“So you’re saying… Duncan came off the rails? For the third time this week?” “For the third time this week,” came the honest reply from the telephone speaker. “And crashed into the Ministry of Defence wagons?” “And crashed into the Ministry of Defence wagons.” “While trespassing on MoD land?” “While trespassing on MoD land.”
The Thin Controller put the phone down, and started to make arrangements to send Rusty down with the breakdown gang.
Falcon and Sir Handel, an inner rivalry.
A lot changes in 120 years, huh?
I spent way too long looking at reference photos of Sir Haydn from the 50’s and modern day. It really helped me appreciate all the minute details and changes such an old engine has gone through.
Nobody really knew what had happened to Thumper. Some say the workers were operating it recklessly, some say it wasn't paying attention to its own engine, some say it was just a dangerous design.
Either way, nobody dared to work with THAT thing again... so they left it. Some people think that Thumper is still lying at the old Boulder Quarry now, cold, broken and silent, waiting to be asked to work again. I wonder if they are right - don't you?
...Okay maybe not that simple but here's a few pointers.
Stop planning and Talking about your AU's and actually write! This one I feel like is the most important for tumblr users. I've had a lot of people Ask, DM or message me with their ideas which is good but you know what would be even better? If I could read about your world, if I could get immersed in it. I do not want to read an essay about your world, I want to partake in it. I want to feel it. Allow me to experience the world you're creating. You've been showing profiles and detailed world building essays for months now but you're not writing your story. WRITE YOUR STORY!
Don't worry if your writing is bad. When you first start writing, it's going to be bad. It's going to suck. It's like drawing. You're going to suck at first. That's okay. That's how you get better. You need to start somewhere. So start and don't stop.
Don't get precious about ideas or first drafts. They will change over time. First drafts, story pitches and production bibles are just that, they're a rough sketch, an idea to be improved. There's a reason that concept art and characters can change so drastically from pilots and pitches. They lay out an idea for you to work off of. As you write, things will change. People like betas/editors will challenge and thus strengthen ideas. Never be satisfied with a first draft when it could be better. Your writing can always get better. Don't be afraid to change.
Create solid realistic characters. Solid characters that feel and interact realistically will engage your audience, your readers regardless of their intentions or their personality. A character that a reader can empathize and relate to can do a lot of heavy lifting if you're not confident in your world building as a beginner.
DO NOT USE AI like CHAT GPT. Self explanatory this one. Just don't. It'll make your skill regress if you become reliant on it.
READ. Read books. Read GOOD Fanfiction. Read BAD fanfiction. Writing is one of the skills that you can get better at by simply engaging with other author's work. Take in what your reading even if you didn't like it. Ask yourself why you didn't like it and try to avoid it in your own work. Ask why something you read was good and see if you can emulate it in your own work.
Restrict yourself. Restrictions can be good for you. Set a story in a single room or a set piece, like a factory or a quarry (like classic Dr Who!). Force your characters to interact with characters that they normally wouldn't have, see what happens! They might kill each other, they might not! Write and find out.
Talk with other writers. Talk to people who will challenge your ideas, who will point out flaws in your work. They don't even have to be apart of the same fandom, a story should stand on it's own . One of the best groups I've been a part of was one where we tore each others work apart.
I could go on but basically if there's anything you take from this, it should be: Write. Write even if you're bad. Have fun with it and don't be precious about ideas.
“We’ll be leaving at first light,” the driver had said. “Be ready. No dilly-dallying with brake vans this time, we need to be off before the morning signalman comes on duty.”
First light, thought Oliver, leaving at first light. But first light had already come, the sun shedding her harsh, glaring rays across his boiler and tanks - paint faded and flaking, he had given up on appearances long ago. You didn’t have time to be conceited when you were on the run.
First light… first light… Nobody was coming. Oliver couldn’t bear to fear the worst - they had gone through too much and he was worried that the slightest thought of the gravity of their situation would bring his emotions crashing down. Isabel and Toad weren’t much company either - they were in a siding out of the way.
Easy for them, huffed Oliver with more than a hint of resentment, nobody bats an eyelid if they see a brake van or an auto coach about. I’m the one all the diesels are looking for. Even that very word sent shivers through his frames, and he felt himself glancing about the yard, checking for any unwanted visitors to his siding. No. Nobody was there. He should know that - it’s an abandoned junction, for Churchward’s sake. But… he couldn’t help feeling an awful sense of trepidation all the same.
