Hello everyone! Ryan(sock) here, and after recently seeing some of my friends using Tumblr, I've decided to try and put my best foot forward with one of my own :) ATM I've got it named as "Before Railway Engines", because I want to share some stories of mine About That first of all. They're a bit out there and I think Tumblr will appreciate them - I've seen so much awesome and interesting fanart and AUs on here and I'd like to throw my hat into the ring too.
I don't really know how Tumblr blogs work so I'm going to jump into the deep end and try and figure things out as I go. This blog will be about my writing and creative endeavors. Feel free to ask me questions! My favourite part of writing is talking about the creative decisions I've made in my work and knowing that I've given people something to think about :)
I'll start with Before Railway Engines and over time go over some other projects I've been a part of, like TUGSContinued, The Video Workshop, or my own personal stuff. Make sure you start from the beginning with the Foreward, then check out the Brief if you want a rundown of the characters. I'll put the number of each story in the post I link them in so you can find them more easily with the search function. I hope you enjoy!
The Harwick & Ballaswein Railway (My Lartigue Monorail Sodor AU)
Hello friends!
It's been a while since I posted here haha, just wanted to let you know about a new thing I'm working on!
In the past few days I've gone on a short holiday to the Southwest of Ireland, and among the places I visited was the Lartigue Monorail Museum in Listowel, Co. Kerry. It's an incredible museum and the volunteers do excellent work, it's truly one-of-a-kind railway history that I'm proud to be able to say is Irish.
The Listowel and Ballybunion Railway opened in 1888 and closed in 1924 - the first commercial passenger-carrying monorail in the world, a little steam-powered line in the rural Irish countryside. It's a story I had always wanted to learn more about, and after visiting the museum, I've fully fallen head-over-heels in love with it.
So I've gotten some inspiration to work on a story that incorporates a Lartigue system into Sodor. I wrote this originally as a Google Doc that I posted on Twitter but I'll just include it here in this post because Tumblr lets you write long things and people on Tumblr like to read long things (I think).
Enjoy!
The Harwick & Ballaswein Railway
Synopsis
After the war, Sodor has been left with a rail connection to Arlesburgh, but none to Harwick. The pleas of the residents of Harwick for a branch that would surely bring many more holidaymakers to their seaside holiday town are ignored by the big railway. However, the MP for Sodor West is convinced of the potential of a rail connection. The solution is a railway that’s cheap, easy to build and unlike anything else on the island. It is a Lartigue Monorail, with 3 engines built by Hunslet running the line, pulling coaches and wagons built by Falcon Works. The Harwick and Ballaswein railway (H&BR) opens shortly after the war in the summer 1919. While (mostly) loved by the locals, the railway’s non-standard rolling stock and infrastructure lead to mishaps and misadventures. With improvements to roads and buses, and a decline in traffic on the big railway to Arlesburgh, the railway shuts down in the late 1930s. In the present day, while the big railway finally makes its way up to Harwick, handed-down memories of the line leads to The Fat Controller helping to establish a monorail museum in Harwick.
Work on the railway would include:
Passenger trains from Arlesburgh to Harwick, catering to the tourist traffic. Would also be important on Race Days to get people to their mainline trains.
Cattle trains for the farmers of Ballaswein
Sand trains from the old Harwick Golf Course to be used on farms across the Island, as well as in building.
Engines (in order of number):
Kerry
Clare
Tyrone
Kerry and Clare are the tender/mainline engines (based on the Listowel and Ballybunion’s fleet of 3). Tyrone (based on the Feurs-Panissières Line’s Lartigue engines) usually works the trains up to Ballaswein/collecting the sand wagons for the others from the old golf course, and is only used on passenger trains on busy days.
Ballaswein (goods branch that serves the northern farms)
Story Concepts
1.
(Introduction to the foibles of operating the railway in following a trip up the line?) The railway is loved locally, being the pride and joy of the locals. Visitors, however, often don’t understand the railway and find it bothersome.
