Hey, so @sodorgazette is doing a holiday challenge/ event called Sodor Lightshow. I imagine that this will be easier to do as an artist, but I'll make do with what skills I have.
Fic below! ↓
2021, Tidmouth
The shed was silent as the TV producers followed the Fat Controller out of the shed.
“But it’s October,” James said finally. “Why would they do a Christmas commercial now?”
“Don’t be stupid,” Gordon sighed. “By the time they’ve finished it, it will be Christmas!”
The other engines in the shed looked excited, but Edward was concerned. “I don’t like the idea of us being ‘screen tested’ or anything like that.” He said to shed at large. “If they only pick one of us, it means the rest of us might get our feelings hurt.”
“Then don’t participate!” This was from Oliver. “But I think that I’d be a great ‘holiday train’!”
“You?” Henry looked prideful. “Not to hurt your feelings, but you’re too small for this. Those people said that the commercial would have an engine pulling containers - I’d assume being large enough to pull containers is a prerequisite.”
“They also said that the engine needed to be ‘iconic’, which I think is more of a pre-whatever you said than being the right size! I’m plenty iconic - I’m Great Western, after all!”
A groan rolled through the shed at this, and Oliver opened his mouth to retort when Tornado cleared her throat, completely missing Thomas’ attempts to keep her from speaking. “Um, Oliver, I don’t mean to boast or anything, but if they’re going to pick a really famous engine… well, let’s be real - it’s probably going to be me.”
“You?! When Thomas is right next to you?”
“I don’t want to be in a Christmas commercial!” Thomas yelped, not expecting or wanting to be drawn into the conversation. “I don’t like how commercialized it’s become.”
“Oh hauld yer wheesht!” Donald grumbled. “Yer so commercialized there’s a store of ye at Knapford station! Ye jus’ don’ wan’ ta do it ‘cause yer entire branch line would hold it over ya smokebox for the next year!”
“Yes, but that’s not Christmas. Christmas is special. And speaking of not being able to forget things, I distinctly remember that signal box outside the big station not having a bullseye painted on it at one point.”
Donald wheeshed angrily at this.
James, now having a minute or two to think, (which was just as dangerous as him speaking without thinking) spoke up. “Actually, it’s probably not going to be any of us,” He said, drawing jeers from Henry, Oliver, and Tornado. “Considering how Daphne and Wendell have basically made Christmas ‘their’ holiday.”
Tornado got a headache every time that someone mentioned Daphne so casually, (How they could be so casual about an engine appearing from the ether is something that she just didn’t get) and she tried to move the conversation away from that direction. “I mean, didn’t they say that they wanted a steam engine? If they wanted a diesel they could just do it with a 66 or someone else, right?”
Everyone else looked thoughtful at that, before James spoke up again. “Well then, I guess they’ll just have to pick me!”
Edward and Gordon groaned in unison as the conversational gauntlet was thrown down, and the other engines immediately began arguing.
“Oh please, they’re gonna pick me!”
“Excuse me, but which one of us actually pulls container trains on a regular basis?”
“They can use computers or something for that! I look the part!”
“Ye? Yer too wee and ye knoo it!”
“Well it’s not like they’re going to pick you!”
“Wanna bet?”
At the word ‘bet’, a trio of eyes widened, and for one fleeting moment Edward, Gordon, and Thomas all shared the same thought.
“Why would you say that?”
“You are all too old for this kind of reckless competition-”
“Christmas is not a competition!”
But it was too late. Word of a “Christmas competition” soon spread across the island…
----------------------------------------
“Are you using those decorations for anything?” Henry asked Dennis, the Tidmouth station master as he opened a supply closet.
Dennis looked into the closet and found it to be filled with Christmas decorations. He looked back at Henry. He shivered, remembering exactly what had happened the last time the big engine had taken an interest in a holiday. “Yes. Storing them until Christmas.” He said, shutting the door and locking it securely.
Henry had the gall to look put out over this, and for a moment Dennis felt sorry for him, until he looked down the platform. The station’s pub had a pumpkin-flavored seasonal beer on tap, and had put out a jack-o-lantern shaped advertisement for it.
Every member of staff who walked by the plastic pumpkin, with its jagged teeth and red LED eyes, had shivered slightly.
Dennis had no sympathy for Henry.
-----
Thomas groaned as he tried in vain to sleep. Tornado had spent the night at the Ffarquahr sheds, and was trying - with some success - to get Bloomer into the “holiday spirit”.
“Do tHey kNOw it's ChRIstMas time at all?
Here's tO yOU
RAISE a glAsS fOR EVeryoNE”
“Okay, well, we can still work on it!”
Tornado might have had the voice of an angel, but Bloomer sounded like a cement mixer full of gravel.
“I envy Percy right now.” Thomas grumbled.
“Isn’t he getting his boiler replaced?” Toby asked sleepily.
“YES.” Thomas and Daisy snapped as one.
