Do Duck and Oliver have any opinions about the ‘new’ Great Western Railway (or, more accurately, FirstGroup using the GWR for brand recognition)?
23 September, 2015
Ah will nae kill them. Ah will nae. It wuld be wrong ta do so. Douglas thought to himself as the sun streamed through the shed windows.
"Hello Douggie!" Donald said as he backed into the shed. He’d been away at the works for a few days, and was glad to be home. "Ye look terrible! Whatever is tha matter?"
"Ah'm debatin' whether rescuin' Oliver all those years ago was a good thing." Douglas said through gritted teeth.
"What? What's gotten into ye knoo?"
"You'll see."
And a few minutes later, he did.
"It's come home! Our Wonderful Railway has been returned to us at long last!" Called a voice from further up the line. Oliver's whistle, sounding happier than it had in ages, followed.
What happened next was very strange. Oliver, Dulcie, and Isabel rattled in with the morning commuter train. They were all singing about "God's Wonderful Railway" - a term of endearment that both Oliver and Duck used for their old line. As soon as they launched into the next verse, a chorus of voices joined in from the yard. Led by Toad, all the former GWR trucks and coaches joined in their singing. When Oliver left a few minutes later, the singing continued.
And continued.
And continued.
At some point, Duck arrived with a line of hoppers. They too were signing.
Everyone was happy and upbeat, and it was wonderfully positive.
"What's happening." Donald asked, slightly afraid.
"They brought back the Great Western. One o' tha franchise operators thought it wuld be a good idea." Douglas explained.
"When did they do that?"
"Two days ago."
"An' they have nae stopped?"
"No."
"Oh no."
-
Three weeks later
"I'd like to teach the world to sing, about GWR..." Duck and Oliver warbled from the coaling stage. Neither of them had particularly good singing voices but they didn't care. The GWR was back!
Across the yard, Donald looked ill.
"It's in ma head, Douggie! Ah'm hearin' it in ma sleep!"
Douglas' eye twitched dangerously. "If ah push them into the ocean, d'ya think they'll stop singing?" He asked no one in particular.
"There’s only one way to find out..." Rex said ominously from the Small Railway platform.
Yo, what about Gordon when the NWR makes its return?
(They clarified in another ask that they meant the LNER)
June 2018
"You look pleased." Henry said as the workmen rubbed and polished Gordon's paint. "Have you got a 'hot date' tonight?"
"Of sorts," Gordon said, totally missing how Henry's eyes almost popped out of his smokebox. "I'm sure you heard they brought back the LNER as the name for the East Coast franchise?"
"I'd heard something about it." Henry said quickly, not sure where Gordon was going with this.
"Well, they want to do a photoshoot with some of the new engines for the service next to those of us who were there for the original."
"But you weren't there for-"
"That is a fact that remains kept between you and me." Gordon cut him off. "Everyone else thinks I came over after the Grouping. Besides, the Fat Controller has already made the arrangements."
He looked back at the men who were slowly applying L.N.E.R stencils to his tender. "I think it makes me look rather dashing, actually. Perhaps I'll keep them after this is finished."
Henry looked much more bemused. "Should I be waiting for a black-and-white newsreel to begin? Has Pathé News arrived to document the occasion?"
"Oh be off with you!" Gordon sighed. He would have wheeshed steam at Henry, but it would have ruined his new paint.
-
Henry laughed all the way to the station platform, where he found Donald waiting with a goods train for the Little Western.
"Och, what's so funny to ye?" He asked. "Has Gordon finally gone soft?"
"Oh it's nothing really," Henry chortled. "He's just excited that they're bringing the LNER back!"
"They're doin' what?"
"The LNER. The government is bringing the name back for the East Coast Main Line franchise."
"Oh no." Donald's eyes widened dramatically, and he steamed away, whistling loudly to his brother as he did so.
"DOUGGIE! THEY'VE DONE IT AGAIN! NOW IT'S THE NORTH EASTERN! WE'LL NEVER BE FREE O' IT!"
What in the HECK happened with Scotsman, Dominion, and Dwight during the Great Gathering?!
(Also, since Dutchess of Hamilton has also been to the US during the 1939 NY World’s Fair, did she get involved?)
Warning - extremely long post below
So, first of all, Duchess of Hamilton never went back to the UK.
Duchess of Hamilton (6229) and Coronation (6220) had their nameplates swapped by the LMS when an engine was sent over to the US. 6229, in the guise of 6220, went to the US.
Streamlined locomotives were all the rage at the time, and railroads practically fell over themselves to get Coronation (as she was now known) onto press trains. The B&O railroad in particular was so impressed with her capabilities that they extended a formal offer of employment to her for service on their streamlined Royal Blue service. The LMS were surprised to get an offer to "purchase" their locomotive, but accepted nonetheless, as it meant a welcome infusion of cash in the dark days during the beginning of WWII.
Coronation fit right in with the Americans, having only been about a year old when she was sent to New York. Following the end of steam traction on the Royal Blue in the late 40s, (the B&O were early adopters of diesels.) she and her B&O coworkers found good employment on the New York Central, where she still runs to this day.
Since then, she's fully "gone native", marrying a J3 Hudson, (yes one of the streamlined ones) adopting both an American accent and three children, and being fully repainted to NYC silver by 1956. Flying Scotsman met her in Albany in 1970, and neither one of them recognized the other.
Actually, most UK expats don't recognize her, to the point where a common interaction is for her to be held up as an example of "look at her, she's integrated well into the US", only for the British engines to say "that's preposterous, she isn't English".
When it's pointed out that she's still obviously an LMS Coronation, the next response is usually screaming.
All that being said, she has no interest to come back to the United Kingdom, and wasn’t asked by the NRM anyways.
---------------
Second of all, the Great Gathering was... an event.
So, there are (officially) 6 preserved Gresley A4s.
