more thoughts on company pride
Donald and Douglas are proud of their nationality and clearly fond of their shared memories. But they don't necessarily go around bragging on the Caley. (If anything, you might well infer from some of their statements in RWS that they feel comfortably certain that, despite the initial mess and drama, in coming to Sodor they have traded up.)
Gordon seems to be set up as the foil to Duck, in this respect. He's the only other one who has a similar prideâprobably. The things he and Duck bicker about in "Gordon Goes Foreign" and "Domeless Engines" are proxy issues for the North Eastern vs. Great Western rivalry, so I assume Gordon has some company pride as well as some personal pride. (Then again, that's arguable. He could just not give a damn about his old railway... but be absolutely unwilling to let Duck or bloody showoff domeless engines have the last word about anything!)
But with Gordon it's not half as intriguing, lol. He has enough oblivious self-importance healthy self-esteem that I don't see him being a bit rattled at the idea that a railway company he took pride in would sell him off for a song. He would have a million ways to rationalize or handwave that! Also, I can 100% believe that Gordon thinks of himself as G.N.R. more than L.N.E.R., and since he was offloaded right during the Grouping period that seems like convenient cover ("Oh well everything was a little nutty then as the big new railway took overânew brooms sweep cleanâtheir loss! But if the G.N.R. hadn't been taken over surely they would have seen my worth and kept me on.")
I mean, yes, he was sent to Sodor after nationalisation, so again not technically by The Great Western Railway but merely by 'the Western region.' Maybe that offers a buffer for him, emotionally? But let's be honestâit was still the same management, still the same people. The Western retained a lot of their old maverick tendencies, to wit:
rest of the country: so, we're adopting a standard gauge
g.w.r.: sod off, we will keep our broad gauge until you literally pry it out of our hands
all the other railways: here's our latest new common safety standard
g.w.r.: our way is better and we're not changing
rest of b.r.: diesel-electrics, baby
g.w.r.: dIeSeL-hYdRaULiCs
They even insisted on keeping one steam line open! And the B.R. backed down!
But, well, they agreed to dieselise shunting operations. They even agreed to have those Midland diesel-electric 08s come over.
Surely this would have hit Duck hard.
But never a word from him about it...
What is going on in your smokebox, son?
