Traintober 2025: Day 6 - Foreign
Flying Scotsman's Tales of Foreign Lands
The Island of Sodor was abuzz with news of Flying Scotsman's return. The world famous engine had been away in the USA for some time, and after a near disaster, he had been repatriated to England, repaired, and sent to the Island of Sodor to acclimatise to life back on railways that were more familiar to him than the giant trunk routes of the USA.
Or, at least, so Sir William McAlpine said.
It was - to those close to Scott - much more realistic to believe that the world famous engine's return to Sodor was at least in part to allow him the chance to speak to his last surviving brother as well as many of his closest friends, to recover from nearly being scrapped on a foreign continent.
The engines were all very excited to see their friend again, none more so than Gordon. "We need to think of poor Scott," the big blue engine said to all who would listen. "He has been through a very traumatic experience, and we need to be encouraging!" "An whit aboot us? We went throuch somethin traumatisin," Donald asked cheekily. Gordon sniffed. "You did not have to go to America." "An whit's wrong wi Americae?" Donald quizzed. Gordon winced. "Well! They are Yanks," Gordon replied. "Did you meet their soldiers during the war?" Donald had to admit he had not. "They were terrible! So rude, and womanising too. And their engines were so brash and callous."
Duck looked over, confused. "No they weren't," he said slowly. "We had a heap of them on the Great Western, and they were fine enough, if not a little blunt." In the background, Edward groaned to himself, not really wanting to try and explain to anyone the fact that the USA was not like England, and had a different culture where being at least a little forward was normal to them.
Not that the other engines would listen to him. Again.
But when Scott arrived, on a cool midsummer day when the clouds were white and fluffy while the breeze was cool and had just a hint of sea salt, he was not traumatised at all! In fact, he had a healthy tan and a beaming smile that lit up the sheds. Most of the engines - though not Edward - were stunned!
"Brother! You… seem oddly chipper for someone who's been through such hardships!" "Gordon! It's so good to — hardships?" "Yes!" peeped Percy. "Like meeting Americans! Gordon's been telling us how terrible and womanising they are!" He looked over to where Gordon was getting paler and paler. "Did you get womanised?" He grinned smugly at Gordon, and puffed away. Duck bit his lip to keep from laughing.
Scott took a deep breath, and burst out laughing. Gordon went as red as James' paintwork!
"Well Gordon?" asked the world famous engine. "Do you think I got… er… womanised?" Duck cracked up laughing, practically shaking on the rails. Behind him, James and Henry cackled and howled with laughter so hard they spat up lumps of coal! "No! Certainly not! I— well, that is to say—"
Scott took pity on his brother, and smiled warmly. "Nothing of the sort happened, I promise," he grinned. "It was actually a lot of fun - I'll tell everyone about it this evening. In the meantime, I do hope you have some coal to spare. I'm running low."
Gordon blinked dumbly, then led Scott away, not even reacting to the peals of laughter coming from the peanut gallery.
** ** **
That evening, almost every engine could be found at the Big Sheds. Even Daisy had deigned to wander down from Ffarquhar to see Scott and hear about his adventures!
Scott looked at all the expectant faces, a little stunned. "Um… well, this is a few more than I was expecting! How has Sodor been while I've been away?" "Who cares!" came a shout from someone - Scott suspected it to be either James or Thomas - they were shushed by a furious Gordon. "Who said that?!" "It's alright, Gordon!" laughed Scott. "I'm not surprised - well, maybe a little at how many showed up, but not at your excitement. It isn't every day an engine goes off somewhere foreign!" "It doesn't mean they can waltz on in here and make demands of you, Scott - you need to learn to stop being such a people-pleaser." "I am not a people-pleaser," huffed Scott. Gordon just raised his eyebrow, unimpressed.
Scott pointedly coughed.
"Well! It was a lot of fun over there - I started in Boston and wound up over in San Francisco, right on the other side of the continent! It is so beautiful over there, with scenery unlike anything you'd ever seen!" He paused, considered. "I remember being on the route to Slaton, Texas, and seeing a day clearer than any day I'd ever seen before it. There was not a single cloud in the sky, and it was so hot it looked as though the sky was no longer blue, but closer to being a light white. I was stunned by it!"
