So, a while back this got posted and I thought it would be cool to do a set of stories on the whole subject of 'family'.
Then work picked up and I only got through the first one and a half.
The half story got used in Day 27 of Traintober (it's the story Gordon retells to Richard Hatt), but this one never seemed like it could fit, so I decided to put it up after Traintober.
*checks watch*
It's certainly after Traintober now, isn't it?
Replacement
July, 1987
Once again, Tidmouth Sheds were in an uproar, but this time, it was a different sort of uproar.
"I'm telling you, he's a mongrel! A fraud! A waste of good metal!" Screeched a posh voice.
Vulgar statements followed this:
"How dare you, you cheese-shaped lump of-"
"-can you at least say this to my face?"
"-if ah were in steam ah would be turnin' ye into roast duck, you-"
"Forget yerself Douggie, can ye imagine what Bear wuld be sayin' if he wuz 'ere?"
"Quackers, I swear to all that is not holy, if you don't stop talking-"
"Is this what the pride of the LNER sounds like? An unmitigated -"
-
Perhaps an explanation is necessary.
The year prior, The National Railway Museum had restored Mallard - the fastest steam locomotive in the world - to operating condition. Gordon was very pleased by this, as it meant another member of his extended family was in steam.
Furthermore, Mallard's speed records were a source of personal pride for Gordon, as his design was the prototype for all the Gresley Pacifics, including Mallard. This meant that Gordon would happily spend hours telling anyone and everyone who would listen (or couldn't get away quickly enough!) about his family's various exploits, much to the annoyance of the other engines, who wished he'd give it a rest!
But Gordon would not give it a rest, and spent most of the next year going on and on about Mallard and Flying Scotsman. Things eventually grew so dire that the Fat Controller reached out to Mallard and Flying Scotsman's owners to see if the engines would like to come out to Sodor just so Gordon would stop.
Unfortunately, things had not gone as planned. While Flying Scotsman was just as charming and gregarious as he always was, Mallard... was not.
Within a few days of his arrival, engines up and down the Island had begun complaining of the A4's attitude, which ranged from snooty and aloof to cold and even downright hostile depending on whom he spoke to:
"You should have heard the things he said when he thought BoCo was gone!" Edward said crossly one morning at the junction. "I've never heard such remarks about diesels!"
"Did he say anything about you?" James growled. "He told me - to my face - that my class was a "insignificant footnote in history".
Percy looked over, expression dark, at where the express engine was sitting at the coaling tower next to Gordon and Scotsman. "He hasn't said anything to me yet, but I think he knows where his bearings are greased."
"What?" Edward was confused.
"Keep it to yourselves," Percy explained. "But I think those books about us are a bit more popular on the mainland than we think. He thinks he can get away with being a sore axle to you because you aren't famous."
"And you are?" James snapped back.
"No," Percy admitted. "But Thomas is, and every time I've seen that great Wedge is when Thomas, Gordon, or Flying Scotsman is nearby."
The three engines looked at each other.
"So not only is he a rude heap of scrap iron," James began. "But he's also a glory hound?"
"Seems so."
"What a berk."
-
This brings us back to Tidmouth Sheds. Henry had been away at the works for several days, and returned to the big station on an evening goods train from Crovan's Gate. Mallard, Gordon, Scotsman, and several other engines were already in the shed when Henry backed in.
Pleasantries were exchanged with the other engines, but when Henry tried to say hello to Mallard, trouble started.
"You aren't a Black Five, are you?" Mallard asked, suspicion colouring his voice.
"You have a very good eye!" Henry chortled, unaware of Mallard's personality. "I've been rebuilt quite thoroughly - Stanier was the most recent one, about 50 years ago now."
"Really? And what were you rebuilt from?" Mallard asked, even more suspicious than before.
Across the shed, Donald, Douglas, and Duck looked at each other with growing concern. Henry's origins were well known to the Island, as was Mallard's superiority complex - this conversation would not end well.
"-and well, at the end of the day, I think I was originally built out of a rejected first draft for Gordon!" Henry laughed a little. "Of course, that was a long time ago."
A lengthy silence followed that.
Gordon and Scotsman looked at each other. They'd never considered that Henry might share a common origin with them.
Douglas, Donald, and Duck looked concerned. They could see Mallard's expression turn increasingly thunderous.
"Gordon, my dear cousin." Mallard eventually said, his tone practically poisonous. "Did you know that we're in the company of a fraud?"
-
The noise did not stop. No matter what anyone did to quell the argument, it would quickly start up again as Gordon or Scotsman tried to make their increasingly-recalcitrant cousin apologize to Henry. Mallard's responses were so rude that they don't bear repeating here, and each time sparked off a new round of shouting.
They would likely have gone on until dawn broke over the horizon, and only did stop when Henry's crew arrived to light his fire for the Flying Kipper. They had heard the argument all the way from the station carpark, and decided that the only way to end this was by separating Mallard from everyone else.
-
"- you expect me to pull what?!" As an uncooperative Mallard was driven towards the docks, the rest of the engines looked at each other, wide-eyed and emotionally exhausted.
"I never want to speak to him again." Gordon said, his voice scratchy and raw from a night of shouting.
"Gordon," Henry began.
"I'm serious." Gordon rasped. "He has no right to speak to you that way. As far as I'm concerned, he is the fraud, not you."
This drew raised eyebrows across the shed. "How is he the fraud, Gordon?" Duck asked. "It's not like he isn't a Gresley."
"He might look like one," Gordon growled. "But he isn't. No true Gresley would ever speak to another engine like that. There is a code. Honor. Dignity. Respect. It's the Gresley - nay - the North Eastern way."
The other engines stared at him. They were all well aware of how Gordon had treated Henry during his first few years on the Island.
"Don't look at me like that!" He snapped. "I was young and I was stupid then. And I have apologized." He looked in the direction Mallard had gone. "He has no such excuse."
The other engines looked at each other. They were all very upset at Mallard's rudeness, but clearly he'd struck a nerve in Gordon.
They wanted to say something, but by that point, the firelighters had arrived to prepare everyone for their morning trains, and the clatter and noise made conversation impossible. When the sheds had finally quieted down, Donald and Scotsman - who did not have morning trains - had fallen so deeply asleep that they slept until noon.
-
Everyone else spent the rest of the day in an exhausted haze. Henry was falling asleep any time his wheels stopped turning, and Gordon's temper had become shorter and shorter as the day had gone on. Even Scotsman, who had managed some sleep, was still groggy to the point of slurring his words.
Mallard, who had also been up all night, was equally snappish, especially after his run with the Flying Kipper. His owners had agreed to let the Fat Controller run him in normal services as well as rail tours, thinking that it would be a nice change from being kept inside the National Railway Museum all the time. However, Mallard actually enjoyed the light duties of being a museum engine, and found real work to be unpleasant and tiring.
He had not been quiet about this either, and this meant that when Mallard arrived in Barrow with the Flying Kipper, Henry's crew was already fed up with him. They left him in Barrow yard and stalked into the yard master's office, and immediately asked for their engine to be assigned the heaviest, most difficult train available.
That train turned out to be a special load of unfitted stone wagons bound for the harbour at Arlesburgh. Mallard made heavy weather of the trip, and it took him almost five hours of slow and dusty running to reach Duck's branch line. His train was of particularly low priority, and he had been shunted into almost every siding on the line, something which rankled his express engine sensibilities enormously. His axles ached and he was so tired that he was almost seeing double.
Mallard tried to rest once he'd delivered the train to Arlesburgh, but Duck hadn't forgotten the things that had been said about Henry, and blew his whistle, wheeshed steam, and generally made a nuisance of himself to keep Mallard awake. When Duck left, Donald and Douglas arrived and picked up where he left off.
When the time finally came to return to Tidmouth, Mallard was in a state of outraged and overtired hysteria. He'd been awake for more than thirty hours at this point, had been yelled at by engines who were defending a fraud, and had been made to do real work! It was disgraceful! Despicable! Absolutely disgusting!
He continued fuming all the way to Tidmouth station, and was subjected to further indignities when he was left alone on the far goods platform.
At first, he thought that it would be possible to get some rest at long last, but that hope was dashed when a pair of green tenders backed down next to him.
“What on earth do you want, Cousin?”
“What is wrong with you.” Scotsman didn’t phrase it as a question. He glared at the A4 through exhausted eyes.
“You’ll have to be more specific.” Mallard said graciously. “My paintwork is a touch shabby, my valves are worn, and I feel as though I could do with some more grease and lubri-”
“You know what I mean.”
“Oh that?”
“Yes. That.”
“Well I’m not sure that there’s anything left to talk about my dear Scotsman - you certainly seemed content to say your piece all through the night, and into the morning as well!”
