Rim trains

Philip reached the 27th layer above The City of Middlepoint. The Layer of Anomalies was just above him. The safest way to reach it was to use the stairway built between them in the expanse of the main shaft of The Pit. After that, he would need to board one of the rim trains to get as close to his goal as possible.

Sometimes traveling through a layer of The Pit is way more difficult than one could imagine. Two points, only a few kilometers apart can be separated by chasms, anomalies, nests of beasts, impassable buildings, caverns, or just by the main shaft of The Pit. A distance that should only take an hour or two on foot suddenly can take days. But a solution to a few of those problems has been found.
Instead of digging or building through obstacles, sometimes it is easier to create a detour. And while the layers may be too cluttered to create one, there is one place that is always free of any obstructions - the main shaft of The Pit. By building the rails on the platforms attached to the layer's inner rim (a dangerous and difficult task), one can get around much easier than ever before.
And that is how the rim trains work.

Locomotive and cart

Each "line" of rim trains usually has only one locomotive with one cart attached to it so as not to overburden the rails.
The locomotive consists of an engine, control panel, and a single chair for a driver surrounded by safety railings. The cart behind it is a roofless platform surrounded by the same type of safety railings (though those ones are taller should passengers prefer to stand).

Safety

While the carts and locomotives on some layers are armored with a pane of bulletproof glass on one side (the one facing the layer), those precautions tend to be used to protect the passengers from other humans, as most of the monsters of The Pit tend to not like to get close to the main shaft of The Pit as it is too close to the glow of The Tree.
Asides from the bandits, the only real danger when traveling using the rim trains are the possibility of the cart being too heavy when too many people want to board it, not caring about the maximum weight. While that led only to one case of rail failure and the death of 15 people in the 9th year of Awakening, the heavily regulated norms prevented any such case from happening again.

Nickname

Loops, rings - at least the ones that form the full loops

Creation Date

5th year of Awakening

Current location

The Pit

Rarity

Only a few of them are needed in The Pit.

Width

3m

Length

Carts are 4m long, locomotive attached to them is only 1.5m long.

Height

1,6m to the railing, no roof

Speed

10 km/h (Cart needs more than 3 hours to make a loop in the widest parts of The Pit.)

Complement / Crew

3 at maximum, most of them only have a single driver.

Cargo & Passenger Capacity

Up to 20 passengers with their baggages, heavier cargo reduces the number of passagers for safety reasons.

Power generation

Like a lot of the machines of The Pit, rim trains nowadays are powered by Electric Elemental Crystals. Placing one of them in an electric box with a slot prepared for them powers the train for even one year, depending on the size of the Crystal.
The first models were powered by steam, but those units have long been decommissioned and repurposed to use Elemental Crystals too.