The engines all looked amazed! They very idea of a sky with not only no clouds, but where it was so hot that the colours themselves were beginning to drain away - it was beyond comprehension.
"I met a lot of wonderful engines and people over there two - the first was Hank." "Who," asked Gordon pointedly, "was Hank?" "He's our ancestor, Gordon!" replied Scott brightly. Gordon's jaw hit his bufferbeam. "Ancestor?! In America? What, was he sent over with Eisenhower?" "No," snorted Gordon, "he's a Pennsylvania Railroad K4 class locomotive."
There was a beat of silence.
"Sir Nigel Gresley used them as inspiration for our class, Gordon - though we got a different firebox and were built a little more sleek and a little less big." "Sir Nigel was inspired by an American?!" spluttered Gordon, stunned. Scott chuckled. "Oh yes indeed! Hank was doing railtours on his heritage line, so we visited and I even double-headed a special train with him. It was a lot of fun… Hank was a nice engine. Very nice. Real salt of the earth character."
Gordon blinked. "Right, because a steam engine whose class helped create our breed can be described in such terms." "Hank was nice!" Scott huffed. "Just because our siblings were about as pleasant as running into Jack the Ripper, doesn't mean their lot were." He paused, considered, then hummed. "Or at least, Hank wasn't. I didn't run into any other K4s over there. Hank told me most of them are nice enough though - they had their own fierce rivalry though, with the New York Central." "What, like you lot and the LMS?" quizzed Henry. "Surely there wasn't ever a railway rivalry as strong as that!"
"There was!" chuckled Scott. "Hank told me all about how they used to compete on trains between Chicago and New York, racing each other across the US North-East. Hank particularly remembers racing against a fellow called Connor - though, unfortunately, Connor was scrapped. There aren't many New York Central engines left anymore." "What, did they have a manager like Dr Beeching?" asked Oliver, astounded. "I know that the US dieselised faster than we did, but surely not!" "Surely so," sighed Scott, looking downcast. "While the Pennsylvania Railroad set up museums to remember their past, the New York Central scrapped all their steam engines as fast as possible, and now only eight steam engines survive from that entire railway. Poor Hank, he told me it doesn't feel the same, not being able to trade banter with Connor."
The engines all stared in shock - it was a truly horrible thought, to have a manager who would callously cut up and scrap hundreds of engines without thinking of preserving any of them.
"Well!" went on Scott, trying to keep the mood from plummeting further, "the next engine I should tell you about was the exact opposite of Hank. His name was Vinnie, and he was only a few weeks away from withdrawal, let me tell you! But he was the rudest, the nastiest, the most spiteful engine I'd ever met! And I met Spamcan!"
That got a snort out of Henry.
"Why do you say that about him?" asked Thomas. Scott grimaced, and looked very put out for a long moment before sighing. "Because he was a bully, plain and simple. He had absolutely no reason to act the way he did, and yet he loved to insult, berate and push around the smaller engines. He tried it with me! He came up and asked me if I was the shunter!" "The shunter?!" exclaimed Gordon, furious. "Let me at him! I'll teach him - shunter indeed, is he blind? You have a tender!" "In America, they use engines with tenders to shunt," Scott replied. "I didn't see one tank engine the entire time I was there… then again, I didn't see many steam engines at all."
Thomas smothered a snort, while Percy looked over at Gordon. "So, who doesn't shunt again, Gordon?" he asked. Gordon went as red as James' paintwork - again - and spluttered indignantly. "But a Pacific?!" he finally managed. "We're far too large! We'd derail! That's why tender engines of our size don't shunt."
Scott shared a look with Thomas and Percy.
"Well, Vinnie seemed to think that engines of our size do shunt, and he came storming over, smoke billowing everywhere - he looked like he was a bull about to go on a rampage! - and so I simply puffed out of the way. The idiot didn't slow down at all, so when the signalman changed the points he went roaring down a siding and crushed a boxcar into splinters! As you can imagine, the managers weren't happy with him, and even less so when he began spitting vitriol about me."
"What a rude engine," sniffed Duck. "I hope he got what was coming to him."