Mallard - static, National Railway Museum (UK). Also an asshole.
Bittern - running, private owner, UK based
Sir Nigel Gresley - running, owned by a trust, UK based
Union of South Africa - running, private owner, UK based
Dwight D. Eisenhower - static (officially), National Railway Museum (USA)
Dominion of Canada - static (officially), Exporail (Montréal)
This is the official list, and for the first 4 engines, it's the truth.
However, things are a bit hazier on the other side of the Atlantic...
-----
So the thing that needs to be made clear right up front that in a sentient vehicle world, museums aren't like the NRM, where locomotives sit static for years on end, although obviously the English have museums like that because of course they do.
Rail museums in the rest of the world are much more like Colonial Williamsburg - a living history center staffed by volunteers who act out a prototypical setting from [insert decade here].
British Rail, being British Rail, didn’t know that and didn’t care.
-
4496, Dwight D. Eisenhower, having been named after the General-turned-President, had been earmarked for preservation by BR, and was summarily shipped off to the US National Railway Museum in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
In an entirely unintentional move, this donation MONUMENTALLY snubbed the Smithsonian, who refused to have any dealings with BR for decades, even for archival purposes. This, combined with the fallout from Operation Smash Hit, and the fact that the Smithsonian is Petty AF, meant that there was virtually no official trans-Atlantic cooperation between British and US museums for decades.
Dwight hit the shores of the US in 1964 New York City and was greeted by a marching band, a ticker-tape parade, and Presidents Johnson and Eisenhower, who were on-hand to personally make the engine a US citizen.
Always keen to curry favor with the government, the Southern Pacific railroad had a job offer waiting for Dwight right alongside the Presidents and the parade, and when he accepted, he went off to Sunny Southern California - someplace so opposed to Britain the he fell in love with the place immediately and refused to leave!
The ladies may have also had something to do with it as well - while most engine classes fell into a typical 50-50 gender distribution, the SP GS-4 class was all female...
[Pictured above - one of 28 very good reasons to live in California if you're a single British steam engine.]
Dwight does not kiss and tell, but at his wedding in 1974, all 28 GS-4s showed up - and he was only marrying one of them!
Since the 70's, he's become a mainstay in California, having been repainted into Daylight Limited colors in 1969, and retiring from railroad duties in 1999. After that, he went into the movie business, and is currently the head of digital media development at Disney.
His wife Irene (SP 4437) is also an interesting figure as well - following in the wheelmarks of the great female locomotives before her, she had an eye for business and a Stanford education before she married her husband, and was an initial investor in multiple tech companies in Silicon Valley during the 70's and 80's, but stopped doing that after her investment in Apple proved very lucrative. In 1996, she was convinced by a few people in the Stanford Alumni association to invest in another tech startup, this one an "internet search engine" called Google.
So yeah, Dwight Eisenhower kept falling up and up and up all his life, and is now married to the richest woman in the world.
--
4489 Dominion of Canada was donated mostly by accident, having been forgotten in the back of Darlington sheds until 1966, when she was shipped off to the Canadian Railway Historical Society in Montreal.
As stated elsewhere, the Canadian Government considered any locomotive built in the UK to have UK citizenship, and therefore treated them as commonwealth citizens under existing Canadian law. (remember that Canada was still a colony at that time)
CN, the national rail carrier, was obligated to offer her a job under their charter, and she accepted, moving to Toronto to run intercity trains between Toronto, Montreal, and Ottawa.
Within two years she was displaced from those duties by the introduction of a new, shiny, jet turbine powered train, and was summarily demoted to local commuter runs in the Toronto suburbs.
Moving to suburbia did one thing more than anything else - expose her to the people who live there. They all had complaints, they all had problems, and they all had no idea on how to fix them.
Being a helpful sort, Dominion decided that she could help, and promptly ran for Toronto city council in 1974. She won, and has been a fixture in local Toronto politics ever since - she even got to be Chairwoman of Metro Toronto (the closest thing to being mayor because Toronto's governmental structure is weird) until 1998, when Toronto was merged with the surrounding area to create a massive new region.
Having then done everything there is to do in municipal Toronto government, Dominion went on to become the Chief Executive Officer of Metrolinx, the agency that controls almost all of the transit agencies in Ontario, because, as she puts it, "I'm still a commuter engine at heart".
She's now painted in the current GO Transit paint scheme, and still does commuter runs- which is really weird looking now that there are double deck commuter coaches in a push-pull configuration, with a Gresley A4 doing the pushing.
------
Now, I mentioned that those 6 were the only ones officially preserved - there were two unofficial preservations as well...
-
4486 Merlin was properly Shanghied - he was yanked off the docks in Southhampton by a cargo ship in August of 1965, and was spirited away to parts unknown.
Those unknown parts turned out to be South Korea. There, he was given citizenship by the US-aligned military dictatorship (Korean history is wild) and was employed by the State-run rail operator.
As the military government began a hardcore plan to increase their country's wealth and industrial output, rail lines were being built across the country, and Merlin was soon awarded a position on the fastest train in the network, the Seoul-Busan Saemaeul-ho.
Because of his experience in running high-speed express trains, Merlin not only became the public face of Korean high-speed rail, but also became an "honored elder" amongst the other Korean engines, a position he still holds to this day - as despite being over 70 years old, he still runs daily trains on the fast services, easily keeping time with the Korean schedules as well as training the new high speed trains, including the KTX sets. He's on his 24th boiler by now, and has more parts from Hyundai than Doncaster.
An additional fact - Merlin actually has had a linguistic effect on Korean railroading, as his strange amalgamation of an accent - a strong Yorkshire accent that tried to be Received Pronunciation for 30 years, mixed with almost 50 years of middle-to-upper-class Korean - has filtered down through the ranks of KoRail, because all of his students want to sound like him out of respect. Human British expats in Korea will occasionally hear a locomotive speaking in English, and the engine will sound like a Yorkshireman every time and the Brits cannot handle it.