For example, on a hot day, holidaymakers will want to sit on the side of the train facing towards the sea, in the shade, rather than on the other side, with the sun beating down on them, looking at rocky mountains and overgrown fields - but because the train has to be balanced equally on either side, half the passengers are often out of sorts by the time they reach the beach. Two couples - one large, one thin - are split between sides, with the men on one and the women on the other. They end their journeys happily, surprisingly enough - and having found new partners.The journey by monorail is still a wobbly one even with an evenly balanced load.
When a little boy’s hat falls out of the train, and the engine stops so the driver can get it, to the indignation of a holidaymaker from England.
After intro moving into main story -> With the railway coming to the north of the island, a subpostmaster’s office is opened at Clagh Ooyre, with the post offices at Arlesburgh, Harwick and Ballaswein hoping to use the railway to deliver their post. Clare is the first out each day, so gets to take the parcel van on her passenger train. Unfortunately, one day is challenged to a race by some young men cycling up to Clagh Ooyre from town. While passing through The Switch, Clare’s sparks set the sub-post office’s roof ablaze. Luckily, Kerry’s sand train, passing through, is on hand - the sand is used to put out the fire, and the post inside is saved. The parcel van is given to Kerry as a result. Clare is gracious however, and commends Kerry for saving the day.
2.
A couple are told to move to the other side of the carriage to balance out the coach. They rebuke the request, and are offended (this prob wouldn’t be in this story I just like the idea for this interaction and want to make note of it).
The railway comes into conflict with the local farms. A farmer buys one cow at one end of the line, but is told with only one cow in the van the train can’t balance to bring him and it back to the other end. To balance out the train, he ends up having to borrow another farmers cow. When they reach the junction, however, the farmer must borrow another cow to bring back the cow he borrowed, and then borrow another cow at the other end to bring back the cow he borrowed from the farmer at the junction - until he ends up losing the cow he bought in the first place.
He ends up spending a lot of money for one less cow, and gives up on the railway, sending his son on a long trek on foot to bring back the last cow - all the way down the line, which takes all day and leaves his son very fed up.
Road traffic is given right-of-way at crossings on the line - ‘the roads were here first, after all’ - but the crossings aren’t manned by crossing guards; whoever comes by can lower the bridge and stop the train for any reason, any time, for as long as it takes to cross. This results in the disgruntled farmer’s son - who’s been sent to work as a hired hand on a farm down the line - leading his long procession of cattle across the line purposefully slowly to delay an already late race day train - and the train arrives at the junction in time to see the mainline engine leaving. The people complain about the railway, to the engines’ upset.
3.
Kerry and Clare have powered tenders to give them extra strength - Tyrone doesn’t and often has trouble climbing the gradient from Arlesburgh to Harwick. Kerry and Clare tease him about this.
Some local children decide to play a prank by running bars of soap along the rail at the hill - with the rail being raised, it’s easy for them to quickly run a bar along a long section. On a busy summer day, all the engines are working the passenger trains, bringing people to and from the beach. Tyrone slips on the soap, and has to go back to the station. Clare comes along behind and offers to help, teasing him all the while. When she can’t make the hill either, Tyrone gets a good laugh. The crews are baffled, however - it hasn’t rained for days, the rail ought to be dry. They realise the rail has been soaped, but too late, as Kerry comes down from Harwick with her coaches. Before they can wave her down, she slips and is sent careening down the line. She takes a bend too quickly and derails.
4.
Motorbuses decide to take advantage of the railway’s poor press and seize their chance to start operating coach tours to the beach. The buses are faster and abuse their right-of-way to cause constant delays, to the point where the engines’ passengers decide not to bother with the train at all. The engines are very upset at losing their passengers, and wonder what their future will hold.
All hope is not lost, however. The railway’s wooden drawbridge crossings were all well and good for horses-and-carts and cattle, but have never had to endure the weight and bulk of fully-loaded buses rumbling across them all day long. Neither have the narrow winding roads of the west of Sodor had to endure such heavy traffic either.