"He did," Scott replied. "They told him I was famous, and a privately preserved engine - and then he wasn't so cross. He wanted my former owner to buy him! But Mr Peglar wouldn't… The managers withdrew him on the spot. Last I heard he went to a scrapyard somewhere in Ohio." "A horrid fate for a horrid engine," agreed Gordon. "Serves him right! Imagine attacking other engines!" "He was notorious for it, apparently," Scott sighed. "The diesel shunters all told me he would bash them around, thinking that because he'd survived this long that he would be preserved. Thought no one would touch him. They got the privilege of dragging him into the out-of-use siding."
A few of the engines who had worked under British Railways were stunned at the idea of a steam engine bashing about shunters, just because he believed he would be preserved. "If we'd done that back on the Great Western..." muttered Duck, horrified. "Something was wrong with that engine." "Not even the diesels would!" agreed Oliver.
"And then there was Beau," mused Scott, with a low chuckle. Gordon looked over, confused. "What kind of a name is Beau? It's a term for a male suitor!" "What kind of a name is Flying Scotsman," retorted Scott. "It's an express train. Engines have odd names sometimes, you know that!"
Gordon grunted, and looked away. A few of the engines laughed at that, while Edward just smiled. "It's hard to try and understand other cultures sometimes, isn't it?" he said softly. Gordon sighed. "That's true enough, I suppose," he grumbled.
"Beau was the old 'American' type engine the San Francisco Belt Railroad was renting to pull enthusiast trains up and down the line." "An 'American' type - you mean like me?" asked Edward, a little surprised. "Not many of us still in steam, after all." "He was an ancient engine," grinned Scott. "Built in 1875, apparently. He's nearly a hundred!" "That's not special," sniffed Gordon to himself. "Skarloey and Rheneas are over 100 years old, and that engine Duke they found not too long ago isn't much younger." "Doesn't make Beau any less special," Scott retorted. "Especially because he was such an odd sort! He told me he used to work for a silver mine out in Arizona, and he had stories that'd make your steam turn to ice!"
"Ooooo, tell us one!" peeped Percy. "Well, there were several stories, such as raids by Native Americans, and accidents on stretches of line like 'devil's back'! Now that's a story to tell. Apparently, for nine years there were accidents on the same stretch of line. No one knew what caused 'em - but at least twice a year, a freight train would go hurtling off at speed! Engine crews and their locomotives taken in the blink of the eye, until finally one year things changed." The engines all watched intently, drawn in by the story.
"The driver and fireman had the local signalman on board, and for once the trainwreck didn't kill them! Instead, according to Beau, at the last moment the signalman threw the engine into reverse, right before the train crashed. At least, Beau thought it was the signalman. No one was ever quite sure - but what's curious, is that signalman was involved in the first accident, all nine years ago. And after that accident, the stretch of line became as safe as anything, well, apart from the occasional runaway."
"Wow! That is a really good story! Very chilling!" chirped Percy. "Thank you," chuckled Scott. "But I'm not much of a storyteller - you should hear Beau! Now there's an engine who can weave together a tale."
Scott yawned, and Gordon coughed pointedly. "Right! Everyone back to your own sheds! Scott's tired - you can pester him another time." The engines all huffed, and a bunch of them shuffled off to sleep in the carriage sheds, not really wanting to make the trek back to the other side of the island this late in the evening.
Edward, though, sidled up alongside Scott, the two watching as everyone else fell asleep. "You changed the name, didn't you?" Edward murmured. Scott looked over. "Oh?" "In that last story - it was Devil's Elbow, wasn't it?" Scott hummed softly. "So you had heard that story, eh?" "Their government hushed it up cause of World War One, but an American soldier told me about it," Edward replied softly. "It's not a story they wanted to admit to, especially not to foreign press."
Scott didn't reply for a moment, instead gazing out the shed at the stars. "You're not wrong. I cut that story into ribbons because of the ending - Beau apparently had had that signalman as a driver for some years prior to the first accident. You can imagine what that felt like for him."
There was another brief pause.
"Did you enjoy your trip to America?" "I did. As wild as it was, I enjoyed seeing more of the world. Maybe one day I'll get to see more."
Sitting there, neither Scott nor Edward knew how true that statement would one day be.
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