---------
4495 Golden Fleece is the only A4 to preserve himself - he saw the writing on the wall in the early 60s, and hopped a car ferry to France at the end of 1962. From there, he bounced around Europe for a bit before making it to the United States in the late 70's.
Of the 8 surviving A4s, he's probably led the quietest life of all - he moved to Miami before it got nice, and basically got in on the ground floor of CSX when that merger happened in 1980. He's now the head of terminal operations for the Port of Miami, but he's generally kept a low profile - not even having a chance to meet Scotsman due to his time in Europe.
He's still in contact with Dwight and Dominion, and has no real bitterness over not being "famous" like they are - he likes the quiet, and still lives in a modest house in Boynton Beach with his long-term girlfriend.
----------------------
Soooo... the Great Gathering.
It was supposed to be a meeting of the 6 surviving A4s - a two year event held at the NRM in honor of the 75th anniversary of Mallard's record-setting run.
"Record setting" is a past-tense term here. While there have been no official runs, every single one of the Pennsylvania Railroad's T1 and S1 locomotives claim to have gone faster than 126 without meaning to, and numerous other locomotives on unofficial attempts done late at night on flat stretches of land across the country have hit 130+.
British Expats have also done better than 126 - Coronation claims to have hit at least 140 on a midnight mail train in 1980, and in Korea, Merlin claims to have hit 128 on a test train, although that was judged by timing mile markers as his speedometer wasn't functioning properly.
Problems arose before any of the engines had even reached the NRM, as Mallard's already sizeable ego had swelled to massive proportions, and several engines in the great hall were planning a justifiable homicide.
Then came the time restraints - none of the foreign locomotives were willing to uproot their lives and jobs for two years just to sit motionless in a shed. A two year exhibition was eventually negotiated down to a 6 month gala, much to the irritation and confusion of the NRM, who could not understand that the engines were still in service.
Then came the extra engines - Dwight and Dominion thought that the NRM knew about Fleece, and were quite insulted on his behalf when he wasn't invited - they threatened to not attend unless arrangements were made for Fleece to attend as well.
An utterly baffled NRM agreed, but also tore their record archives apart, as they knew that Fleece had been scrapped. The fact that his picture was plastered all over CSX's Florida Division website was all the more confusing as a result.
-
Meanwhile in Busan, nobody knew that Merlin had escaped the scrappers' torch and therefore did not invite him. He was only informed after K-Pop star Psy texted him from London to ask if he knew about the event, which was being advertised on television.
Merlin, having missed his friends from the LNER, decided that he would just crash the party, used some of his many vacation days, and took off for England on a cargo ship.
-
By sheer coincidence, all four foreign A4s hit the dock in Southhampton on the same day, and were delighted to see each other - especially Merlin, considering that everyone else had thought he'd died.
Meanwhile at the NRM, delight was not the word one would use. Befuddled, confused, shocked even, but not delighted. Their plans had revolved around 6 A4s, most of which wouldn’t be running - only to now discover that there were 7, all but one of which were functioning! (Mallard, the star of the show, was the odd one out, and it drove him crazy)
Then they got a phone call from their man at the docks saying that another one had showed up, looking like he’d driven out of a K-pop album cover, and they just gave up and started screaming.
-
Screaming is also what happened when the cavalcade of foreigners showed up in York - first of all, the quartet of new engines sounded nothing like they had when they left England.
Dwight had willfully unlearned his Upper Crust British accent by 1971, and had fallen deep into a California accent (quite similar to what Scotsman sounds like - coincidence? No.)
Dominion and Fleece hadn’t tried to unlearn their accents, but 40+ years of living in North America can really dilute the Britishness. It doesn’t help that Dominion has developed most Canadian vocal tics eh?
As stated above, Merlin has a weird fuckin accent, and now he speaks English with a strong Yorkshire accent, but will occasionally and without warning drop into a Korean/Yorkshire hybrid accent.
The screaming also happened because the NRM had wanted to repaint the duo trio! quartet?! into LNER garter blue, and were promptly informed that “we’re painted like this for work! Don’t touch it!” (the sole exception was Dwight, who hadn’t pulled a real train in 14 years, but he liked his Daylight Limited paint), so instead of the new arrivals showing up in LNER colours, they showed up looking like THIS:
Having their long-lost siblings show up looking and sounding like THAT had quite an affect on the A4s and the other NRM engines:
Bittern could not believe her eyes - to the point where she actually began making noise about seeing an optometrist
Union of South Africa almost backed through a wall
Sir Nigel Gresley was speechless for two days
Mallard was so angry that he actually chipped a tooth during one of his rants about “the impropriety of it all!!”
Evening Star laughed so hard that he managed to derail himself without moving
City of Truro almost cracked a piston from shock
Alycidon spent the entire gala coming up with more and more laser focused jabs at Mallard - who was so easy to fluster that the Deltic needn’t have bothered
Oliver Cromwell and Green Arrow made fast friends with the new arrivals, and spent the entire time learning ‘Americanisms’ to annoy the other engines with.
But what about Flying Scotsman? Where was he in all of this? He was generally considered to be the “leader” of the NRM fleet (much to Mallard’s annoyance), and was usually who the other engines turned to when things started getting out of control.
Did Scotsman calm things down? Like hell he did. The inmates were running the asylum from the moment that Scotsman saw the other A4s - more importantly saw Dwight - and immediately greeted them in flawless Californian.
This actually set off the building’s security alarm, as Flying Scotsman saying “DUDES! Wassup?!” caused such an uproar that the noise broke several exterior windows.
----
And all of this was in the first few days - there were six months left to go.