“They- I- You- You have been preened and fettled just a bit too much, alright? It’s gone to your smokebox, and not in a good way.”
“Oh please. You and I both know I’m correct. That abomination is nothing more than a waste of good metal. He should have been confined to the cutting room floor just like his drawings.”
I can’t believe I’m listening to this. You sound like Deltic - you know, the original Deltic? The prototype who had BR’s men so far down his intakes that they were able to turn him evil?”
“I can’t say I’m familiar.”
“He said that he was inevitable, and that he would surpass us in every way, and that we would all fall to his greatness. He was a supremacist git, Duckie, just like you are right now.”
“I’d kindly ask you not to lump me in with monsters such as that.”
“Then stop acting like him. Actually, I take that back - do start acting like him; I had the chance to meet him a few years ago at the Science Museum - he’s had a complete turnaround, spent an entire hour telling me how sorry he was for everything. I don’t think I’ve ever heard you apologize for something in my entire life.”
“Well I’ve never had to, and I doubt that I ever will have to.”
“Why don’t you start. Today.”
“Oh, be sensible! Why are you supporting the Mongrel anyways?”
“He’s -” Scotsman cut himself off. “All right, even if we ignored what you said about Henry - which we will not, by the way - Gordon is furious about this. I’ve never seen him so mad and neither have the other engines who live with him! You owe him an apology on top of everything else!”
“Feh! I don’t owe him anything! He’s scarcely better than the fraud!”
“I beg your pardon.”
“Oh don’t look at me like that! He’s a prototype! A first draft! A rough approximation of what was to come! Don’t tell me you haven’t looked at him! His running board has more in common with the Forgery than you or I, and they’ve even removed his center cylinder! His center cylinder! And his Gresley motion! The two things that make our line stand out above all the rest! He’s as much of a Gresley as that box on wheels they put on the Woodhead line! The only reason I afford him any respect at all is because he’s managed to ingratiate himself to that clergyman with a predilection for children’s books!”
“First of all, Tommy is just a much of a Gresley as we are-”
“Bah!”
“And second, where do you draw the line? Are there no true Gresleys other than you? Is it limited to just your class? Or does one have to be famous? Is Green Arrow a true Gresley according to you? Are Dwight or Dominion true Gresleys? Are the J50s? Am I?”
“Stop being melodramatic. Your undesirable shape aside, you are of course a Gresley, and so are -”
“Undesirable shape.”
“What? Oh yes, it’s very unfortunate, but true.”
“How so?”
“Well, it’s rather obvious if you think about it.”
“Enlighten me.”
“Just look at those of us who survived - they only preserved one or two of the rest of our family classes - just look at yourself, they only saved you because of your record - but they’ve preserved myself and five others! Clearly we are more desirable than the rest of you, and I have seen for myself how popular a streamlined body is.”
“You vainglorious little bas-”
“In fact, and I mean no offense, but if it had been Silver Link, Sir Ralph, or even a Thompson or a Peppercorn who hit the ton instead of you, they would be here and you wouldn’t. It’s that simple.”
Even through his exhaustion, everything Scotsman saw was beginning to get this strange red colouring. “You’ve crossed a line now, and you are going-”
“I’ve crossed a line?!” Mallard scoffed. “Scotsman, cousin, I am the line. The Line, against which Gresleys - no, all steam locomotives are measured against. I achieved something that no locomotive has done before or since, and I did so with loose valves, a failing cylinder, and a heavy-handed driver. You did something that Truro probably did before you were even drawn, except that you had the good sense to bring a dynamometer!”
Mallard paused. His smokebox was ringing like a damned bell, he was so tired, and he didn’t have any desire to be kind today. “And in case you start getting any ideas above your station about your fame or your glory and if that affords you some unearned amount of additional respect, old iron, let us remember that when BR decided to form the National Collection, They. Didn’t. Want. You.”
Scotsman was about to burst a boiler tube. He opened his mouth to say something equally hurtful when an aggrieved sounding “AHEM” could be heard from beside him.
There on the platform was the Fat Controller, who had heard everything, and was as angry as Scotman had ever seen a human being get.
“Oh, what is it now?” Mallard griped, showing that he had no sense in his smokebox at all.
-
Later
The Fat Controller spoke to the big engines that night. “Due to, err, extenuating circumstances, Mallard had to return to the mainland early.”
Exhausted cheers met this.
“Now, I understand that some of you might be disappointed by this,” The Fat Controller ignored them. “but not to worry. I have spoken to a gentleman whom I know very well, and I have arranged for another locomotive of Mallard’s type to arrive shortly. That way we will be able to accommodate all the people who have come out to see Gordon, Flying Scotsman, and Mallard all together.”
That engine turned out to be Union of South Africa - or Osprey, as she preferred to be called nowadays. She was Mallard’s polar opposite - bouncy and excitable, she relished the chance to have some “real work”, and made fast friends with the engines of Sodor before nightfall of her first day on the Island.
“Why couldn’t we have had her before?” BoCo asked the shed at large. “And do we have to give her back?”
Everyone laughed at this, and when Osprey herself backed into the shed a while later, she was met with genuine smiles.
“You all seem happy about something!” She chirped.
“We’re just glad that you aren’t rude like the last one was.” James said with surprisingly upbeat bluntness.
“Duckie...” She sighed. “What did he do now?”
Everyone told her, and when they finished, the happy mood in the shed had darkened significantly.
“So he thinks he’s in a class of his own, does he?” She said quietly. “He should know better than to say things like that.”
Even Scotsman looked at her quizzically at that.
“He’s… been doing this for some time.” She explained. “Being earmarked for preservation, not having to worry while we all did… it did things to him. We’ve all tried to make him stop - it gives the rest of us a bad name! - but with myself, Bittern, and Nigel on other sides of the country, there isn’t a lot we can do. And he clearly doesn’t respect anyone else’s opinions on the matter.” She looked at Scotsman significantly when she said this - Mallard hadn’t so much crossed the line as he’d driven over it at 127 miles per hour.
“Well we must do something.” BoCo, of all engines, spoke up from the other side of the shed. “Forgive me if I’m treading on any Gresley family ground here, but if one of my brothers had spoken like that, the rest of us would have paid him out from now ‘til the new millennium.”
Gordon, Osprey, and Scotsman looked at each other for a moment.
“I suppose we should…” Gordon began.
“He certainly deserves it.” Osprey said.
“But what could we do to him that isn’t wanton cruelty?” Scotsman pondered. “We are trying to be the bigger engines here, let’s remember.”
The engines paused for a moment to come up with ideas, but the quiet was soon broken as Henry was driven into the shed.
“You all look contemplative.” He said as he was spun around on the turntable.
“We’re just trying to - my word,” Osprey said as she took in Henry’s form. “You do look like one of us - no amount of Stanier meddling can change that.”
A pair of gasps rang out as Gordon and Scotsman had the same thought at the same time.
As everyone else looked at them, they both turned their attention to Henry.
“Henry…” Gordon said slowly. “Have I ever mentioned how-”
“I know what you’re thinking.” Henry said quickly, cutting him off. “And I will not be a party to it.”
“Oh come now, cousin.” Scotsman said slyly. “Tell me that you can’t see the appeal of this?”
“I’ve been in the same shed as your lineage for sixty years,” Henry said. “I will not be involv-”
“I see you haven’t given up on insulting children, have you?” Sir Nigel said as he was backed into the next road. Mallard was in the back of the shed, sulking; he’d been put back there several hours early after the parents at the heritage railroad’s open day had started complaining.
“They are sticky, and stupid, and young.” Mallard grimaced. “I don’t know how you put up with them.”
“I put up with them because I like them, and more importantly, they like me.” Sir Nigel said. “If they grow up not liking steam engines, then how will we survive when they’re adults? Boilers don’t grow on trees, you know - their ticket revenues will someday pay for them!”
A vulgar noise followed this, and the other A4 rolled his eyes. “Ah yes, Super-Engine is a piece of history; they’ll never rid themselves of you.”
“Did you come in here for a purpose, or am I to be stuck with you until the morning?”
“Yes to both, unfortunately enough.”
“Well, out with it - I want my beauty sleep.”
“I think you’d have to sleep for a month to manage any of that-”
“Why you-!”
“-but I do have some family news.”
“What is it? Be quick.”
“Did you know that they found another A1 prototype? I don’t know how this has only now come to light, but-”
“I said be quick.”
“ - but, new documents have come to light in Sodor. Apparently their 4-6-0 - I cannot for the life of me remember his name, but he’s the green one in the books - he’s one of us! Scotsman, Gordon, and Osprey all vouch for his pedigree, and when I saw Arrow, he was ecstatic at the prospect of expanding the family a little. Oh, and Morayshire is already champing at the bit to go out there and welcome him in person…”
Sir Nigel kept talking for some time, but Mallard didn’t hear him.