Trying to calm himself, he stared at the wall of the shed; it was littered with graffiti, such messages as ‘RIP’ and ‘Save Our Steam’ scrawled onto the brick in vivid lettering. Save Our Steam - that was a North Western campaign… he hadn’t heard any news for weeks. He wondered idly if they had even managed to hold out since he last read that newspaper that had blown onto his siding - for all he knew, by the time he got to Tidmouth they might have been taken over too. There was only so long a railway could last against BR.
The dazzling light was steadily moving upwards as the sun heaved itself above the horizon and over the Welsh hills. Just as he was beginning to really worry, a soft voice echoed from the back of the shed.
“Morning boy. Best we get going, eh?”
Oliver put on a brave smile, battling with the fear that threatened to swallow him whole. “Yes, let’s.”
Duck sighed. It was a shame - all the engines were going to London, but it wouldn’t be the same without Paddington. Good old Paddington, Old Oak Common, and all the memories that came with it - he supposed since he left for Sodor it had all been rebranded as St Pancras.
Shouldn’t be surprised, he thought darkly to himself. That Modernisation Plan wouldn’t spare anything, even a terminus as grand as Paddington. They probably took all the Western spirit out of it.
He’d just have to settle for the name St Pancras… oh, but St Pancras didn’t have the same ring to it as Paddington - what a glorious name that was. Why, oh why, did they have to change it all? There really was no respect for Great Westerners these days, honestly-
‘HI! HI, LOOK, IT’S LONDON!’ A voice squeaked from the flatbed he was pushing.
‘Oh, don’t get excited Percy. London isn’t the same now… it isn’t Paddington anymore. It’s St Pancr- WHAT IN THE NAME OF-‘
But the rest of his speech was drowned out by the chorus of cheers from the platform as the North Western cavalcade drew into the platform. This station didn’t look like Paddington. It didn’t have the same track layout as Paddington. But most confusing of all, he had just passed a signal box with the name Euston Station on it. Wasn’t that the name that Patriot had said the station was called?
Duck couldn’t understand it, and was so taken aback by this new name that he kept pushing even once the others had braked at the end of the platform, and he had to be shouted at by three workmen, Percy, Toby and Henry before he stopped.
‘Of course it is, you silly engine,’ his driver laughed. ‘This IS Euston. Paddington’s just a few minutes down the road. Not to mention St Pancras across the road there - you can see it from here - and King’s Cross is just opposite us-‘
‘KING’S CROSS?? ST PANCRAS? THEY’RE DIFFERENT PLACES??’ This bellow came from Gordon, who had just drawn alongside for the photographers.
‘Of course they are!’
Gordon’s joyful statement to the world that King’s Cross was still alive went unheard by Duck, who sat in stunned silence.
For almost the whole duration of the exhibition, he spoke not a word unless directly spoken to.
Until the end.
‘I want to go to Paddington.’
Edward, stood next to him in the shed, was confused. ‘What?’
‘I want to go to Paddington. Take me to Paddington.’
So it was that the curious sight of a pannier tank strapped to a lorry journeys down the road from Euston into the yard at Old Oak Common.
The engines who had been loaned to run the line swore that the joyful screams of recognition could be heard all the way from Sodor.
So today I’m going to switch things up from the usual stuff I’ve been doing for Traintober, and instead of writing a short story of some kind, I’ll be sharing a headcanon (inspired by @weirdowithaquill, go check this person’s stuff out if you haven’t already).
Given the theme of trust, I thought I’d talk about driverless trains - go into a couple of deeper concepts and then round up. (Below the break)
So, how do driverless trains work in the sentient locomotive universe? There must be an enormous amount of trust involved with allowing them to basically run themselves - and it really shows how much we’ve progressed as a society that we’ve gone as far as letting this happen at all. Although, there are pitfalls, of course.
Back in the day when steam locomotives were first created, chaps such as Richard Trevithick and Robert Stephenson - household names now - wanted to experiment with how much these new iron horses could really do on their own… and it turned out that the answer was ‘not much’. They were a creation of humans, and were really dependent on them to do things - without going too deeply into a philosophical debate here, they essentially had no freedom. The driver and fireman fully controlled the engine, and engines were pretty poorly treated for this reason, just like horses were. They were there to do work.