--
There was one railtour attempt. It was supposed to feature Bittern and Sir Nigel running in tandem, but instead featured Dwight and Merlin, mainly because Bittern wanted to see what would happen.
They exceeded the max speed limit for steam traction within 15 minutes, sparked a thorough investigation by the RAIB, and got all future steam powered railtours for the Gathering cancelled immediately.
On the plus side, the two engines did prove that it was still possible for a steam train to hit 100 safely.
--
One thing that baffled the other engines was the inordinately large number of people who turned up just to see Dominion, and the one person who kept turning up to see Fleece - it took a lot of explaining for them to understand that Dominion had been married three times, and had children (adopted) and grandchildren from all three marriages coming to see her. A similar amount of explaining was required to explain that Fleece’s girlfriend/partner wanted to see him too.
The normally chatty Dwight and Scotsman would suddenly clam up whenever Dominion and Fleece teasingly tried to ask about their love lives, something which wasn’t unnoticed by the other engines, but got similarly nowhere.
The answer to why they both shut the hell up was explained when a lot of shouting broke out in the yard of the NRM one day about a month into the exhibition:
Irene Eisenhower, not content to sit in California and count her billions, quickly grew bored without her husband, and decided to go to England and be with him. The fact that she definitely did not fit the UK loading gauge was never even a consideration, and so she just showed up in York on the back of a lorry, having informed no-one of her arrival, and content to just pay off the requisite people if a fuss occurred.
A fuss did occur, and it was only ended when Scotsman managed to convince the museum’s curator (who at this point in his life was regretting ever thinking of this damned gathering) that Irene was a ‘temporary donation’ to the museum.
[Scotsman, who definitely hid his Cali accent from museum staff the entire time, has one of the best poker faces in the world]
Dwight was overjoyed, and so was Scotsman, for initially unclear reasons. Then Irene managed to grab both her husband and Scotsman, dragged them behind a shed, and [THIS IS A PG13 HEADCANON] the both of [PG13]. Turns out that while Scotsman may have slept his way across the US a few times, he was actually ready to settle down with Dwight and Irene - they were a throuple way back in the 70s, and those passions haven’t faded. When Scotsman reluctantly left the US in 74, a lot of the reluctance was because of those two.
This bombshell of a revelation went over interestingly at the NRM. Some engines (Green Arrow) were happy for them, some were incensed (Mallard - although it was for anti-American reasons, not homophobic ones), and some were intensely curious about what was going on in the outside world (Bittern).
-
The ‘foreigners’ (as Mallard had taken to calling them), were deeply displeased at how their fellow engines were being treated - while a lot of them were ‘in steam’, some were not and might never be again, something they found abhorrent. Unable to do anything at that time, as the NRM was not a for-profit entity and therefore did not have anyone to bribe, (Irene’s solution to things is to throw money at the situation) the engines started talking about how life was different in the outside world - namely that engines were still working hard, even when they were over a century old and running on steam power.
This was of great interest to engines like Evening Star and (6220) Duchess of Hamilton, neither of whom were likely to be steamed again, and Bittern, who was growing more and more curious with each passing day. Dissent began to slowly build against the NRM curators, and the culture of the United Kingdom in general.
-
One thing the foreigners did try do something about was Ellerman Lines. The poor bastard had been sectioned to show his inner workings, much to the jaw-dropped horror of the foreign A4s, who made such a stink about it that he was moved outside the museum by NRM staff, who must have thought that the engines lacked object permanence or something, because that didn’t make it better!
-
Irene Eisenhower, who was beginning to get really sick of the nonsense that the NRM called preservation, (Scotsman was not in running condition, and had been hastily reassembled mid-overhaul in order to be cosmetically ready for the event, and let’s not forget poor Ellerman Lines) elected to bring the event to a close on her own after only three months. She did this by eventually putting her immense wealth to good use, and called for a haulage service to rescue the engines from the NRM without the knowledge of the museum staff. Aside from the A4s, she also took Ellerman Lines, Scotsman, and Bittern (who had asked to go) with her, and only bothered to inform Ellerman and Bittern - she was not about risk Scotsman having another “think of England” moment and staying.
The haulage firm was efficient and the cargo ship was waiting, so the engines were in international waters before the NRM opened the next morning.
Much swearing occurred in England that day, and the NRM’s image has yet to fully recover from the PR story that they had sold Flying Scotsman (and Ellerman Lines) to a reclusive American billionaire.
Privately though, the NRM does not care, as that story is a lot better than “Someone stole our engines and we’re not allowed to get them back because as it turns out we’re slaveowners, so no international court will help us.”
Also, despite their multimillion dollar “donation" from the I. Eisenhower Opportunity Fund, they still haven’t been able to fully pacify their engines, all of whom have somehow gotten the idea that they should be running in main line service like they live on Sodor or something...
--------
Dwight, Scotsman, and Irene all live happily together in the sprawling Eisenhower estate in Malibu. Irene is currently lobbying the California state government to legalize polygamy, with moderate success.
-
Ellerman Lines, after a lot of therapy and a full rebuild, is now working on a short line in Wyoming. He likes the scenery.
-
Bittern followed Dwight, Irene, and Scotsman to Los Angeles, and used her ‘connections’ (Dwight) to get a supporting role in Avengers: Age of Ultron. Since then, she’s gotten several roles based on her own merits, including an Emmy nomination for Best Guest Appearance in a Comedy.
-
Merlin spent a few months in LA before he went back to Korea. He is very thankful that he was able to reconnect with his brothers and sisters, and that his homeland has good internet, as he video calls his family across the Pacific almost every day.
-
Golden Fleece still lives a quiet life in Florida, but finally decided to tie the knot, and married his girlfriend in 2017. The ceremony was supposed to be quiet, but Irene Eisenhower has no idea what that word means.
