is 100x bigger “in lore” than it is in-game. Under this assumption, the Deeprun Tram is approximately 147 miles in length.

For real world reference, this is roughly the distance you’d get if you drew a direct line from New York City to Baltimore, or from Dallas to Austin.

So if we assume this, then someone could travel from Stormwind to Ironforge in less than an hour and a half via the Deeprun Tram.

This is insanely fast. People IRL commute every day for twice this amount of time.

Ignoring the massive, massive impact that this would have on Stormwind and Ironforge’s economies, in military terms it means that using the Deeprun Tram alone, an entire division could be moved from Stormwind to Ironforge every 24 hours. That’s central Azeroth to northern Khaz Modan.

In the Eastern Kingdoms, the Alliance can move entire armies effectively anywhere it wants in a matter of days thanks to this, even without taking into account corresponding naval transports.

The Deeprun Tram is a straight up revolution in terms of how wars can be waged by the Alliance and they should capitalize on it. As soon as possible they need to start working on extensions to Stromgarde, Gilneas, and Nethergarde. Assuming these extensions would be roughly the same length, it would mean that Stormwind and Ironforge could move forces into southern Lordaeron at a rate of a one brigade or so every 3 hours.

To say nothing of how it is a revolution in supply chains. Food, water, weapons, support attachments, etc. can all be efficiently moved the same way.

The Alliance should lean on the Deeprun Tram as much as possible. No other organization on Azeroth has anything even close to that kind of logistical advantage, and logistics win wars.

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The Deeprun Tram alone is why any siege against Stormwind or Ironforge is doomed. You simply can’t wait them out. One city will resupply the other, meanwhile the combined armies of the rest of the Alliance are on their way to roflstomp the besieging army.

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The tram sounds like fast troop transport until you bring up these two words.

Portal Spell.

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yawns, teleports to Tirna vaal and back from Stormwind for popcorn to listen to this thread with

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It’s also is very mystical. It takes you from Stormwind to Ironforge by traveling from east to west and under the sea.

Jokes aside, the tram can feel really weird in this game setting to me because it’s too advanced for either stormwind or ironforge. Like Gnomes can make something this amazing but nothing else is also weird.

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It was apparently a Gnomish/Dwarven collaboration.

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It isn’t really clear how effectively these can move large amounts of men and material lorewise, although for the sake of discussion I assume that they don’t scale well, otherwise all other means of transportation are pointless.

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They evacuated a significant chunk of Teldrassil’s population with almost no advance notice, literally to the other side of the world.

That’s the equivalent of an army, or at least a mobile commando force.

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It’s very rare that teleporting is ever used to transport masses of people so I doubt it’s much of an alternative. The story still treats army movement as being dependent upon marching and sailing.

To use the War of the Thorns as an example, a critical part of Sylvanas’ plan was tricking the night elven army into sailing down to southern Kalimdor, which gave her sufficient time to march through and overcome Ashenvale and Darkshore. By the time they night elven army sailed back, the war was all but over. Had they the option of teleporting, the war would have gone differently.

Similarly the predominant reason to ally with Kul Tiras and Zandalar was to secure their fleets in order to establish naval dominance. A moot effort if sailing wasn’t critical.

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One thing I would say, is that Ironforge and Stormwind are already largely successful / powerful economic cities as shown in game, and it would not be a stretch to say their current prosperity is already taking the tram into account.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the Tram in universe is likely a bit more complicated in design (or extremely uncomfortable) than it is in game. Since the in-game tram has no seating, no guardrails from accidentally falling off, etc. Given the fact that it is designed by Gnomes (a race well known for over designing tech with safety features) the in-universe tram likely has seating areas, and cargo areas between the two. (That or one tram is exclusively cargo, and one is exclusively a transport)
Either way this likely cuts down on the people / trip it can make, and likely reduces the time it would take to move an entire battalion (supplies not withstanding) between the two locations.