Now, engines don’t usually mind this because they’re generally quite simple minded beings… I mean, if you look at the Railway Series, do any of the engines really get particularly complicated emotions? The most we saw was Gordon’s depression, but that’s because his own siblings were being cut up. The mindset of locomotives is pretty much just ‘enjoy the small stuff in life and be a good engine’. There were some engines who were exceptions, and sometimes it got quite scary for the humans when engines just spoke up with really deep thoughts.
“Driver?”
“Yes?”
“If engines are just here to do work for you, then what’s the point of everything that we enjoy? If it’s all for nothing?”
“… Woah.”
It wasn’t all work work work though - drivers who ‘knew how to speak to engines’ were well regarded in the early railway companies, and given the job purely because they were good at making an engine happy. A happy engine means that more work gets done, and you also get a good reputation - the Great Western Railway was a brilliant example of this, with CME Daniel Gooch letting engines choose their own names and giving them just their names without numbers. It was when larger companies like BR came along that locomotive happiness just got thrown out of the window, and this is reflected in the mass scrapping of the 1960s which gave no regard to feelings of engines (i.e. they were often sold to private companies to be cut up as this was cheaper - these companies often cut corners by not taking the body off the frames before melting the engine down… basically meaning they were still conscious. Even some of the BR works did this to make it easier to melt down masses of engines quicker.)
Anyway, this is a VERY LONG side tangent. How does this relate to driverless trains? Well, when locomotive rights improved massively in most countries in the late 70s, engines still didn’t really have any freedom from crews because they literally couldn’t. So instead the UK Government made sure to make it a requirement that UK railways made tough choices in regard to drivers - only ones who respected engines could stay, and those who were abusive or ignorant were fired.
But as technology improved in the middle of the 20th Century, driverless trains became a real prospect. Following experiments where computer systems were tried in cabs on new build electric locos, it became clear that trains could literally drive themselves from place to place without the need for a driver and wow that is an odd concept for most people! Even with better locomotive rights, it is DIFFICULT to put so much trust in this sentient machine to do the job well - which is why most railways still don’t have driverless trains to this day, as well as it being really expensive to implement. The 1950s saw the first experimentation with this concept in France, where one of the metro lines became semi-automated. The other lines of the metro system followed in the late 1960s, along with Barcelona Metro’s own driverless system - a few London Underground lines went the same way at a similar time.
Since then, a small handful of railways around the world have tried it… and amazingly, it works. The engine is able to control their own speed, but the computer system is there to automatically override if they get too close to another train, and stop the train in question immediately. This has caused some problems in the past on the Singapore metro, when multiple trains were mysteriously stopped at random intervals, disrupting an entire city. There were some wild theories behind why this could be the case, but it turned out that one of the engines’ computer systems was acting up… and the rebellious engine didn’t say anything.
The UK mostly has trains with drivers, although there have been a couple of recent innovations that have forayed into driverless territory. The London Underground was planned to be fully automated at several points, but it has yet to happen (although as previously mentioned, a couple of lines are now automated).
However - despite all of this innovation - there has yet to be a widespread driverless train movement on main line railways. It was only in late 2021 that a train, moving by her own control, ran on a line shared by other traffic. This was in Germany, although the UK is also trying out a couple of similar options, with the trialling of ETRMS in areas such as West Wales.
The engines themselves, of course, are greatly intrigued by the concept - the closest that a steam locomotive has got to this sort of level is Tornado, who was fitted with an in-cab signalling system which is going to be trialled after she is back in steam. The hope is that NWR engines will also be trialled with this same system if it goes well on Tornado… the engines have mixed views on the subject, with some simply preferring a hand at their controls and finding it comforting.
Despite this, it is still a fascinating concept. Ask any diesel or electric engine about the concept of driverless trains, and they’ll be giddy with excitement to tell you all they know about it!
Got to keep going - got to keep going - got to go faster - got to go faster -
The North Western Railway’s premier express engine wasn’t going to hear another word said about Mallard - ugh, he could barely tolerate hearing that name now. It got worse when that stupid silver wedge, Silver King, arrived on loan to the railway JUST AFTER THE RECORD WAS SET.
Normally, he would be proud - when Scot topped one hundred, he was the first to have a letter posted to King’s Cross in congratulations. It was the same for Papyrus when she broke the record. But this was different.
Right from the day Mallard had got to 126, it had been rubbed in his face harder than an aggressive cleaner’s rag in the morning - the news was everywhere. He didn’t mind at first. The gaudy headlines ‘BRITISH ENGINE SNATCHES BACK STEAM RECORD’ and ‘GRESLEY’S PRIDE WINS THE DAY’ didn’t get to him too much - he was a Gresley engine, and next of kin to Mallard just as much as her siblings - but when talk went round amongst the engines of replacing him with one of the A4s… that was too far.