Excuse me, but this is an reverse-humanization blog.
-
Not Every Story Ends At The Ending
2007 - January
Richard glowered at the stack of reports in front of him.
I’d fire the lot of them if I could. He thought to himself with no shortage of malice. It’s 2007, not 1910.
Following a long period of debate in the railway’s C-suite, his father had finally replaced Kerian Murphy, the retiring Head of Steam Operations. The position was one of pride on the Island, as the steam fleet was the main reason many of the railway’s employees had decided to work there.
Richard had expected some level of pushback from the employees, some of whom would most likely think that they’d been “passed over” for the coveted position, but this was ridiculous. It seemed like half the company had something to say about this, and none of it was positive.
I can’t even read most of this, it’s sickening. It was all… the sort of talk that he worked very hard to dissuade, and every single one of them should thank their lucky stars that the reports were anonymised.
Of course, this didn’t explain the other stack of reports on his desk…
When they’d started coming in, he’d initially thought that they were mistakes, reports and files intended for the mechanical services department at Crovan’s Gate, but after a few moments of reading, it became apparent that these were actually human resources complaints - even though the reports didn’t involve humans…
-
Tidmouth Station
Richard stepped out of the station’s office complex at tea time and walked into an argument in progress.
“Oh you horrid engine!” Bellowed Ralph, one of the senior drivers. He was already an unhealthy shade of red, and was gradually going to purple. “That could have hurt!” He was jumping around on one leg, having just had a blast of hot steam go across the other.
“Good.” Edward, of all engines, snapped, not even bothering to look at the man.
Ralph actually made a fist, and looked ready to try and throw a punch at the engine, when the fireman swooped out of the cab and muscled his co-worker back down the platform without a word. They disappeared into the cab in almost total silence.
“Wha-” Richard was quite frankly shocked, and had no idea how to process Edward being cross enough at someone to warrant that reaction.
“Don’t.” The blue engine snapped, the actual malice in his tone shocking Richard into silence. “This is an internal matter.”
“Internal matter? Edward, this is- what?” Before anything else could be said, the signal dropped and the train set off. Judging from the shouting that was already coming from the cab, Edward had no plans on making the journey easy on his crew.
“Edward! Internal to who?!” He eventually shouted at the train as it receded into the distance, but no answer came.
Fortunately, the station was not busy at the moment, and few, if any, people witnessed him shouting after a departing train like a crazy man.
Unfortunately, the station held more than just people… “Sir, I’d give up while you’re ahead.” Came a voice from behind him. “I’ve been here three days and they won’t say a thing.”
Spinning around, Richard found a Class 37 sitting on the next track over. “I’m sorry?”
“I said,” The engine replied, speaking as clearly as he could - which was very clear indeed; Unlike many of his class who had rough, industrial accents, this one could be reading the news on the BBC. “I’ve been here on hire since late on Sunday. Something has gotten into all of the engines here, but they won’t say what it is.”
“Not even to you?”
“Not a word. I’ve picked up some context, but it seems like the driving staff has made some deeply unkind remarks about one of their fellows. I’d assume that this hostility is coming from the driving staff’s refusal to apologize or admit that any wrong was done.”
A polite, articulate, and intelligent locomotive. What a marvel. Richard mentally calculated the over/under percentage of his Father trying to steal this one. The ‘under’ was unsurprisingly low. “Thank you, uh…”
“Fendt, sir.”
“Thank you Fendt.” Richard turned to go back into the office, to go through his papers and try and find some reason for all this, when Daisy rolled into a platform on the other side of the station.
The unbelievable noise her motor was making was a sign that something was dreadfully wrong, and as she stopped at the platform, Richard could see her face was taut with some negative emotion.
He moved towards the platform crossovers, but Fendt stopped him before he could do so. “Bad idea! Save yourself!” The diesel hissed.
“Wha-?” Richard was saying that a lot today. He watched as Daisy’s passengers left - in a hurry. The station was quiet for a moment, before her crew stormed out of her driver’s compartment and started berating her. He couldn’t hear exactly what was said, but it ended when Daisy blew a thick cloud of sooty exhaust in their faces!
They stormed away - to where Richard did not know, as all the crew facilities were on his side of the station - but as soon as they were out of sight, Daisy’s motor, which had been misfiring badly the whole time, started firing on all cylinders as if by magic.
“I told you,” Fendt said, looking a bit shocked at the level of rudeness the railcar was stooping to. “Something is wrong, and they won’t budge.”
-
Later…
Richard stormed out of the staff room, acutely aware that if he stayed a moment longer, he’d wring someone’s neck.
His attempt to discover what the driving crews had done had ended badly, with the assorted men claiming ignorance at increasing volume. Of course it wasn’t their fault, they’d extolled - it was those damn tea kettles! And the blasted buzz boxes! They were the true instigators!
Useless arses… Richard seethed as he stalked up and down the platform. He wanted to bring this to his father’s attention, but in this state he’d likely make the situation worse, not better, and was trying desperately to cool his head.
Of course, the sound of Duck and Gordon verbally sparring with their crews was not helping. Fendt was still sitting at one of the platforms, engine off, and Richard was forced to use the diesel’s bulk as a wall to block the sounds coming from the other platforms. Even Fendt, who was desperately curious about the whole affair, was trying very hard not to be noticed - there was a dangerous undercurrent to both engine’s words that hadn’t been there before.
Eventually, both engine’s crews stormed away, (Really, was anyone actually working today?) leaving the central part of the station empty.
Gordon and Duck began a muttered conversation as soon as the men left, only to quickly stop once Gordon started loudly complaining about the “fools who we must abide by!”
“Quiet!” Snapped Duck. “Do you want the whole station to hear you?”
“I don’t care if the whole station hears!” Gordon retorted. “Maybe something would actually be accomplished, instead of this pointless and uncivil war we all seem intent on prosecuting!”
“How can you say that?” Duck sounded legitimately incensed. “You heard what they’re saying about her!”
“Oh, I have - in fact I daresay that I’ve heard more said about her than you ever will!” Gordon was quick to respond. “But this animosity will solve nothing! We must work with them before someone does or says something that cannot be taken back!”
“Oh yes,” Duck said, sarcasm dripping from his every word. “Do remind me when that last worked? I seem to recall many of my brothers asking nicely not to be cut up and look at where that got them!”
A poignant silence lasted for a long minute. Richard, who had heard quite enough, thank you, had moved out from behind Fendt when the conversation started anew, and he retreated next to the diesel. Why, he couldn’t say - some macabre sense of curiosity, perhaps?
“That is not what we are dealing with.” Gordon’s voice was low and thunderous. “We are dealing with some petty, childish, and outright entitled men - boys, really - who cannot accept that they have not had everything handed to them on a silver platter! You all are acting as though she will be cut up! That’s ludicrous! They can’t even do that to her! She’s not made of metal!”
“Then why are you going along with this?”
“BECAUSE SHE IS ONE OF US!” Gordon thundered, all stealth forgotten. “And I will not for a moment have it appear as though I don’t support her implicitly!”
Duck said something else, but Richard didn’t hear it as he turned on his heel and walked back into his office. He was putting a few things together in his mind…
---
A few days later…
Richard was sitting in his office when she slipped into his office without knocking.
“You know, normally one waits to be allowed in.” He said as he looked up.
“Jus’ be lucky Ah didnae kick it down.” Siobhan said in a way which left Richard unsure if she was joking. “I’m no’ normally summoned like Ah’ve been naughty.”
“I ‘summon’ everyone. It’s proper procedure.”
“Even yer da?”
“Especially my father. Otherwise I’d have to chase him across the Island just to have him sign things.”
A laugh met this. “Ah feel that yer da’ and ye are two very different people.”
“You’re just catching on now?”
“I’ve been busy.”
“I noticed. How is the baby?”
“Monty? He's fit as can be.”
“Monty?”
“Montague.” Siobhan clarified, not missing the raise of Richard’s eyebrows. “Don’t look at me like that - it was me Grandad’s name.”
“Did you tell Duck that?”
She looked down and mumbled something.
“What was that?”
“Ah thought it was an old-fashioned name, but Deccie thought it was nice. Because he talks ta Duck all the time.”
Richard managed to suppress an uncharacteristic bark of laughter as he put together several things in his mind. “I suppose you’re very close to the engines then?”
“Is tha’ why ye called me up here?” Siobhan seemed confused by the abrupt turn in the conversation. “My friends?”
“In a manner of speaking…” Richard didn’t miss how she said “friends”, and shuffled through some of the more tame feedback forms. “When you got the steam operations job - congratulations, by the way - there were… a few complaints about it.”
“What?” She sat up straight,, genuinely upset by that. “Who?”