This isn’t to say the Tram is a technological marvel, and a powerful tool in the Alliance’s belt, which it most undoubtedly is. The tram likely can handle more throughput of cargo and people per day than either Zeppelins or Boats or Transportation magic. It is extremely effective, and likely one reason why the Alliance is in such a dominant position in the central Eastern Kingdoms.

With the addition of the Dark Irons to the Alliance, and assuming that the Blackrock orcs have been routed after their … dozen odd defeats in the region… the Alliance has one of the most formidable congruent territorial holdings in Azeroth.

One thing that holds the Tram back though is that Ironforge lacks easy mass transport networks going out of their territory besides the Tram. While they have airplanes, and Gryphons, traditional army movement northward is limited to going to Stormwind and north by boat, or marching overland by foot. Which severely cuts down on the benefit of northward mobility that the Tram provides. In the distances provided by your example, it would be easier for the Alliance to shift all northward travel beyond the Thandol span to still relying on naval traffic.
If the tram had more destinations, or if Ironforge had better methods to mobilize troops to the North then the Alliance could better leverage the incredible power of the Tram in moving forces.

As it stands, aside from Ironforge Ground infantry, the deeprum tram’s power lies more in it’s economic impact than its military capacity. At least in my opinion.

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I remember some obscure lore saying that there were passages out of Ironforge going north into the Wetlands and I would be astonished if there weren’t any.

It seems both obvious (given the alternative route would be going south through Dun Morogh and then up through Loch Modan) and it probably wouldn’t be difficult at all for the Dwarves given that they are already masters of subterranean infrastructure. There are even bunkers on the north side of Ironforge Mountain in the Wetlands that I always assumed were part of Ironforge itself.

If my assumption is correct it would mean that both Stormwind and Ironforge could reliably supply any front in the north either by way of transferring to sea at Menethil or by going overland to the Thandol Span.

(I’m also assuming that Menethil Harbor has been repaired by now)

I still think that given that the Deeprun Tram already exists and should by all accounts be insanely useful, that extending it to other areas might be warranted. Stromgarde Keep being an obvious example, but maybe even Gilneas City if it’s built under the ocean (which might be feasible given part of the current Deeprun Tram is submerged anyway)

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I’d have to double check, but (much like many ‘brilliant’ choices in the lore) there are no passageways that lead into the Wetlands into Ironforge. One of the main defensive boons of Ironforge is that the Dwarves only had one main entry point to the city (reachable by land) and that they could fortify that forever. Having unreachable areas (mountaintop entrances) that could supply food to bolster a massive stockpile. If there were entrances in the Wetlands, they would have been mentioned during the Old Horde siege on Ironforge during WC II.

I do agree that Menethil Harbor should be repaired by now, but that only bolsters the case for reinforcements from Stormwind, as naval travel is generally substantially quicker than overland, especially over such treacherous ground routes.

Also, for the record, when I think about ‘lore size’ of Azeroth, I generally attribute it to be ‘roughly earth-sized’ with Northrend being located near the North Pole and Pandaria being roughly at the same area as Peru would be. Meaning each of the main continents are incredibly huge, with many zones the size of countries.

As for your last point, yes, I agree that the Deeprum Tram should be expanded. Not only that, but the old ‘Dark Iron Highway’ in Dark Iron City should be explained (surely that goes somewhere? Maybe some sort of ancient underway that could be expanded)

It would take substantial effort, but the Alliance should be extremely motivated for the expansion of such tramways. Much like the Horde should be motivated to increase Zeppelin travel, and maybe have the Mag’har work on a Train System ala what was in Gorgrond.

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Any entrances on the Wetlands side would be much smaller than the great gate, so presumably they could be collapsed if Ironforge was besieged from the Wetlands. The prospect of being able to travel from Ironforge directly to the Wetlands is too convenient to ignore in my opinion, and if there aren’t any lorewise I’d say that’s really dumb.

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You won’t find many arguments that it might be dumb not to have one.