‘Gordon’s just a temperamental engine. Always complaining, isn’t he?’
‘Tender Engines Don’t Shunt this, Little Edward that…’
‘Haven’t heard anything positive from him that isn’t a boast…’
And when that stupid wedge-shaped creature Silver King came on trial… oh, it got WORSE.
‘This is Silver King, but you can call him Spencer - his class is the fastest in the world!’
He wouldn’t take any of it - and he wasn’t taking it now.
The two express engines roared side by side, mile after mile, stations and bridges flashing past in blurs of colour as Gresley’s iron horses thrashed themselves to their limits. The silver beast drew ahead first with its coaches, but Gordon with the vans rushed forward again and regained level ground. There was no stopping them now even if the crew wanted them to - the poor firemen were shovelling for all they were worth while both drivers hurled curses and insults over the cabs - all while the two engines glared solemnly at each other, neither breaking their gaze as they raced onwards.
Steel wheels pounded steel rails as the ballast shook and sleepers creaked beneath their weight - a hare on the line side leapt away in fright as the pair thundered past, and were gone. Neither driver, fireman or engine noticed the speed limit sign that marked the curve at the end of the long stretch - Silver King was new and inexperienced, but Gordon should have known better than to keep going here… although that didn’t matter. His vision was blurring as he pushed himself harder, faster -
Keep going - go faster - keep going - faster - faster - faster - can’t let him win-
He never noticed his wheels leave the rails. For a few sickening seconds, he felt himself tipping over onto his side, the ballast rushing towards him, his valve gear being torn to shreds by the impact-
Gordon twitched, and pretended to still be asleep. It was the crack of dawn, two hours before he needed to leave for the Express. He could just stay here and-
“Just great.”
There was no point trying to sleep when someone wanted attention. The express engine let out an enormous yawn – a yawn just loud enough for everyone else in the shed to hear that he had been unwillingly disturbed from his sleep – and glanced over at the source of the noise.
It was, predictably, James – poking half out of the shed. And he had a leaf on his nose.
The express engine groaned. “What is it, James?”
The bright red Mogul, clearly delighted inside that someone had noticed him, started his rant. “Leaves, Gordon. Leaves.”
Gordon’s patience was waning. “And?” he grunted irritably.
“It’s that time of year again – leaves EVERYWHERE, just waiting for me to slip up on. On the lineside. On the rails. On the sleepers. On me-“
A sudden cough of suppressed mirth erupted from the big blue engine, and James shot him a dirty look. “What?”
Gordon thought it best not to mention all of James’s trouble with leaves – it was no wonder he was so paranoid of them. He had what seemed to be a yearly tradition of getting stuck on the hill at least twice each autumn with leaves on the line, and that wasn’t even mentioning the time when he got leaves all over his wet paint and they refused to come off! James really didn’t have any luck when it came to autumn.
“Well?” James snapped, jolting Gordon out of his thoughts.
“Oh, nothing. Perhaps,” he continued innocently, “if you hated leaves so much, you could take old Rustbucket out to clear them up… you know how cheerful he always is on days like this…”
“Oh! That’s quite alright, Gordon, I wouldn’t worry!” A nervous laugh came next. “I’ll be just fine, at least for today. Leaves are no problem to an engine like me…”
And he bustled off like his boiler was covered with half a hive of bees- no, that analogy was dangerously close to making Gordon laugh in James’s face. Now that he thought about it, all of James’s incidents with leaves may have had something to do with his reluctance to work with the leaf-blowing machine… oh well. It wasn’t his problem if James got stuck on the hill today. At least it would be continuing the tradition.
The sun had begun to stretch its first rays of dazzling light over the horizon and into the shed, and the other engines were beginning to stir from their slumber, their boilers being warmed by the glowing fires started by the cleaner earlier. Gordon, meanwhile, drifted back to sleep – an express engine didn’t deserve to be woken up at dawn.
Ok, so I'm going to probably not HOPEFULLY do Traintober this year, or at least some of the prompts. This is my master post for the whole thing, and I'll be adding links as and when I do them. I'll be using @tornadoyoungiron's prompt list, which is as follows...
discoholicmusic
pixelskylines
andulkaphoto
gummygunk
blakekathryn
2087