“I can’t tell you that.” You’d be arrested for murder before lunch if you knew. “But they were the standard fare - that you’re a woman, that you’re less experienced, that you have a child, that you were on maternity leave when you were promoted, and did I mention that you were a woman?”
“Bastards…” She muttered.
“I wholeheartedly agree, but that’s not all.”
“What, did they think Ah slept my way to the job?”
“No, of course not.” They had been much more explicit than that. “But, around that time, I started getting reports on my desk that didn’t seem to be addressed correctly.”
“What?”
“This is human relations, not engine relations.” He said simply, sliding a few of the other reports across to her.
Her eyebrows rose significantly as she read one report. “Eddie said that? Him?”
“Yes. And this wasn’t restricted to just the branches, or the steam engines.” He handed her another report. “Every engine on the Island seems to have gotten a bee in their bonnet at the same time. Coincidentally, this happened just a few days after your promotion was announced.”
“You don’ think Ah had anything ta do with-”
“Not in the sense that you’re thinking of, no.”
“But…”
“Siobhan, my father told me that he’d promoted you, but he didn’t tell me why. He only said that you “knew how to speak to engines”, whatever that means. That’s why I called you in here.” He looked at her, trying to correctly say what he was thinking. “I - This- you- I need to know, okay?”
He tried and failed to compose his thoughts. “How close are you to the engines? On a real level. I know about Donald and Douglas, but… the rest of them?”
“They’re ma friends.” Siobhan spoke like it was a universal truth on par with gravity. “Ah can’t even imagine what ma life would be without them. James helped me propose to Deccie. Del’ was my Maid o’ Honor. Ah love ‘em all ta bits.”
“I see.” And for the first time, Richard truly did.
-
Richard and Siobhan exited the offices right next to the front of the Limited. Fendt was being attached to the front, and they had to speak up over the rumble of his engine.
“Your maternity leave ends next week?”
“Aye.”
“Well, don’t let me keep you any longer.” And with that, Siobhan walked away towards platform 4, where Oliver was waiting with a train to Arlesburgh. She used the staff crossovers at track level instead of the passenger underpasses, and Richard did not fail to notice how Isobel, Dulcie, and Oliver’s faces lit up the moment they saw her.
“Oh,” Fendt said quietly.
“What?” Richard asked.
“I understand now.”
“Understand what?”
“The upset. If someone had spoken about a member of my family in the manner that these drivers have been, well, I don’t think I would have been so restrained as the engines on this Island.” The Class 37 said it as though it were obvious.
“Family?”
“Oh yes. Can’t you tell?”
“Tell what?”
Fendt eyed the man. “I suppose you wouldn’t be able to understand: She has steel in her, same as any engine.”
“How can you know that?”
“I know it in the same way that you know how to breathe.” Fendt said it with such passive but absolute surety that Richard was momentarily struck dumb. “It has been a privilege talking to you, but I must depart, and as my hire term is nearing its end, it is unlikely I will be coming back. Good day.”
With that, the 37 roared out of the station with his train. Richard blinked owlishly as he watched the train disappear into the distance.
He planned to wander back to his office and digest this, but his feet had other ideas, and he found himself crossing the lines to the cargo platforms, where Gordon was simmering on the front of the very delayed Fast Mail.
“Hello, sir.” He said, his jovial attitude giving off an unusual air of forced sincerity.
Richard looked down the train - Gordon’s crew were glaring daggers at the newspaper vans, which explained a great deal. “Gordon, may I ask of you a favour?”
“Of course!”
“Call it off.”
“What?” Innocent was another thing Gordon couldn’t pull off very well.
“This ‘uncivil war’. Call it off.”
“Sir, you don’t know the whole story-”
“Siobhan is going to keep that position. If I have to fire every other driver on this railway and hire new ones, then so be it.”
Gordon’s expression melted into one of relieved joy. “Sir, thank you-”
“Don’t.” Richard wasn’t done. “What you lot did was incredibly irresponsible, totally inappropriate, and as foolish as it was loyal. Next time you have an issue like that, talk to me - solving disputes like this is quite literally my job. Someone could have gotten hurt, and I doubt I need to tell you how upset my father would be if he had been the one to discover this!”
Unspoken was his uncertainty of who would attract his father’s ire - the engines, or the drivers.
“Yes sir, of course sir.” At least Gordon had the sense to look shame-faced. Richard had no doubt that Duck and Edward would not feel even the slightest twinge of guilt.
“Good.” Richard turned to leave, but then stopped. “And one more thing, if you have time.”
“The vans have derailed.” Gordon said bluntly. “Inept repairs to their bogies, no doubt. I have quite a while.”
Richard looked back. One of the newspaper vans was sitting at a remarkably strange angle. “I see. I imagine we’ll be seeing my father soon enough, so I will be quick.”
He maintained eye contact with Gordon, and explained what Fendt had said.
“Sir…” Gordon began uncomfortably. “I don’t think I could explain it even if I had all day.”
“Why don’t you try. Think of it as ‘punishment’ for how unpleasant you’ve all been this week.”
“All right,” Gordon said, trying to place his words carefully. “But I must warn you - the best way to tell this is in a story - one that I’ve pieced together from several different sources over the years.”
“I’m all ears.”
“Well, it all started about twenty years ago…”
1988
“They did what?” The engines looked at each other in confusion. Duck was not usually part of the branch line’s rumour mill, so anything coming from him had to be true.
“Adopted her!” Duck said, sounding no more sure than they were. “I don’t know how, but they did.”
“Adopted?” James asked. “As in, they’re now her parents?”
“Yes!”
“Can they do that?”
“I suppose so, otherwise they wouldn’t have been able to.”
The shed was quiet as the engines reflected on this.
“What does that make her? To us?” Henry broke the silence. “She has to be something.”
After a moment, he added. “And not ‘someone’s father’s brother’s nephew’s cousin’s former whatever’. That joke is growing tiresome.”
The engines pondered on this. They’d never encountered this situation before.
Delta was the first to speak up. “I think this makes her… one of us. Doesn’t it?”
“But she isn’t an engine.” Gordon countered.
“I don’t think that matters - she’s their daughter now, just like how all of us are… whatever it is we are.” She said slowly. “So by that logic, she’s with us.”
“What do you mean ‘whatever it is we are’?” Gordon asked. “What is that supposed to imply?”
“At the risk of sounding sappy,” Delta said, surveying the shed and the engines within it. “But I don’t think any of us are merely friends anymore.”
James, Henry, and Bear all looked slightly bashful at that, while Gordon quietly harrumphed at the diesel’s words.
“I suppose that’s more correct than I would normally admit…” He said quietly.
-
A few weeks later - Tidmouth Station
“Ah, and finally for the new girl,” Fred the dispatcher said. “For her first real outing on the main line, she gets the 1B03.”
A set of knowing cheers rose from the staff room’s occupants as the new girl - Siobhan - perked up. She’d been firing on the Little Western for a few years now, and probably thought she was pretty damned good if her performance reviews were any indication.
But this was the main line, not the branches, and so a little hazing was to be had at her expense. Gordon didn’t suffer fools or new hires gladly, and everyone in this room had at least one bad experience from working on his footplate. It was time for the new girl to be taken down a peg or three.
Clive, one of Gordon’s usual drivers, almost felt bad for her, but in the past few weeks she’d become almost swanky, waltzing about the station smiling like she’d just won the lottery, and was becoming entirely too chummy with the Little Western engines for anyone’s liking.
To use an old phrase: It wasn’t wrong, but you just didn’t do it. At least, not with the big engines - those nutters on the branch lines can do whatever they want, but if she wants to work out here… having her deal with Gordon will sort that right quick.
The two made their way out to Platform 2, where Gordon was already waiting with the train. The yard crew had already built his fire and oiled him up, so all that they needed to do was drive him away. Siobhan, youthfully perky even at Quarter To Seven In The Morning, totally missed the sympathetic glances the yard crew sent her way as they formally “handed over” Gordon and his train to Clive.
Once he’d dropped his bag in the cab, Clive walked himself to the front - it was good practice to speak with Gordon, so everything would be coordinated between the crew and engine for the upcoming-
“-and then, Henry says, ‘what if the Great Western Way is the wrong way?’ an’ I don’ think Duck or Ollie said a word for over an ‘our! They looked like they got hit wit’ a sleeper!”
“It cannot be that simple to make them stop!”
“Aye it was!”
The new girl was talking to Gordon like they were old friends. Clive hadn’t even noticed her go up to the front of the train, and yet here she was. “Ahem.” He cleared his throat.
“Oh,” Gordon said, his expression immediately cooling once he saw Clive. “I suppose we must be off soon.”
“Aye.” Siobhan agreed, scampering off to the cab before Clive could get a word out. “I’ll get the fire goin’ jus’ the way ye like it Gordon!” She said as she departed.