-
Dominion of Canada continues to baffle non-local trainspotters when she runs commuter trains into Toronto. She is now a great-grandmother.
-
7 years later, and the term “Great Gathering” is still a forbidden phrase in the back rooms of the NRM.
I'm not over Bill and Ben adopting a horse. Whatever happened to it?
To be honest, Edward isn't over it either.
As to how it happened and what happened to it - the short version is that there was a sketchy racehorse-breeding operation in Suddery that finally got busted for cooking the books. The horses were gonna be seized and sold as collateral, and the owner just opened the gates and let them go free. (This was about 1988ish) One of them, a nice piebald thoroughbred, got into the Clay Pits and refused to leave Bill and Ben alone.
Bill and Ben basically have a collective +12 to persuasion, so they managed to convince the management at the clay pits to keep the horse. Some wry sonofagun heard about Duck having adopted a clutch of ducklings in Haltraugh, and jokingly filled in Bill and Ben's names on the 'ownership' line of the animal control forms.
As happens many times on Sodor, the local judiciary (not The Magistrate, just a very unobservant clerk) didn’t get the joke, and processed the form as it was. Bill and Ben now own a Racehorse.
His name was Thunderbolt, and Bill and Ben would 'train' him by keeping pace while he ran alongside them on the spur line to the clay pits.
Because they're Bill and Ben, they naturally are friends with a local lawyer in Suddery, and he helps them set up a legitimate horse-racing enterprise when it becomes apparent that Thunderbolt had been bred for racing.
[As a note, Bill and Ben would have been doing this anyways, but the absurdity of their situation was not lost on them, and they took every opportunity to fuck with BoCo and Edward. BoCo flat out never believed them, and Edward took some amount of psychic damage when presented with the evidence.]
Nobody was more surprised than the China Clay twins when Thunderbolt won his first race at Cheltenham, and would go on to have a remarkable career of 15 Derby wins, and a gold medal in Dressage at the 2004 Olympics.
[It should also be noted that all the purses from those wins, and the numerous other lower placed finishes, and the stud fees all went back to Bill and Ben. Their lawyer friend suggested that they invest the money, and they did. They now have a sizeable nest egg and no idea what to do with it.]
After retirement in 2007, Thunderbolt lived at the clay pits with Bill and Ben until 2016, when he died of old age. It was a genuinely sad time for both twins, but they had been preparing for some time. There's now a statue of Thunderbolt in the center of Suddery's high street.
They haven't told Edward or BoCo yet, but Thunderbolt had sired colts, and several of them now live in the stables in the clay pits.
I'm gonna need a bit more info on what you want, but here's something off the top of my head.
Flying Scotsman, noted man-slut, went on his US tour thinking that he'd be the top dog amongst engines, considering that he was a relatively big engine in the UK, both in size and fame.
So this is what happens when @rise-comics and I are left mostly alone in a discord server.
Most of this is canon.
I like to think that the one speaking english is the metroliner cab car
[12:15 AM]and all the acelas speak french just to annoy the rest of the NEC
📷Rise Comics(she/her) — Today at 12:18 AM
Buzz(in a Roz voice): I have not a goddamned clue what y’all are saying
📷@Jz1
and all the acelas speak french just to annoy the rest of the NEC
📷Rise Comics(she/her) — Today at 12:19 AM
Then they meet the one Charger who sounds like Arnold Schwarzenegger
📷@Jz1
Every charger has a different accent, which really does not mesh well with the rest of Amtrak, most of whom were built in Pennsylvania or Indiana and therefore have the blandest accent possible
📷Rise Comics(she/her) — Today at 12:21 AM
It’s called variety
[12:22 AM]- The one Long Range Charger, currently drunk off their ass(edited)
📷Jz1 — Today at 12:23 AM
It's called One train with four accents. They send a Genesis to pick up the new Chargers and he spends the entire ride home regretting ever making fun of the Acelas because at least they don't speak with an accent jesus christ this isn't in english
[12:23 AM]He gets to beech grove and is visibly twitching
📷Rise Comics(she/her) — Today at 12:24 AM
When they’re at Chicago, the Genesis has started contemplating murder
[12:25 AM]Until one of the chargers offers up their stash of acid as a bribe
📷Jz1 — Today at 12:25 AM
"No one would blame me" [Queens accent from the back] What? "Nothing!" [California Accent from the back] Sounded like something man.
📷@Rise Comics(she/her)
Until one of the chargers offers up their stash of acid as a bribe
📷Jz1 — Today at 12:26 AM
There's not enough acid to make this bearable
📷Rise Comics(she/her) — Today at 12:26 AM
At some point, there probably has to be trolling involved, from the POV of the genesis
📷Jz1 — Today at 12:27 AM
By the time they pass through Iowa the Genesis is spreading baseless lies about how Amfleet cars work
Jz1 — Today at 12:27 AM
The Chargers take him at his word and start setting up shrines
Rise Comics(she/her) — Today at 12:31 AM
Oh god, Amfleet shrines
📷@Rise Comics(she/her)
Oh god, Amfleet shrines
📷Jz1 — Today at 12:32 AM
[Chargers] - We must leave offerings to THE SILVER FLEET
[12:32 AM][SEPTA Silverliner parked nearby] - The what now?
[12:33 AM]That acutally would be even funnier - they have no idea what an Amfleet looks like so they Cargo Cult the Silverliners
📷Rise Comics(she/her) — Today at 12:33 AM
[The NJT F40s watching this happen] - dying of laughter, hard enough to derail without moving(edited)
Meanwhile the ACS-64 fleet is growing more and more CONCERN with each passing day
[12:34 AM]it is unclear whether they feel that the Chargers are nuts, or if they've missed a memo
Jz1 — Today at 12:35 AM
They try to worship one of the Metroliners. It ends badly
Rise Comics(she/her) — Today at 12:35 AM
The Genesis that instigated it is either laughing, terrified, or both
Jz1 — Today at 12:36 AM
That Motherfucker hopped on the first Empire Builder west and made this mess someone else's problem
📷Rise Comics(she/her) — Today at 12:36 AM
Lol
NEW
[12:38 AM]Then an F59 just gets fed up enough to pull strings and get that guy back into Philly to beat his ass in the most Philly way possible.