Buses begin to have accidents, blocking the narrow roads; crossing bridges are weakened so much they’re closed, and now the only option for people is to use the monorail. They are very grateful to the engines, and the engines are glad to have them back.
However, the railway’s fortunes have still not considerably changed - getting all their passengers back brings them back to where they were; that being, barely breaking even. With the MP who had their line built no longer in office, the new MP (one with a friendly relationship with the coach and tarmac companies) makes a decision - they will build better, stronger roads to get buses to the seaside. As for the bridges, they must be replaced too - with stronger stone and brick ones, not new drawbridges. The line is to be closed, and the engines sold off. But who would want to buy such novel engines?
5.
In the present day, the big railway is extending up to Harwick. Stories of the old monorail float in the air as work is done, and Walter is intrigued. When he tells The Fat Controller about it, The Fat Controller is intrigued too - it brings back boyhood memories of riding the monorail to go on holiday to the seaside.
When Walter finds an old section of monorail track in a ditch, he becomes more intrigued than ever, and a search party forms to find the missing monorail engines. A farmer in Ballaswein is found to have his own small section of track that he’s salvaged, and an old coach which he’s done his best for, but has seen better days. The search comes to an end - the engines are no more. Walter is heartbroken - surely, somewhere, somehow, they’ve survived?
The Fat Controller stops him. ‘They’re gone’, he says quietly. Walter doesn’t know what to say. The Fat Controller, however, tells him that just because they’re gone doesn’t mean they have to be forgotten.
“Nobody seemed to do anything about, except to mourn its passing” - Michael Barry on the Listowel Lartigue (RTÉ, 1976)
With the help of the Island preservation society, a monorail museum is built in Harwick, and a new-built locomotive is built - a diesel-powered replica of the tender engine design named Liz. The museum makes for another fine tourist destination in the town, bringing in people from all over the island, and is opened with songs and celebration. Liz has their own demonstration line, where they teach visitors all about how the special little railway worked. Liz is very happy and honoured to continue the legacy of the H&BR, and tells the visitors that those original engines were actually quite the trailblazers, helping to pioneer the monorail. No-one at the time gave too much thought to it - the new engine says that they are sure that if the original engines knew they would still be in the hearts and minds of people so many years on, they would be very very proud indeed.
And if you want to see an engine very much like them, you can pay a visit to the Lartigue Monorail Museum in Listowel, Co. Kerry, Ireland.
References:
By no means is this a Harvard format bibliography but here are the resources I used in researching the Listowel and Ballybunion. The Lartigue Monorail Museum has within it information which I'm not sure is published anywhere online (all the more reason to check it out!) but a lot of stories (both true historic account and apocryphal legend from the locals of Listowel) have been passed down which were an invaluable guide. Also worth pursuing (which I have not read but hope to buy soon) are:
"The Lartigue" (Michael Guerin)
"The Listowel and Ballybunion Railway" (A.T. Newham, Michael Foster - Oakwood Press)
"Lost Railways from Around the World" (Anthony Lambert)
A monorail system which operated between Listowel and Ballybunion could be an inspiration for solving the traffic problem of some of the wor
North Kerry farmer Michael Barry is restoring part of the Lartigue Monorail at Lisselton.
Dear Readers, Engines on the Island of Sodor come in many different shapes and sizes. The Fat Controller’s Railway is standard gauge, the S
Hello everyone I remembered my password : )
It's been a while haha, sorry for the gap in posting! I've had college and summer adventures taking up my time lately - I passed all my classes and went to the Awdry Extravaganza again! I thought now would be as good a time as any to upload some more stories to this blog. I'm not going to upload the whole lot since some contain spoilers for other projects, but I thought it'd be worth uploading a couple, since they're stories I've been sitting on for a while.
Meet Ruth and Chris! This is meant to be my interpretation of Ruth from the CGI series. When I had the idea for Chris, I thought she'd fit in as her owner nicely, seeing as making things in her workshop is something already in the actual series - just taking it to a less BWBA extreme. This is the first intreme-type story.