Gordon sent one last smile her way - “I trust that you will!” - before he again acknowledged Clive. “I trust that you have everything in order?”
Clive wanted to ask about that interaction, but held his tongue. “Yeah. There’s a speed restriction around Cronk station but otherwise we should be fine…”
-
Later - Barrow Station
The run went fine, and Clive couldn’t believe it.
It wasn’t that the new girl hadn’t fouled up - she had, at multiple points - but it was what happened afterwards that was confusing: Gordon had reacted calmly. When she made a mistake, he told her what she’d done, and how to fix it.
The engine hadn’t shouted, or yelled, or told her that she was being stupid once. As they’d pulled into Crovan’s Gate, Clive had actually hopped out of the cab and gave the big engine a once-over, just to make sure he was feeling all right.
Gordon had growled at him when he did that, so he was clearly feeling fine.
Arriving at Barrow, Clive did the reverse of what he did at the start of the run, and handed Gordon and the coaches over to the station staff. Without looking back, he made his way to the station’s break room. He made it most of the way through a cup of coffee before he realized that the new girl wasn’t with him.
He made it most of the way back to the platforms before he found her again. The station crew had moved Gordon to one of the bay platforms - he enjoyed sunning himself there between runs - and there the new girl was, sitting on his bufferbeam with a packet of crisps and a bottle of Irn Bru and laughing at some joke he’d made.
-
“That bad, eh?” Geoff, the Barrow station master, looked up as Clive stormed into the staff office. The Tidmouth crews had an unfortunate tendency to harass their new recruits by giving them difficult or otherwise “uncomfortable” jobs in the first few weeks. They never seemed to catch on that if the new hires were having a bad day, their day would be just as bad - the engines, Gordon especially, were firm believers in the phrase “the more, the miserable”.
Clive growled something unintelligible and disappeared into the loo without another word. Rolling his eyes at his co-worker’s ineptitude, Geoff went back to his paperwork.
A few minutes later, the door to the staff office opened up once again. The new girl - Siobhan, if he remembered her name correctly - walked in, a purposeful look on her face. “Hiya - have ye got any of the good polish? Not the shite that smells like old socks.”
“For your boots?” Geoff said slowly.
“Nae - engine polish!”
“Supply closet off the waiting room.”
“Thanks!” She disappeared out of the staff room as quickly as she’d appeared. Geoff watched through the open door as she ransacked the closet for first the polish, then what appeared to be every clean rag she could find, before making haste towards platform three.
That was enough to push the man’s eyebrows into his hairline, and he set his paperwork aside for a moment. Making his way into the waiting room and the doors to platform three, he found Siobhan animatedly polishing Gordon’s bufferbeam while making idle talk.
“Down to the left a little - there you go.” Gordon said encouragingly(!) “I dare say that if you stick with this for a few weeks, you’ll be downright competent!”
“How encouraging.” Siobhan replied cheekily.
“Oh don’t be like that - I’ve known James for almost my entire life and I’ve never seen him be competent at anything. You’re already well ahead of him!”
They continued talking as Geoff shut the door to the platform and went back to his paperwork. Seems like it went very well. I wonder what Clive was on about?
“I’m not certain I follow you there, at the end.” Richard said, trying to quell his instinctive and totally impotent anger at long-retired men and their hazing practices.
“Sir,” Gordon said quietly. “I was built at a time when engines were seen and not heard. Even then, in the nineteen eighties, I would never consider being ‘close’ with any of my crews beyond basic pleasantries.”
“So what made Siobhan so special?”
“She’s…” Gordon seemed at a genuine loss for words. “She’s not… a person, to us. A person is, for lack of better term, not someone that we associate with. Not like that.”
“You speak with me just fine.”
Gordon fixed him with a profound stare. “Times have changed, and even if they haven’t, you are going to be our Controller some day. The difference between you and an ordinary person is so vast as to be almost insurmountable.”
Richard wanted to diffuse the suddenly-heavy atmosphere with a joke about him not being a person, but refrained - Gordon was being deathly serious. “And Siobhan is like that?”
“No sir, not at all. She’s… take that diesel - Fendt. He is not one of us - not of this railway - but we still welcomed him into our shed, because he is an engine. In that sense, he is one of us - in the truest possible way. What he said, when he spoke of steel, is like that phrase some people say: “We are all human”, except not…”
He trailed off, trying to find the correct way to phrase it.
“Except Fendt wasn’t talking about humans, was he?” Richard finished. The air between them felt as heavy as it ever had. It felt like he was learning things that were not to be known by man.
“No, he was not.” Gordon paused again. “If… I were blind, and I met Siobhan for the first time… I would not imagine a person.”
“You’d imagine an engine.”
“Yes. Yes I would.”
"But you said she wasn't, before."
"Yes, but that was before..." Gordon trailed off, unable to explain it. "She wasn't, but now she is."
“Does she know?”
“No.” The atmosphere shifted again, and the air between the two became a bit lighter. “What would I tell her? I can barely tell you, and you seem to have a better grasp of this than anyone I have ever met, human or engine.” The big engine looked wistful for a moment. “I would love to tell her - to let her know what she means, but I cannot even find the words. I know that she knows how highly we all regard her, and that will have to be enough.”
That seemed to be the end of things, and just a few minutes later the breakdown gang arrived to try and free the derailed van. The mail had been re-loaded into the other vans, and Gordon steamed away to the mainland shortly thereafter, leaving Richard deep in thought on the platform.
--------
For many years, Richard thought about that day. Unlike some of the other revelations he’d been forced to have while working for the railway, this one didn’t force him to reach for a bottle - at least, not to the point of total drunkenness.
A measure of Port, or a glass of Sherry seemed to give him the greatest clarity on the topic, and he didn’t like the conclusion he came to:
It didn’t mean anything.
It was just one of the many facets of life: Siobhan was an engine - or at least the engines themselves thought so. It made no sense, but so few things did any more.
But it still didn’t settle well with Richard. The world might work that way, but Sodor didn’t. Pride cometh before a fall, love bloomed even where it was thought impossible, and every story had an ending. The fact that he didn’t know what the ending of this story was, or his role in it, sat like a weight in his stomach, coming back into full bloom every now and again:
When Tornado and Osprey had arrived on Sodor for the first time, they’d both greeted Siobhan with the same respect as Richard and his father. Richard had thought that maybe he was wrong, and it was all nothing, but when Siobhan had mentioned that she’d been born in Glasgow, Osprey had said: “Ah, you’re from St. Rollox!” as though that had explained something.
When Daphne (and that was another mystery right there) had ‘arrived’ on Sodor, she greeted Siobhan like an old friend.
When his father spent the last few days before his retirement arranging the purchase of a new locomotive, Richard had somewhat dreaded the arrival, and their inevitable immediate acceptance of Siobhan. When the ‘new’ engine turned out to be Fendt, his worries were not eased at all, as the diesel outright refused to acknowledge her as anything but an engine.
Still, the story hadn’t reached an end. There were more engines, more coaches, and more trucks, but still Siobhan was there - never changing, just getting older.
Eventually, one night in the late 2040’s, Richard came to a new conclusion.
Never changing, just getting older.
Just like an engine.
But what happens when she gets too old?
The glass of port was set down on the desk with a thud. Within a few minutes, the ice inside of it had caused a ring of condensation to form on the documents below it - the acceptance documents for a new diesel locomotive that was arriving in the morning.
The glass of port remained there, forgotten, until Richard’s housekeeper cleaned it up in the morning.
Richard slept fitfully, his mind swirling with incomprehensible possibilities of a future that he wasn’t sure he wanted to consider. A song stuck in his head - an old tune, from one of the various television shows that had been set on the Island, back when television had been a dominant market force. His children had watched it when they were young.
“If only I could be an engine too…”
He wasn’t sure how… but it seemed like this story was about to come to an end.
-
Tidmouth Sheds - 2049
The building had been rebuilt and enlarged several times since its original construction - it was bigger, and roomier, with space for many more engines than the railway possessed. It wasn’t a ‘roundhouse’ any more, instead its shape was more of a rectangle, with a rotating transfer table accessing many tracks.
The building was usually abuzz with voices and noises at all hours of the day - the nights were usually quieter.
At this moment, as the four engines were driven into the shed, a pindrop would have sounded like a gunshot.
“Hey, everyone.” Siobhan said in an impossibly small voice, letting out steam in embarrassment as she became aware that every eye in the building was on her. “Ah suppose Ah’m not retired anymore, eh?”
Gordon, seemingly the only engine whose jaw wasn’t on their bufferbeam, took a moment to look her over. “Well, I must admit that this is unexpected, but not at all unwelcome.” A broad toothy grin spread across his face, threatening to split his smokebox in half. “Not that you could ever be unwelcome here, Siobhan. Welcome home.”