Jz1 — Today at 12:40 AM
Poor sap arrives in Philly and the Entirety of Philly yard is like the locker shrine scene from MIB2 except they're all trying to worship some poor silverliner who is scared out of his mind(edited)
📷Rise Comics(she/her) — Today at 12:41 AM
I can only imagine how scary it’d be to be in that situation(edited)
[12:42 AM]Or how funny it is for the SEPTA AEM-7 watching this happen(edited)
📷@Rise Comics(she/her)
Or how funny it is for the SEPTA AEM-7 watching this happen(edited)
📷Jz1 — Today at 12:43 AM
The entire AEM-7 fleet is laughing so hard they reverted to Swedish
[12:44 AM]The Acelas are laughing in French
[12:44 AM]The entire yard sounds like a fucked up version of Ellis Island
[12:44 AM]A single CSX engine rolls by on the bridge that goes over the yard, stops dead in his tracks, and runs the other way
📷Rise Comics(she/her) — Today at 12:45 AM
Lmao
[12:45 AM]Woe be anyone who has to be in the yard at that moment
📷Jz1 — Today at 12:46 AM
At that exact moment a Northeast regional shows up with a trainload of Amfleet coaches and a schism forms
[12:46 AM]An vainglorious RDC tries to get his own cult
📷Rise Comics(she/her) — Today at 12:46 AM
Lol
📷Jz1 — Today at 12:47 AM
No work is accomplished on this day
Rise Comics(she/her) — Today at 12:49 AM
Ah yes, the Amfleet Cult incident of 2016 is one acid trip of a comedy
Was Franz Kafka one of the staff?
📷Jz1 — Today at 12:50 AM
He only wishes he was
📷Rise Comics(she/her) — Today at 12:51 AM
Lol
📷Jz1 — Today at 12:51 AM
From that point on, The Charger deliveries were done by BNSF
[12:51 AM]Surely this will cause no problems ever
📷Rise Comics(she/her) — Today at 12:52 AM
It’s either four different accents or everyone sounds like a slightly different surfer
📷Jz1 — Today at 12:53 AM
It's either very german, very california, very New York, Or very Florida (because brightline)
[12:54 AM]I also like to imagine that the brightline engines turn into Florida Engine the moment they crossed the state line
📷Rise Comics(she/her) — Today at 12:54 AM
Yep lol
[12:54 AM]Complete with alligators
📷Jz1 — Today at 12:54 AM
Fought a Gator (and won)
[12:54 AM]Fought a Gator (and lost)
📷Rise Comics(she/her) — Today at 12:55 AM
Lol
📷Jz1 — Today at 12:55 AM
Florida Engine does 'industrial quantity" of Methamphetamines, breaks land speed record
Rise Comics(she/her) — Today at 12:56 AM
Florida Engine swims across port
📷Jz1 — Today at 12:56 AM
Florida engine learns to swim, fights boat
📷Rise Comics(she/her) — Today at 12:57 AM
Florida Engine accidentally kidnaps entire Panama City Police Department
📷Jz1 — Today at 12:57 AM
Some guy in Lake Okeechobee says he doesn't like trains - the water bubbles and a Charger erupts from the water "I heard you were talking shit"
📷Rise Comics(she/her) — Today at 12:58 AM
Lol
[12:58 AM]Florida Engine busted for selling fake golden bricks
📷Jz1 — Today at 12:58 AM
Florida Engine arrested for selling stolen fake golden bricks
📷Rise Comics(she/her) — Today at 12:59 AM
Florida Engine derails, orders Wendy’s in a nearby drive thru
📷Jz1 — Today at 1:00 AM
Florida Engine steals his own wheels, puts himself up on blocks
Rise Comics(she/her) — Today at 1:02 AM
Florida Engines accidentally welded together in one consist.