Chris herself is a 7 1/4" gauge 1366 loco (image from Kingscale Live Steam)! I love live steam, it's such a wild west in terms of engineering and the kinds of rolling stock you'll see come together in one place. If you ever want to see something special, look up the Echills Wood railway and their Standard Gauge weekends (as well as Michael White's Miniature Railway Adventures! He's someone with actual hands-on experience with the gauge and his series is great!). I think it's so much fun to have a character like this in the Thomas universe, an engine who can go to places and get into situations that bigger engines can't.
I don't know if this is a question people are asking when they read these, but I thought it'd be worth addressing anyway: are these scripts canon to Video Workshop? The answer is Maybe! Idk 💀
I hope you enjoy these stories with a character of mine that I'm very fond of.
(Also I've started making an AO3 account for these but I'm not getting that invite link for like 2 weeks haha)
Carson released the first installment of Forgotten Engines last night, written by Mike (The Buried Truck) - the first in a series that has been in production for 5 years. I was invited to join the Video Workshop in 2021 directly because of this project, and I ended up writing the following 6 stories of the arc as Mike was busy - with help from him, Carson, Luke Ryan and Dan (TardisRescue). I am so honoured to be involved in the project, and so happy to be able to talk about it publicly (no spoilers though!)
Please check Patchwork out, and keep an eye out for the rest of the stories when they're finished :)
(Also I wrote the trailer/foreward for Forgotten Engines, if you haven't seen that yet then watch it!!!)
I'm still kind of alive yooo-
Here's mine fanmade facial designs/interpretations. For original characters from fanfic Before Railway Engines, written by @ryansock, please check them out in @beforerailwayengines. Note, they are not related to TUGS but to TTTE.
I honestly would like to see how other people interpret those characters!
And I warn you there's wall of text ahead...
I hope designs are decent at least, it was quick doodle (even though it took long time for me, for no reason), although I see few flaws here and there. You're free to criticize me, since I'm TUGS fan and not TTTE fan.
I wanted Connie to be more colorful than her real life counterpart and have some contrast between shades of teal/turquosie, and to make her contrast with Naoise. But I'm not sure about her face and metal eyelashes. And I hope she looks okay in duet with her "sister" design-wise.
Naoise is weirdest one probably, technically having two doors, which doesn't make sense from practical view. One for the face, and another one (that is open) for solely decoration purposes (depicting castle, flowers, having golden ornament). But I kind of like it, since she got easter eggs (I just hope it's okay to include them).
With Tarquin I tried my best to avoid him being similar to characters from TUGS design-wise, the key word is tried. I don't know if he looks like one of them or not, I can only hope. Decided to simplify his "roof" (I didn't find original one appealing), mouth is a rope, and eyes are still windows (taken from other parts of his body).
I thought of giving Naoise square nose instead of pointy one, so girls would contrast with Tarquin more. But I'm not sure.
I wonder if I should've give them typical gray face like usually Thomas characters has, but I wanted to go with wooden faces. But maybe they would clash with other Thomas characters. I also could've draw them with more depth, while here they're simplified, and give them better structure of faces.
Also Connie and Tarquin has real-life counterparts and therefor exact references you can find (although Connie doesn't have much compare to Tarquin).
While Naoise doesn't have any, so here's pictures of references/inspirations I used (please, ignore that one of them is modern lmao). But I didn't try to find for her counterpart, let her be generic and vague one:
(I'm thinking of drawing full body for boats, horses and people characters, different design variations now. Even though I'm not the best at drawing equines outside of MLP:FIM style lol)
I wonder if Horace, Mildred and Stefan belong to any breed(s) in particular? Or if they're inspired by some. Are they draught horses? Like Shire, Clydesdale, Sufflok Punch etc.