--------
“I say,” Daphne said, her voice reaching an unusually low tone. “I am most insulted that we weren’t even considered.”
“Maybe they didn’t know?” Wendell tried his best to defuse the situation.
“It would make them amongst the last to know!” She scoffed. “I pull their dratted containers all the time!”
“Are we sure that they’re only going to pick one?” Delta asked from the next road in the diesel shed. “I’m certain we could do a pretty good double act - if it’s me and Bear we’ve already got the colours down!”
“Mm,” Bear said, half asleep. “They wanted a steamer for some reason, I’m afraid.”
“Really? Why?”
“Couldn’t begin to speculate.” Bear yawned. “Henry thinks it's because the TV show only focuses on the steam fleet.”
Delta looked murderous at that, and Daphne just looked even more determined.
“Well then,” She said. “I shall just prove to them what they’re missing out on, won’t I?”
James, who was sitting next to Delta with his eyes shut, but wasn’t yet asleep, suddenly regretted saying anything at all!
-----
The sheds at Wellsworth were quiet.
“So,” BoCo ventured. “I hear talk of a commercial being shot soon?”
Edward rolled his eyes. “Please don’t tell me you’re trying to get involved in that too!”
“Oh no, but I think that puts us in the minority.”
“Oh thank goodness!”
-----
“They’re not going to pick us.” Emma said as they rolled into Barrow station. “We don't look like we should be pulling containers!”
“But - but - but it’s Christmas!” Pip protested. “And everyone else is doing it!”
“And everyone else is going to be sorely disappointed when the TV people pick a steam locomotive like they said they were going to.” Gordon was waiting at the platform with the morning semi-fast and had heard them.
“Oh come on!” Pip was still insistent. “We’re pretty enough to be on TV! Just look at us!”
Emma and Gordon could only laugh at that!
----
“Lemme in!”
“No!” “You’ll steal our plans!”
“Ah dinnae care about yer plans! We’re gonna win wit’ or without yer stupid plans!”
“Oh! So our plans are stupid, are they?!”
Rex, Jock and the other small engines watched as Duck and Oliver barricaded the shed from Donald and Douglas. The inside of the shed was aglow with multicoloured Christmas lights, and a strand of tinsel was caught on one of Duck’s wheels.
“Do you know what a screen test is?” Bert asked, the small engines having gotten some idea of what the big engines were in such a state.
“I’m not sure, but I don’t think it means what they think it means.”
-----
Stephen Hatt walked into the Railway’s office complex from the platforms at the big station. “Can someone tell me why the engines are so excited about tinsel? The commercial shoot isn’t for a week or so.”
From deeper within the offices, a cry of “A WEEK?!” bellowed out, followed quickly by a string of unprintable epithets.
----
The head cleaner for Tidmouth sheds stared at his staff schedule in dismay. He was not a Sodor boy by birth, and this was one of those times where he wished he was. His entire staff was putting in unpaid overtime just to put up these bleeding Christmas lights (IN OCTOBER), and didn’t think there was a damned thing wrong with that.
“I can’t even bring this to Mr. Hatt…” He said in dismay. “He’s just as nutty as they are - he’ll say I’m the strange one!”
A week later, the film crew arrived for the ‘screen test’. The engines had been expecting a larger production, and were rather underwhelmed by the film crew being four men who showed up in a hired van.
The Fat Controller showed them around the yard, and once they’d decided on a potential filming location, they were taken to meet the engines. “- and, as you can see, they’ve all been very eagerly awaiting you!” He said jovially. “Christmas has become quite an event around here.”
He wasn’t wrong. The film crew actually did a double take at the sight of the engines:
Daphne and Wendell had been bedecked from buffer to buffer in their ‘holiday train’ lights, which covered their entire bodies in patterns of string lights, light up snowflakes, and the words “NWR HOLIDAY TRAIN” spelled out in giant vinyl graphics.
James and Delta were polished to a mirror finish, and their red paint was nicely offset by minimal amounts of green wreaths, tinsel, and lights that ran along Delta’s sides and James’ boiler in a rather tasteful manner.
Duck and Oliver were the inverse - their green paint was scarcely visible underneath a simply massive amount of red lights that ran all over them. It was honestly quite hard to look at.
In comparison, Tornado (who was appearing solo - Bloomer had decided not to attend - at Thomas's insistence!) looked almost normal. Multicoloured string lights were wrapped around her boiler handholds, exposed pipes, and her smoke deflectors, while green and red tinsel hung from her cab. Her buffers had been painted so they said MERRY and CHRISTMAS on them, and she’d changed the colour of her eyes so one was green and the other red. A Christmas song played softly over her speaker system, and she wore a headboard that read “TESCO HOLIDAY TRAIN”.
Henry, having been barred from any Christmas decorations by the station staff, had been forced to find an alternative, meaning that he and Bear were nicely polished but undecorated… other than a pair of enormous Santa hats that had taken three men to drag up onto the top of each engine.