One I could put forward was that, assuming that the lorescale is bigger than game scale that perhaps the ‘Ironforge Range’ of mountains is actually several mountains worth of areas between Dun Morgoh and the Wetlands, not just a single one-mountain wide range. In which case, such a tunnel would need to extend through several mountain ranges, and the danger of breaking into other subterranian threats (troggs, Kobolds, etc) and the cost made it undesirable for a race that had little difficulty moving troops overland.

That or such a passageway did exist, but it was collapsed with such efficacy during the War of Three Hammers, that none were rebuilt in the preceding time. (As to stop rival dwarfs from simply working through a minor cave in a much more extensive one was required)

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I actually just went and checked right now, and there is in fact a passageway leading to the Wetlands directly from Ironforge. It exits onto those farms in the southern Wetlands overlooking Menethil Harbor. There doesn’t seem to be any way in-game to get down from there without flying but that seems like an easy case of gamescale, given that Menethil Harbor is right there.

Adding stairs and/or rigging up a lift to transport cargo would be nothing.

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I agree that the Tram is a pretty amazing asset to have. I’m not sure I agree about the time frame of travel when extrapolated, I’d say it’s more a matter of days than hours for a trip to Ironforge from Stormwind, and vice versa, given the implied size of the world compared to the game world. But unlike, say, gryphons, it doesn’t need to stop at all, or eat, or sleep.

While portals are much faster, what isn’t touched on often is that portals are a highly regulated magic lorewise, for one, and for another they can be blocked or messed with. While we often see them just poofed into existence, they take a lot of power to maintain and often don’t keep their stability. That’s why you see established portals that are more stable, as opposed to simply portaling everywhere constantly. There are drawbacks and major risks.

The tram, meanwhile, is slower but has no risks attached and so long as the entrance to the tram is held in either city, it’s essentially a trump card.

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One day at 90mph would have the tram travel 2160 miles, almost enough to get you from New York to LA, and I don’t think that the distance from Stormwind to Ironforge is equivalent to the length of the continental United States, especially given that the tram was constructed in roughly 4 years give or take.

I think that we need to accept that Azeroth as we know it is smaller than Earth by a significant margin (although still not as small as portrayed in-game)

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On the subject of teleportation, we are told, in vague terms, that Telemancy (from the Shal’dorei) is substantially more stable / better than general Teleportation magic, and based on the anchor points attached to them seem to be using a different means of anchoring the magic, with a single skilled Telemancer able to maintain a number of telemancy portals simultaneously.

I have some ideas on how the Shal’dorei are able to keep more stable transportation lines via magic, but the game is so inconsistent with how teleportation works in this game, that I’ve avoided sharing my own theories due to the lore never going into the deep dive details that would help flesh out some of the more ill-defined magical systems.

To Ainhin:
Ah, thank you for checking, that is indeed interesting to know. One would think then that such a route would have factored into more Alliance battle plans and tactics over the years, but… ah well.
I still hold onto the fact that Azeroth is roughly Earth Sized, and the distance between the cities does not need to be as big as New York to LA to be ‘most of a day’ though I think the distance is more akin to Austin to New Orleans.

Regardless of the actual distance, that doesn’t diminish the extreme relative speeds of the Deeprun Tram. Though, of interesting note, if the Deeprun tram does run at 90 miles per hour, that would put it roughly at the speed of a Zeppelin, if the Hindenburg is any indication. (84 mph top speed, no wind)

Side edit: I love talking about logistics in Azeroth. I have fun working out this kind of nerdy stuff all the time for a Campaign I am running, and am quite glad to see other people taking an interest in Azerothian logistics. I could go onto numerous side tangents on my thoughts about how stuff like this.

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In terms of Deeprun Tram extensions, I’m not entirely in favour of a connection to Gilneas or Stromgarde, purely for aesthetic reasons rather than in-game sense ones. I’d rather see Shadowforge and Aerie Peak hooked up to the network.

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Eh, the stations don’t need to have a giant Gnomish cog aesthetic. Being able to deploy resources to Gilneas or Stromgarde IMO is far more useful geopolitically right now than Shadowforge

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