@lightning-studios I rummaged through the concept sketches I did for the Barbara fic. One of them is decent. Still very young Barbara had to be hustled onto a train from Home to Town for a certain semi-emergency. At the end of the line, she has a chance to catch her bearings.
No one will ever guess ahead of time which engine is here featured. No one.
1919? 1920? (I can't really recall the timeline)
"Miss," said a voice. Both reproachful and saddened. "Do stop crying."
"I'm not crying," she sobbed. Their combined voices were too much for her, and her weeping intensified; she burrowed her hands deeply in her hair and yanked hard at the roots, scrambling for control. "Go away."
"I can't."
"I'll scream," she warned. Already she felt her blood pumping through every little vein in her body, panic rising in her throat.
"I have no driver."
The panic slowed. The girl peeked from behind her hands, suspiciously studying the engine's empty cab.
For several moments she was lost, mesmerized by the complicated knobs and levers and gauges, how everything was connected in complex ways to the rest.
Then she realized what she wasn't seeing. The engine had spoken the truth. He wouldn't be able to go anywhere—she'd have to go, herself.
But she felt quite calm now, especially when she kept her eyes roving up and down the strange, knobbly controls.
"I hate you," she announced, and her voice cracked despite herself. "I wasn't ready. But you made Nanny drag me onto your horrid train!"
"I'm sorry," said the engine. He really did sound sorry, eying her now with a new sympathy. "But we had to leave by 9.38."
"Why?"
"Because the train had to come in here by ten after."
"Why?"
He looked at her in faint bemusement. "Because that's what it says on the time-tables."
"I don't care about those stupid time-tables."
"But I do. I'm an engine. I have to follow them."
This struck her as fairly reasonable.
Now in curiosity rather than accusation, she said: "What happens if you don't?"
"Why, if one train is late, it affects all the others. Passengers miss their connections; the station-pilots can't rearrange the trains in time; engines must run harder to make up time, and that means more work for the fitters down the line... everyone on a railway is connected, you know."
The girl considered.
"I didn't realize engines talked so much," she concluded at last, with her usual air of disapproval.
Unlike most people, the engine didn't take offense. He only smiled. "Perhaps I talk too much. Back home they sometimes told me so. Anyhow, I'm glad you're no longer frightened."
At first she was only very still. But, gradually, you could see her start to crumple, from the inside out.
"I don't want to ride a train ever again."
He looked at her kindly. "But you must return home, miss."
"No."
"Don't you want to go home?"
More than anything! If only they'd never left!
She thought it over. "I'll walk," she said. She liked walking. So long as no one made her hold hands. So long as no one rushed her. But she was very strong; everyone said so. She could walk for miles and miles without tiring, for all she was so little.
She tried to explain this to the engine, but he disagreed. It was far too many miles for that. "And the roads are impassible at Maron. Unless you can ride a horse, I suppose."
The girl shuddered. She was more frightened of horses than anything.
At least trains followed time-tables. They didn't move till after the guard whistled—they didn't pull any sudden moves on you. Sensible creatures really.
"I suppose I might be able to go back," she said, voice barely above a whisper. "If it's on your train."
"Melbourne is going to take the return."
"No! I can't bear a strange engine, I can't bear it. I want you."
"I can't, I'm on the afternoon express..." He trailed off, gaze fixing on her.
"Don't stare," scolded the girl. She hated to be stared at, and she'd been told off doing it herself many times before.
She didn't know that her hair was dishevelled, her eyes red, and her face tear-streaked.
"We'll see," he said softly. "I'll ask Driver what can be done."