This statement settled over the building, convincing many of the other engines that, no, their eyes were not deceiving them, and then the shed exploded into noise.
Stephen Hatt hadn’t been kidding when he said that with the addition of Osprey, the NWR now had a locomotive surplus. Thomas had been returned to service, meaning that Tornado could now work on the main line. Of course, while there may have been a shortage on the branch, the main line had no such issues, and both engines found themselves reduced to less important work like “thunderbird” duties and yard shunting.
Neither engine minded this arrangement - work was work, after all, and it was better than doing nothing - but there was some pushback from their drivers, as both engines were not only borrowed, but also very valuable, meaning that only senior main line crews were allowed to operate them.
Siobhan, who was now the senior locomotive driver for the NWR, but had worked her way up from the bottom of the railway’s hierarchy since the 1980’s, had no objection to this, and soon made fast friends with both engines. However, the rest of the Tidmouth-based crews allocated to the two had different opinions...
“Do you really want to cause a fuss over this?” Roy, the railway’s scheduler, was a no-nonsense Mancunian who had come to Sodor after finding Network Rail too disorganized. “Because this will reflect badly on you.”
“All I want is something better than yard work!” Whined Craig, Osprey’s chosen driver for the day. He’d worked for the NWR for many years, and had forgotten how lucky he was to be able to drive steam engines every day and get paid for it. “I’ve got an A4! Mallard and all that! And I get yard work? C’mon man, gimme something here!”
“Osprey.” Roy said over his spectacles. “Not Mallard.” He made a few very deliberate clicks on his computer. “But if you insist on barging into my office and making a fuss like a child, I suppose you can take 6B11 - it’ll make James’ day if nothing else.”
Craig smiled like a cat that caught the canary, and once the office printer had spat out the updated train orders, he left in a very self-satisfied manner.
Roy rolled his eyes and went back to his work, but within a few minutes his desk phone rang.
“Hello? Speaking. I see. Will this interfere with - oh his driver is ill? Well I hope it’s nothing serious.” He made a few clicks, un-assigning the engine from their next train. “Ah, well, there’s nothing that can be done about that. Yes, I’m already assigning a replac- oh, Osprey was asked for specifically? Well, I do apologize, but she has already left for her next assignment, however I do see that 98863 is available for that run. Yes. Splendid. Consider it done. Good-bye.”
He hung up the phone, and allowed a rare smile to cross his face. He could see into the yard from his office window. Considering that his fireman was still polishing the A4, Craig was most likely still harassing the staff canteen for a cup of coffee. Tornado could be seen by the coaling stage, and already the assistant stationmaster could be seen bounding across the tracks, ready to bring them news of their new assignment.
What a shame, Roy thought to himself as he updated the roster. From what I understand, Tornado is fairly adept with wagons.
NORTH WESTERN RAILWAY TOPS ACCESS PORTAL V25.1.2.6
Osprey rolled her eyes as she rolled into the docks. Her driver was seemingly more eager for this run than she was, but it would be nice to stretch her wheels. The sidings at the docks were not full - it was low tide, and many of the bigger container ships and bulk freighters were waiting in open water.
A little red six-coupled diesel shunter was organizing a line of flatbeds under a crane, and stopped what he was doing as she was driven in. “Well knock me over with a feather!” He exclaimed in a strong Hampshire accent. “Whomever did you piss off to have someone like yerself come down here?”
“Ah, just button it!” Craig leaned his head out of the cab. “We’ve got the 6B11, on the quick!”
“I see,” Said the shunter sympathetically. “Hello, Craig! I’ll have your punishment brought around in just a tic.”
Arthur the fireman roared with laughter at this, and Craig turned a bright red. “You see here you little urchin…!”
But the diesel had already vanished behind a line of containers, leaving Craig fuming, Arthur using his shovel to hold himself up, and Osprey more and more bemused.
“You certainly know how to make friends and influence engines…” She remarked quietly.
She hadn’t meant for it to be loud enough to be heard, but evidently Arthur had good ears, and the fireman’s laughter redoubled while Craig tried and failed to “win” the argument.
The two were at the point of menacing each other with coal shovels when the little diesel struggled back into view, a line of rather large aggregate hoppers towering over his small frame. “Y’know, if I was you,” He said to Osprey directly. “I’d find a way to pay Craig out for this - they’re vicious today!”
“Oh, little Salty…” The lead hopper practically oozed cruel satisfaction. “You say such polite things about us! Tell me how you really feel!”
“Go bump yerself Hector…” The diesel growled at the hoppers as he was uncoupled, and scuttled away without another word to anyone. Osprey felt sorry for the next set of trucks that annoyed him.
Speaking of annoying trucks, the lead hopper looked over at her in a most unpleasant fashion. “Now, look at what we have ‘ere. What sort of cheese wedge are you?”
“I’m-”
“Looks like Cheddar to me! Is that what ye are? A nice hunk of cheddar?”
“My name is-”
“Oh! How’s about that Swiss cheese? Gruyere?”
“I am-”
At this point the other trucks had begun naming cheeses and laughing. Somewhere between “edam”, “camembert”, and “can we get a real engine please?” she lost patience with them.
“ALL RIGHT!” She bellowed, shooting steam every which way. “My name is Osprey! And I am going to take you jokers all the way to Barrow whether you like it or not!”
This did not have the intended effect. “Oooh! She’s a hot one! Best make sure she don’t melt!”
“I’d say she already has - lookit her, she’s all droopy!” This from another truck.
“Yer right. Must be Raclette then.”
Osprey said nothing as she was turned around on the yard’s wye. She was fuming, and had she said anything at that moment, she’d have sounded much more like Gordon or Mallard than she’d have liked to!
Craig meanwhile thought it was all a great lark, and relished in his apparent “victory” over both engine and fireman. This lasted until he tried to move the reverser into the reverse position, and found it stuck fast. Grunting, he yanked on it a bit harder, with the same result. Once, Twice, Three more times he yanked on it, but still Osprey refused to move the lever.
“C’mon…” he grunted. “Stupid thing… stupid engine… ”
Arthur, realizing the lunacy in calling an engine stupid whilst standing on their footplate, took a measured step back. Craig continued to pull, putting more and more of his strength into it until…
CLANG! WOOSH! “OW!” Osprey “let go” of the reverser, and put as much steam as she could behind the valve. It shot into the full reverse position, at which point Craig, who had been trying to pull the lever towards himself, now was hit in the forehead by it as it sprang back. It was such a hit that he saw stars as Osprey began to reverse out of the wye.
Arthur almost fell out of the cab, he was laughing so hard, and Osprey allowed herself a vicious grin as she backed down onto the still-mocking hoppers.
Make cheese puns all you like, I’ve been doing this since before you were a glint in your designer’s eye. She growled to herself. I survived the Blitz and Modernization, some garbage bins on wheels aren’t going to get the best of one of Gresley’s finest…
--
They made it as far as Gordon’s Hill. The journey there was a slow and arduous one, dogged by slow orders, red signals, and sticking brakes up and down the train. They'd been shunted aside for faster trains twice before passing Knapford. Osprey tried to bump the trucks into submission, but they were more than willing to bump her back, and that fight had ended when Arthur was almost thrown from the footplate by all the banging.
Seeing as they hadn’t managed to break 30 miles per hour the entire time, Craig stopped the train at Wellsworth and asked the signalman for a banker pre-emptively. In turn, the signalman informed him that if they dawdled, they'd likely miss their signal path to the mainland. This worsened everyone's mood significantly, and BoCo (who had banking duty today) was not looking forward to the long slog up the hill.
BoCo was right. Even with the diesel pushing from behind with all his might, the train was still too slow, and Osprey was eventually dragged to a seething, steaming halt halfway up the hill.
Osprey growled, a sound that was more metallic than organic, and started off again. BoCo wasn't at all ready for this, however, and when the slack pulled out he was left exactly where he was while the train surged ahead a few dozen feet, before grinding to a halt again.
The trucks howled with laughter at this, while Arthur watched Osprey's boiler pressure shoot up by a worrying amount. "Down girl!" He cried. "This lot isn't worth it!"
Hissing unprintable epithets under her breath, Osprey whistled to BoCo, and when he responded in kind, they set off again.
This time it seemed like they had a chance, so quite naturally Hector and his friends slipped their brakes on, dragging the train to yet another standstill with a screech that came from both their brake shoes and their engine.
"Maybe we need to go down and cut the train-" Craig suggested.
"No!" Barked Osprey, sending a gout of smoke and steam into the air. "Let's go again!"
"We can't-"
"We will!"
"Arthur..." Craig said plaintively. "Tell her."
"Hello, I don't think we've met before." Arthur looked at him as though he were an idiot. "I fire Gresleys on a regular basis. In what world is she going to agree to that?"