Donald and Douglas were nowhere to be seen. They had managed to short out their AWS systems with their lights, meaning they couldn’t move until they were mended.
Finally, a ‘surprise’ entry came in the form of Abbey, one of the engines from the electric branch. She’d heard about the competition from engines at the junction and thought it would be fun to try her wheel at it. Where she’d found the massive bow, or the giant red ribbon to go with it, remained a mystery.
-
The director, a Mr. Pemberton, wandered around the engines with his cinematographer in tow. He was an excitable man, but knew very little about railways. His underlings knew this, and one of them whispered to Stephen Hatt when they were certain nobody was listening. “You do know that he’s not going to use any of these, right?”
“I don’t follow.”
“He’s been imagining this ‘ideal locomotive’ in his head for two weeks now. We don’t have much time left, and I’m not even sure if such a thing exists, but this is all a bit… much, especially for how long they’ll be in the ad for.”
“Oh, don’t you worry.” Stephen said kindly. “I’m sure that one of them will be suitable.”
“Oh good heavens!” Mr. Pemberton exclaimed, collapsing theatrically into a seat in the rear of the van. “I have so many ideas now, but none of these trains are what I want!”
The underling quirked an eyebrow in Stephen Hatt’s direction, as if to say I told you so.
“Well Carter,” Stephen said to the director. “They’re not the only engines on this Island, but what is it that you’re looking for, if not them?”
“Oh, it has to be fast!” The director said, gesturing with his hands as if to illustrate his point. “It needs to be easily identifiable, and totally iconic. None of this visually busy stuff you’ve got here - I’d almost take that one with the ribbon and bow, but the electric thingy at the top kind of ruins it - it needs to be clean, with as few lines as possible. Just a train, no more or less.”
Suddenly, he stood up, looking off towards the yard. “Something like that!” He exclaimed, heading off in that direction.
Stephen watched him go. There, in the distance, Osprey was arriving with a train of containers - with so many engines in Tidmouth for the ‘screen test’, those who weren’t participating were doing jobs outside of their usual duties. Coupled right up behind her was the special container wagon that was to be used in the commercial - it had been polished and cleaned before it arrived on the Island, and its TESCO branding stood out in the lights of the signal box.
The Fat Controller shook his head as he watched the man bound across the sleepers towards the train, several members of railway staff trailing behind him in an attempt to make sure the director wasn’t run over by a passing train. “I feel as though this should have been an obvious outcome.”
The ad aired in the middle of November, and drew some controversy from those on the fringes of the political spectrum due to a scene where Father Christmas showed his vaccine passport.
On the Island of Sodor though, there was a much bigger matter to be upset over…
"I admit," Emma said with muted befuddlement. "I was wrong. We could have been in this ad."
"I told you so!" Pip oozed satisfaction at being right, even if it stung a little bit that they were passed over.
“I’m almost glad I wasn’t in it.” Daphne said after watching it. “I certainly wouldn’t be so calm.”
Osprey was bemused. “I don’t understand why they wanted one of us for it - you could barely see me!”
“There weren’t even any lights!” Delta and Tornado both groused. “What kind of a Christmas advertisement doesn’t have us decked out in lights?”
“I’m more offended that Mr. Pemberton thought I was too ‘visually busy’.” Henry grumbled. “I don’t even know what that’s supposed to mean…”
“I wouldn’t worry about it.” Bear soothed. Privately he was just as confused, but kept it to himself in the name of not making a fuss.
Oliver merely seethed.
Nobody could tell what Donald and Douglas were saying - they had slipped fully into Scots, and Siobhan had turned an acute shade of pink when she tried to translate.
Duck refused to talk about it.
“I mean, really!” Finally, James was livid. “They make us jump through all those hoops and go to all that effort just for that?!”
The ‘that’ he was referring to was Osprey’s appearance in the advertisement. It had come and gone in six seconds:
A shocked-looking snowman without a nose had been placed next to a railroad crossing. In its hands was a newspaper saying “STOCK SHORTAGES?” on the headline.
The crossing lights lit up, and a train rushed by - it was barely identifiable as Osprey, instead focusing on the Tesco container behind her.
A carrot was now in the snowman’s nose, and it looked much happier. The newspaper headline changed to say: “OR NOT!”
After that, the scene changed to an airplane trying to take off from a runway.
Gordon and Edward, meanwhile, had found the entire thing hilarious, and both of them took great joy in mocking the others.
“I did say that this would happen, didn’t I, Gordon?”
“Oh yes, you did. It’s strange how nobody else listens to us when we are clearly the smartest engines on the Island.”
“Nobody listened to Cassandra either, so perhaps there is some precedent.”
“How right you are!”
"As are you!"
"Ah yes! How wonderful it is - to be right!"
The other engines glared at them, but they were too busy chortling about how right they were and paid them no notice.
I’d like to say that everyone got over this silliness in due time, and that no retribution was planned, but that would be a lie - this is the Island of Sodor, after all!