I didn't have particular breeds in mind, I basically tried to think of all the kind of horse descriptor-y words I could think of like Stallion, Mare, Pony etc. Sheila in the mines is a Shetland since they were commonly used as pit-ponies, but that's all I can think of. I did have an idea for a 4th for the Horace, Stefan and Mildred group called Jermaine the Jackass but he never ended up in any stories
For a while now, my partner and I have joked about we see Annie and Clarabel as Thomas' lesbian aunts - gay mothers keeping their failson out of trouble. That was something that we joked about before we started going out, and as a demiromantic bi person, that was a lot of self discovery about myself. So I wanted to do a story that channeled some of my aromantic/demi experience, and I had the idea of a story about Annie and Clarabel meeting each other for the first time that was knocking about for a while. I decided to do both. I hope you enjoy :)
COMIN’ OUT (ANNIE’S SONG) Written by Ryansock SCENE 1 - KNAPFORD SHUNTING YARD Hard cut opening into- BILL AND BEN Thomas and Rosie, sitt
I went into a bit of a frenzy writing this this week tbh, it just kept getting longer with more moving parts 😅 I don't view Annie and Clarabel as sisters, it's not something that's ever said in the show, and the only places I found that said it was a post on the Thomas Facebook and a Take Along Card. So it's about as canon as there being no number 11 engine on Sodor or the Spiteful Brakevan being a Brown Guard's Engine who helps Donald and Douglas. Their bio in the writer's bible for S17 describes them as "slightly wacky maiden aunts", which... i mean.... y'know... to me that gives "they were best friends and lived together" energy. And if the coaches in the books were meant to be "dutiful wives" to their engines, I don't think they're sisters. That whole thing on its own is freaky and weird like Thomas is widderwally twee years old he doesn't have a polycule
I thought it would be worth addressing since other people interpret them that way. That's fine! But this is how I see them and I hope you can appreciate that 🫡
Thank you so much!!! That means a lot, there's a lot of me in this and I was worried a little about putting myself a bit too out there and being publicly vulnerable. I'm glad you had fun reading it :)
For a while now, my partner and I have joked about we see Annie and Clarabel as Thomas' lesbian aunts - gay mothers keeping their failson out of trouble. That was something that we joked about before we started going out, and as a demiromantic bi person, that was a lot of self discovery about myself. So I wanted to do a story that channeled some of my aromantic/demi experience, and I had the idea of a story about Annie and Clarabel meeting each other for the first time that was knocking about for a while. I decided to do both. I hope you enjoy :)
COMIN’ OUT (ANNIE’S SONG) Written by Ryansock SCENE 1 - KNAPFORD SHUNTING YARD Hard cut opening into- BILL AND BEN Thomas and Rosie, sitt
I went into a bit of a frenzy writing this this week tbh, it just kept getting longer with more moving parts 😅 I don't view Annie and Clarabel as sisters, it's not something that's ever said in the show, and the only places I found that said it was a post on the Thomas Facebook and a Take Along Card. So it's about as canon as there being no number 11 engine on Sodor or the Spiteful Brakevan being a Brown Guard's Engine who helps Donald and Douglas. Their bio in the writer's bible for S17 describes them as "slightly wacky maiden aunts", which... i mean.... y'know... to me that gives "they were best friends and lived together" energy. And if the coaches in the books were meant to be "dutiful wives" to their engines, I don't think they're sisters. That whole thing on its own is freaky and weird like Thomas is widderwally twee years old he doesn't have a polycule
I thought it would be worth addressing since other people interpret them that way. That's fine! But this is how I see them and I hope you can appreciate that 🫡
Do characters Connie, Naoise, Tarquin have a reference sheet/concept art? Or smth like that. And would it be ok to draw doodle of them/one of them?
If anyone wants to draw Connie, Naoise or Tarquin, please do! I'd love to see fanart :) They don't have a reference sheet, but I've written up descriptions of them with the kinds of boat they're based on in a previous post called "Before Railway Engines: Brief". I point to some sites and blogs that have pictures of the boats Connie and Tarquin are based on there - with Naoise, she's a general type of unpowered narrowboat (she gets a stack when she's given an engine though)
The only additional info I'd give for anyone who wants to draw them is that they don't have tugs-style flesh faces, they're more like Caroline's face from Thomas. Sorry I can't be more specific with details, but I'd be so happy to see any fanart at all :)