Unaware of the discussion going on at the front, BoCo chose this moment to speak up. "Osprey? What's our plan?"
"Melt! That's what the little cheese wedge is gonna do!" Hector crowed.
Osprey bumped the train viciously, but just as quickly was bumped back by the hoppers. This jolt was harder than the others had been, and actually shoved the A4 forward a few inches, her wheels screeching along the rails.
"Okay." She said quietly, more to herself than anything. "No more Miss Nice Engine. BOCO! HIT ME!"
"What?!"
"YOU HEARD ME! BASH THE TRAIN! HARD AS YOU CAN!" A determined look came across her face as her boiler pressure skyrocketed to the upper limit of what was safe. "I fought the Nazis. No truck gets the better of me…"
The trucks hadn't limited their horrid comments to Osprey, and BoCo didn't need to be told twice. He rolled back a chain or so, before surging forward, slamming into the hoppers with a violent CLANG that echoed up and down the hill.
At the head of the train, Osprey waited until the train was slammed against her tender before charging forward, almost ripping Craig's arm from its socket as the regulator slammed into "full steam" without warning.
With BoCo pushing hard from behind, there was a considerable mount of slack in the train's couplings, so when Osprey took off, the chain between her and Hector was able to stretch by a large amount, meaning that for a moment, she was accelerating without the train to slow her down.
Hector had begun to lose his confident look when BoCo had smashed into the train, and let out a yowl of both panic and pain when the slack between himself and Osprey finally let out, and he was violently jerked into motion. It felt like his coupling was going to be pulled out of his bufferbeam, a feeling that was exaggerated moments later by the slack behind him letting out, causing him to jerk the wagon behind him into motion, an experience that continued as each wagon behind him was yanked into motion, one at a time. "Bloody 'ell! Hold back!" He shouted to his fellows, trying to slip the brakes on and stop the train.
Osprey had other ideas. As soon as she felt the brakes start to come on, she threw as much power as she could at the steam powered air brake pump. Behind her, the trucks yelped as their brake shoes were forcibly pulled off of their wheels and into the "released" position.
With the trucks taken care of, Osprey charged forwards in a cloud of steam and sand. The crest of the hill was just coming into sight, and she threw every ounce of steam she had into her pistons. At the back of the train, BoCo was astonished to find that the load on his buffers was getting lighter, as Osprey began to pull the train up the hill by herself.
"Almost… there!" She panted as she crested the summit of the hill. Now that she had some momentum, the train became easy, and the aggregates hoppers began to pull away from BoCo with increasing speed. When the diesel rolled to a stop just past the summit, he found the train already well on its way down the hill, a thick black thundercloud of smoke trailing behind as a testament to Osprey’s effort.
Arthur had been shoveling like mad for the last ten minutes or so, and took a moment to wipe his brow and catch his breath as the train clattered down the other side of the hill. "Whoo, that was some serious effort!" He said, checking his watch. "And still on time - we might make Barrow on time!"
“What?” Craig stared at his own watch. “We’re at least twenty minutes behind! They’d surely put us in the loop.”
“I recall being told that we would have “generous timings” the whole way.”
At this moment, the AWS horn sounded, not the angry tone of an upcoming red signal, but instead the ding of an upcoming yellow aspect. “See?” Both men said, as Craig pushed the button to dismiss the warning.
“6B11, Control.” Squawked the radio.
“6B11.”
“6B11 disregard the approach and slow signal ahead of you. We’ve just lined you for a green all the way to Barrow on the down slow line. You'll take the crossover at Maron.”
“Roger that.” Craig just scowled as Arthur looked triumphant. Ahead of them, Osprey whistled victoriously as the distant signal raised its semaphore arm from “slow” to “clear.”
“See that Hector?” She called back down the train as Craig opened the regulator a bit more. “No stopping now!”
Hector hadn’t gone this fast in ages, and wailed piteously to himself.
While astute viewers of the Television Show (and it has earned those capital letters, for the engines never refer to it in any other way) might know that Percy carries all the Island’s mail by himself, the reality of the situation is much more complicated.
The Royal Mail formally discontinued its use of mail trains nationwide in 2003, including Sodor’s mail trains. However, they did so without fully considering the geography of the island and its neighbors. You see, while Sodor has a very large rail network that connects every city, town, and village within it, (except Harwick and Ballaswein, but that is another story altogether…) its road network is decidedly sub-par. The A590, the island’s main road, is narrow and winding, with few overtake points to allow slower traffic to give way. It runs through town centers instead of going round them, meaning that any local traffic jam can quickly spread to the next town over.
The Royal Mail’s new plan for Sodor was to take all the mail to airports in Dryaw or Barrow-in-Furness by lorry, at which point it would be flown to Carlisle to be sorted, and then flown back, where it would be delivered to local post offices for final delivery.
In a vacuum, this system actually works rather well, as outgoing mail can be quickly and efficiently routed to destinations outside of Sodor, and since an airplane has already been scheduled, returning inter-island mail to the island is not an issue. Unfortunately for the Royal Mail, Sodor is not a vacuum, and problems quickly arose as the mail lorries began experiencing significant delays from almost the very beginning. Soon, the Island’s mail was being delivered late every day, much to the irritation of its residents!
This also deeply complicated the issue of mail coming from Northern Ireland and the Isle of Man. While mail from these places was sent from Douglas to mainland Britain by air, there had been a longstanding agreement between the governments of Sodor and Man that any ferry service between them would have to carry the mail - a holdover from the days before air travel, but a welcome one at the time, as it meant that mail from Man continued to arrive on schedule!
While no agreement had been worked out with the Royal Mail in regards to Northern Irish mail, the overall curtailment of mail services on Sodor was of a particular annoyance to the Royal Mail’s Northern Irish division, as they had just spent a large number of pounds expanding a sorting office near the docks of the Belfast-Tidmouth ferry!
These agreements/expenditures, and the resultant crown inquiry into whether or not they were still legally binding, were the primary impetus behind the re-institution of Sodor’s mail trains. Between 2005 and 2007, the NWR’s mail services ran as part of the Tidmouth-Barrow express trains. Its primary duties were the delivery of pre-sorted Irish and Manx mail to post offices along the NWR main line, however it also operates a limited en-route sorting service for letter post bound for stations immediately along the line. Since the mail contract did not include anything beyond Barrow-in-Furness, (The Royal Mail was very specific in its definition: “Sodor-Bound” mail went no further than Barrow) this necessitated detachable mail carriages. As the London-bound Wild Nor’wester had been run by Intercity 125 equipment since late 1999 - which did not feature easily detachable carriages, and the mail ferry sailings from Ireland and Man arrived after the train's 7:30 AM departure time, the cars were attached to the 11:30 Midday Express, which travelled from Tidmouth to Barrow with only a single intermediate stop at Crovan’s Gate.
Services ran in this manner until the summer of 2007, when the service was spun out into its own train - the Fast Mail - after an increase in bulk mail and parcel post traffic forced an unacceptable number of unnecessary stops in the timetabled non-stop journey. This increase in traffic came from two diametrically opposed services: print media and e-commerce.
E-commerce giants such as Amazon.com and eBay had begun significant expansions into the country over the past decade, with Sodor seeing the benefits of this after an Amazon fulfilment center opened in Rugeley, Staffordshire, allowing Sudrians to receive 2-day shipping on most items sold by the online retail giant. Meanwhile, the increased reach of online news sources and other pre-existing financial difficulties had caused many of Sodor’s newspapers to fold or merge due to falling readership in the early 2000s. This state of newspaper consolidation eventually left three survivors - the Tidmouth Advertiser, the Wellsworth Parliamentarian, and the Sodor Edition of Barrow-in-Furness’ North-West Evening Mail. While the Parliamentarian was content to reform itself as a weekly broadsheet, the two daily papers began fighting for a share of the Sodor news market. While their initial price war has long since settled into an uneasy but stable détente, both papers gained significant footholds into smaller Sudrian towns. As almost all Sudrian towns are located on or near the NWR’s main line, this traffic was sent down the railway, and generated enough traffic on the NWR to justify the reactivation of several old BR newspaper transport vans that had been left on the Island following BR’s discontinuation of dedicated newspaper transport services in the early 1990’s. As both the Advertiser and the Evening Mail were evening papers, the distribution occurred in the late morning, requiring the newspaper vans - which were Mk.1 General Use Vans or converted coaching stock just like the Royal Mail’s Traveling Post Office carriages - to run on mid-day passenger trains in order to meet delivery times.