📷Jz1 — Today at 1:02 AM
Florida Engines try to recreate Baldwin Centipede, accidentally create a different kind of Centipede
📷Rise Comics(she/her) — Today at 1:04 AM
Florida Engine gets drunk, tries to fly
📷Rise Comics(she/her) — Today at 1:04 AM
Lmao
📷Jz1 — Today at 1:05 AM
Florida Engine vows revenge on airplanes - claims "they've had it too good for too long"
📷Rise Comics(she/her) — Today at 1:05 AM
Florida Engine arrested for attempted arson via spaghetti
📷Jz1 — Today at 1:06 AM
Florida Engine arrested for screaming about "noodle incident" at 4AM
Rise Comics(she/her) — Today at 1:07 AM
Florida Engine consumes too much NOs, recreates 2 Fast 2 Furious
📷Jz1 — Today at 1:07 AM
Florida Engine jumps drawbridge - claims it was late for court
Rise Comics(she/her) — Today at 1:08 AM
Florida Engine breaks world record for fastest and longest sustained multi track drift
📷Joseph R (he/him) — Today at 1:09 AM
and hits a signal
📷Jz1 — Today at 1:09 AM
Florida Engine steals house - claims fourth amendment
📷Rise Comics(she/her) — Today at 1:10 AM
Florida Engines steal shed to avoid rent(edited)
📷Jz1 — Today at 1:11 AM
Florida Engine crashes off end of line - claims he was going to Orlando to "see that rat mickey"(edited)
📷Rise Comics(she/her) — Today at 1:12 AM
Florida Engine bites gator - claims it tasted like chicken
📷Jz1 — Today at 1:13 AM
Florida Engine invades NASA Cape Canaveral - swears vengeance against SpaceX and Elon Musk
Rise Comics(she/her) — Today at 1:16 AM
Florida Engines steal SpaceX rocket, dunks on Musk
Jz1 — Today at 1:16 AM
Florida Engine Hacks Elon Musk's Twitter, Causes Dogecoin Pump and Dump
NEW
📷Rise Comics(she/her) — Today at 1:17 AM
Florida Engines block port of Miami in world’s longest consist
Jz1 — Today at 1:18 AM
Florida Engines claim this act of sabotage was to support the container ship Ever Given "in her hour of need"
[1:19 AM]Florida Engines seemed unaware that Ever Given was freed two months ago
Rise Comics(she/her) — Today at 1:21 AM
Florida Engine spills fruit train, creates jam
Rise Comics(she/her) — Today at 1:22 AM
Florida car cosplays as train, wears cone as a hat
Jz1 — Today at 1:24 AM
Florida Airplane lands on Train Tracks, offers Florida Engine "a fair fight"
📷Rise Comics(she/her) — Today at 1:25 AM
Florida Engine and Florida Plane fight in world’s largest Wawa, Florida Boat wins
📷Jz1 — Today at 1:25 AM
Hahahaha
📷Rise Comics(she/her) — Today at 1:26 AM
A gator was shoved where the sun don’t shine
📷Jz1 — Today at 1:26 AM
Florida Engine attacks John Deere Dealership, fights gators
📷Rise Comics(she/her) — Today at 1:28 AM
Florida Engine throws pet gator at John Deere dealer(edited)
📷Jz1 — Today at 1:29 AM
Florida Engine steals Car, claims he was 'adopting it'
📷Rise Comics(she/her) — Today at 1:31 AM
Florida Engine sells stolen cars as ‘pet cars’
📷1
📷Jz1 — Today at 1:32 AM
Florida Engine and Florida Boat conspire to traffic in exotic "pet cars"
📷Rise Comics(she/her) — Today at 1:34 AM
Florida Semi-Truck roped into exotic ’pet car’ scheme by Florida Engine and Florida Boat.
📷Jz1 — Today at 1:35 AM
Florida Crane arrested in increasingly-large "pet car" bust
[1:35 AM]Florida Submarine also under suspicion
📷Rise Comics(she/her) — Today at 1:38 AM
Autoracks stolen by Florida Train
📷Jz1 — Today at 1:38 AM
Florida "pet car" bust increases - multiple Florida Engines suspected
📷Rise Comics(she/her) — Today at 1:39 AM
Florida East Coast Railway Indicted In ‘Pet Car’ Scandal
📷Jz1 — Today at 1:40 AM
Florida Plane denied bail in "pet car" arrests - deemed a flight risk
Rise Comics(she/her) — Today at 1:45 AM
Florida Train acquitted on all charges relating to ‘pet car’ scandal, still fined for public exposure.
📷Jz1 — Today at 1:46 AM
Florida Train thanks Florida Lawyer for proving innocence - Florida Boat and Florida Crane to go to trial next week
📷Rise Comics(she/her) — Today at 1:48 AM
Florida Boat was actually Egyptian fishing trawler. Florida Boat still at large.
How did the North Western Railway keep so much independence under BR? They were nationalised, but the Hatt family seems to have kept complete autonomy with regards to stuff like liveries and keeping steam traction?
In short - institutional belligerence and geographic irrelevance.
In long - The NWR was rolled up into BR without its consent or any desire to be part of it. Unlike the other railways in the UK, which were essentially bankrupt following WW2, the NWR had managed to find some level of fiscal stability, and while they weren’t doing great, they were very much “okay”.
When BR was foisted upon the nation’s railways, the operations side of the rail network remained mostly the same, with each railway (GWR, LMS, LNER, SR, and the NWR) maintaining their own management and rolling stock. It took many years for the network to become fully integrated, with some regions (the Western and North Western especially) being less on-board as they preferred their own way of doing things!
The largest driving force behind this was Sir Topham Hatt - the O.G. FC, who can and did beg, bribe, steal, and bully people to get his way. He was very attached to his locomotives, and was not on board with BR’s plans to introduce new engines to the Island in an attempt to “modernize” his railway. His son Charles followed in his example, although with less outright belligerence and more “working the system”.
This meant that the North Western Region was more or less independent all the way into the 1960s, as dealing with the Hatt family was usually viewed as “too much effort for too little reward”. Following the introduction of the modernization plan, significant blowback from the Western Region was dealt with by simply firing the persons involved and replacing them BR stooges. Attempts to do this in Tidmouth was met with... much less success, as anyone who was sent to Sodor was either sent away in disgrace, or quickly “went native”.
As the rollout of diesel locomotives across the country went pear-shaped in a hurry (look up the Class 17 for one such example), BR’s desire to deal with the Hatt’s bullshit waned dramatically, and as steam traction was phased out across the network, Charles Hatt managed to hammer out an agreement with London that basically allowed him to run steam, provided that they didn’t leave Sodor except in an emergency.
This was allowed because the Island is only connected to the national network at Barrow, meaning that there was unlikely to be any spillover onto the rest of BR. Furthermore, the Vale of Rheidol Railway in Wales was also allowed to operate steam for much the same reasons - an isolated line not really connected to the national network - so BR was backed into a corner where they could either allow Sodor, or scrap Rheidol. Minister for Transport Castle, for unknown reasons, had already stated that the VoR would be allowed to continue, so BR was more or less forced to allow Sodor to keep its steam trains.
Various attempts throughout the 1970s and 1980s were made to bring the region back into the fold, but were quickly rebuffed by the fact that the region often operated more efficiently and with fewer incidents than the mainland did!
In fact, Charles (and later Stephen) Hatt keeping the railway in order was a big reason why BR was so unable to do things like replace the regional management.
As an example, in 1977, a major accident occurred when a goods train derailed into the path of the midday express. The resulting derailment tore up three of the four running lines and caused significant confusion and delay - for a weekend. This accident, which would have required over a month to properly clear up and fix on any BR line, was repaired fully in three days. BR didn’t find out until the next Monday - at which point the accident was cleared up!
More attempts likely would have been made to replace the Hatt family, but in the early 90′s, BR was broken up. Stephen Hatt, having looked at the proposed privatization plans, was horrified, as it would have sold the engines and coaches to multiple companies, the tracks to another, the freight operations to any number of operators, and then would have forced the entire thing to run under a lowest-bidder-take-all franchise agreement!
Obviously this could not stand, so in 1990, Stephen Hatt ran a special train, headed by Gordon, all the way down to London and refused to leave until an agreement was made to keep the North Western Region together. After a lengthy period of negotiations, an agreement was struck that basically said “Anything west of the eastern edge of Barrow station belongs to the NWR”. That included tracks, trains, equipment, and signaling.
What followed was three years of begging, bribery, and outright theft as the North Western region frantically tried to get anything and everything - from maintenance of way equipment to five rakes of brand new express coaches - allocated to them. When the axe finally fell in April of 1993, a BR work crew symbolically severed the tracks leading to Barrow station at five minutes to midnight. Ten minutes later, the same crew, now working for the totally independent NWR, reattached the line and services resumed.
The local magistrate at Arlesburgh (from the mid 70's on) is sorta-kinda off of his rocker, but in a really fun way:
------
-Dilly laid her last bunch of eggs in 1976. The hatchlings imprinted on Duck, and he basically is forced to accept that he now has several feathery children. As a joke, his driver asks the Magistrate if Duck can 'adopt' them. Being the sort of person that he is, the Magistrate has animal adoption forms with him, (actually he has most forms needed to run Arlesburgh's judiciary in his jacket pockets) and before you know it Duck has ducks. He takes this role very seriously, and the pond outside Haltraugh station has an entire flock of his well-cared-for 'children' in it by 2020.
----
-Ivan Farrier, the CME of the Arlesdale Railway, has five children - of which only two are human. The other three are engines on the railway that he built:
Frank, the railway's works diesel, whom Mr. Farrier built out of spare parts
Sigrid, an engine that has never appeared in books or the TV show, and is only mentioned in the source book The Island of Sodor: It's People, History and Railways
Jock, the new build steam engine
When The Magistrate attended Jock's first steaming and learned that he was Mr. Farrier's creation, he congratulated him on the birth of his son, and produced a birth certificate from his filing cabinet of a coat.
Mr. Farrier, assuming that The Magistrate was joking, dutifully filled out the form, and told The Magistrate that Jock wasn't his first 'child', as he'd built Frank, and been the designer of record for Sigrid.
Farrier assumed he'd misplaced the birth certificate when he couldn’t find it the next morning, and only discovered where it went the next week, when National Insurance Numbers and birth certificates for Jock, Frank, and Sigrid showed up in the post, declaring him as the father!
As surprised as he was, Mr. Farrier has never attempted to overturn this, mainly because his wife threatened him with a violent death if he did - she'd wanted a large family, and she wasn't going to turn down three more children!
The other engines took this rather well, all things considered. Frank and Sigrid were shocked, but accepting. Jock took to the subject like a duck to water, and actually calls Mr. and Mrs. Farrier 'Dad and Mum'.
Rex, Mike, and Bert were very accepting as well, and have no jealousy over their own lack of parents, although Mike makes many jokes about Sigrid and Frank forgetting about Father's Day 1997 due to a series of hilarious misunderstandings. (Jock remembers Father's Day more than he remembers his own birthday, and also gives them shit over it.)
Mr. Farrier's two human children had no idea that having mechanical siblings was unusual until they went to university on the mainland.
The staff at the Arlesdale Railway did inform the Fat Controller (the second) of this development, but he is believed to have purged this event from his memory. (Ask @mean-scarlet-deceiver for the exact details, but his father would have retroactively made Thomas his first-born if he could have)
--------
-In 1988, Siobhan, Donald and Douglas' favored fire-woman, drunkenly admitted to them that:
Her parents were divorced
She didn't really know her father as a result
Donald and Douglas were the best father figures she'd ever had, and
She'd rather have them as fathers than whoever the hell her mother was dating.
Donald and Douglas were very touched/shaken by this revelation, and spoke of it for several days until The Magistrate's Secretary happened to overhear them.
Being just as unhinged as her boss, The Secretary informed her boss, who in turn showed up at the sheds one morning with adoption papers in hand.
Donald and Douglas suddenly became co-fathers of a 19-year old.
Siobhan was thrilled. Her mother was not. It took several rounds of mutual shouting before she realized that Donald and Douglas were the 'Donnie an' Douggie' that her daughter spoke of so fondly. This calmed her down a bit, but even to this day she'll get a drink whenever her friends start talking about their 'unusual family dynamics' - Because she has got them beat.
Nobody has informed the NWR management of this, but Siobhan does have Donald and Douglas as her emergency contacts. Three successive HR managers have been driven to drink when they stumble across that little nugget of information in her personnel file.
----
- Nobody actually knows what The Magistrate's name is. He refuses to use it on court documents, claiming that 'the power lies in the court, not me', and won't tell anyone what it is.
When asked how he is to be called, he says "You may call me Magistrate or you may be silent."
When the court system asked their employees to self-identify their pronouns in 2017, he wrote in He/Him/Justice.
The going rumor on the island is that he changed his name to actually be 'The Magistrate', but this is denied by both The Magistrate and his wife Susan - who claims that her Husband is merely an eccentric man. She claims that she took his last name -Williams- but this is disputed by literally everyone who has ever met The Magistrate.