Due to the scheduled nature of the stops required by the newspaper unloadings, which did not allow them to be placed on the Midday Express, and the demands of the newspaper companies to not have their goods placed on slow stopping trains, the newspaper vans were placed on the tail of the Limited, a mid-day semi-fast train that ran slightly ahead of the Express. This decision was not a successful one, and caused significant confusion and delay for the NWR, as the increased station dwell times caused by the newspaper deliveries, combined with the frequent unscheduled stops on the Express caused by Parcel Post deliveries (which could not be delivered or loaded while the train was still in motion), often led to both trains having simultaneous unscheduled stops at the same station - a situation that often led to “cataclysmic” delays further down the line.
After a mere fifteen months, the NWR was forced to reallocate the mail and newspaper cars into their own separate train - the Fast Mail. This train, which is timetabled as a non-stop return journey from Tidmouth to Barrow and back, operates under the principle of “goods request stops”, in which any specific station stop must be “requested” in advance by the stationmaster or by the freight customers - usually the Royal Mail and the distribution arms of the Advertiser and Evening Mail.
As a result of all this-
“Oi! Tornado! Wakey Wakey, lazy boiler!”
------
Tidmouth Station
Tornado snorted as she opened her eyes. “I wasn’t sleeping!” She protested.
“Yer eyes were shut.” Siobhan gave her a knowing look. “It isn’t like I haven’t been driving LNER Pacifics for years!”
“I was listening to a podcast!” Tornado said defensively. “It was just getting to the good part!”
Siobhan didn’t quite know what to say to that, and eventually walked back to the cab muttering about “damned teenagers and their trends.”
“Iff’n ye think that’s bad,” Sidney said as she entered the cab. “Wait until she gets talking about somethin’ she’s interested in. You’ll not be able to pry yourself free with a crowbar.”
“She’s not a normal engine, is she?” Siobhan hadn’t driven the new A1 before today, and the reports coming in from everyone else on the railway had implied that she was strange even by Sodor’s admittedly high standards.
“D’ya think I’d be here if she was?” Sidney was technically a volunteer from the A1 Trust, but had stayed on Sodor because, in his words: ‘Ya'd never survive wit’out someone who knows her!” The NWR had recognized his talent in engine-wrangling, and had allowed him to stay on Tornado’s footplate.
Siobhan merely rolled her eyes and looked out of the cab and down the train. As usual, the bags and bales of newspapers were slowing down the loading process significantly, and it looked like the Fast Mail would be late yet again.
-
Some minutes later
The newspaper van had finally been shut, and the stationmaster came up to the cab with the finalized train orders. “You’ve a light load today.” He said as he passed the papers up. “Wellsworth, Cronk, and then straight on to Barrow. Hopefully those layabouts with the paper won’t muck anything up today!”
“Here’s hoping.” Siobhan said as she took the papers. The newspaper delivery drivers were terrible at being timely, and often held up the train by many minutes due to their incompetence.
After a few more minutes of waiting, the Guard blew his whistle, the signal dropped, and the train set off towards Wellsworth. The train was short today - only four carriages, and almost immediately she had to rein Tornado in to prevent her from exceeding the station speed limit.
“Easy!” She called. “S’not a race!”
“Sorry!” Came the apologetic reply. “It’s quite light - I didn’t mean to.”
“Little scatterbrained, isn’t she?” She remarked to Sidney. “Reminds me o’ my daughter.”
“No doubt about that.” The older man (and she was getting to a point in her life where that meant something) said sagely. “She’s very good at pulling trains, but you’ve got to mind her at all times - she’ll leave ye behind if you aren’t watching.”
“Good to know.” Siobhan remarked idly, paying more attention to the line of hopper wagons in the goods loop just outside the station. A positively thunderous cloud of smoke was trailing from the engine in front, and she wanted to see which poor engine had got saddled with those brutes today.
“I don’ think you understand my meaning…” Sid tried to clarify himself, but his words were lost under the angry woosh of steam and flurry of curses coming from the A4 heading the coal train. “... I’ll admit I’ve never seen that before.”
“If those trucks cause something to her, I swear ta fuck I will nail your hide ta my office door, Craig!” Siobhan shouted out the window at the retreating train.
In the hubbub of all of this, no more was said of Tornado’s absentmindedness…
---
At Wellsworth, the post and newspapers were unloaded in short order, but the train was held for a few minutes to allow BoCo out of the yard.
“Banking duties, I’m sure you understand.” He said apologetically as he rolled to a stop next to Tornado.
“Oh of course!” She said brightly. “I just hope that - oh, there she comes!”
“She” referred to Osprey, who rolled into Wellsworth with such a clatter and commotion that all other communication was impossible. She was practically vibrating with anger as her driver stormed out of the cab and began to oil her joints.
“Does Gordon allow you to use his throttle in such a maladroit fashion?” She hissed.
“No!”
“Then why do you insist on doing so to me?!”
“Now you see here! I am trying-”
“And failing!”
“Why you stuck up piec-”
“Say it. I dare you.”
Everyone else in the station wished they were somewhere else at that moment, except Siobhan, who was about to “teach” Craig the proper way to speak to engines when the signal dropped and the guard radioed that they were clear. Tornado, who didn’t want to be anywhere near whatever was going on between Osprey and her driver, whistled urgently and began to pull out of the station on her own!
Sidney rolled his eyes and reached over to reduce steam before Siobhan noticed. When she finally returned her attention to the train, she hadn’t noticed Tornado’s slight movement and advanced the throttle normally. Tornado responded with a will, and charged out of Wellsworth and up Gordon’s Hill as fast as she could!
--
The train pulled into Cronk station, and already Siobhan could tell it was going to be a long stop. The station’s carpark was situated next to the tracks, and the lorries used by the newspaper companies usually queued up in the spaces reserved for buses. Seeing no lorries usually meant that they were going to turn up whenever they felt like it. This was a problem, as Cronk Station’s goods office had been turned into the station café many years ago. This meant that there was nowhere to put the unloaded newspapers, and as a result, the train would be forced to wait for the lorries to show up. Of course, the train was allowed to leave if the lorry drivers never showed up, but it was NWR policy to wait at least a quarter of an hour before doing so.
Quite naturally, this meant that the drivers were probably going to show up 14 minutes from now, and take their time unloading.
“Might as well get comfortable.” She said to Sidney.
“Huh?”
“No lorries for the papers. It’s gonna be a while.”
“I see…” He said, eyeing the station café, which was advertising ‘2-for-1 Steak Pies’. “In that case, I’ll be back.”
He clambered down from the cab, and made a beeline for the café, much to Siobhan’s bemusement.
Normally she filled spare time with the unending supply of paperwork that was required to run a train in the 21st century, but with the journey not even half over yet, there was only so much she could do, and ten minutes later Siobhan was pacing up and down the platform, acutely aware of how late the train was.
“Shall we ever be on our way?” One of the mail carriages groused. “I was unloaded promptly, so I just cannot understand the delay… Can you understand it, Constance?”
“Why don’t you shut your mouth, Elodie?” Snapped the newspaper van. “You didn’t see me complaining when your door jammed last week, did you?”
“Well, I never!”
“But you do!”
The mail clerks were busy stowing the last of the outbound mail, and exchanged tired looks with each other and the other mail carriages. Siobhan didn’t even try to intervene this time - you’d have an easier time convincing James to turn blue.
“I do hope I’m not interrupting a lover’s spat.” A familiar voice said from behind her, and Siobhan turned on her heel to find her husband Declan standing on the platform, a clipboard in hand.
“What are you doing here?” She said, her mood immediately improving.
Declan worked for a large business consultancy firm, and explained that his company had been hired by the Tidmouth Advertiser to find the source of the numerous complaints about their newspaper’s delivery and distribution. “Although I don’t think I have to look very hard to find one source.” He said as the coaches continued to bicker behind him.
“Oh, jaysus,” Siobhan buried her head in his shoulder. “It’s like this every time! Ah dinnae think we’ve been on time once this month!”
“Right,” He said while pulling a pen out of his suit jacket. “I’ll make a note of that.”
He proceeded to balance his clipboard on his wife’s head as he did so, which drew an exasperated laugh and playful swat on the arm before the moment was broken by the eventual arrival of the newspaper lorries.
The newspaper delivery team consisted of the four men from the lorries, plus an attendant employed by the railway who rode inside Constance and threw smaller bundles of papers out at stations where the train didn’t stop. They seemed to know that they were under observation, and the load of newspapers was hauled out of Constance and into the lorries in record time. It took only ten minutes for the newspaper van to be significantly emptier, and Siobhan practically snatched the updated manifest sheet out of the lorry driver’s hand when he finished signing it.
What happened next occurred very quickly:
Siobhan, Sven the guard, and Declan were all standing at the end of the train - the railway employees were making sure that all doors were secured on the train, while Declan was saying his goodbyes to his wife before leaving to follow the delivery lorries on their route.
-
Sidney was still in the station café, chatting to an old friend who he’d run into unexpectedly.
-
Tornado had heard “it’s gonna be a while” and had promptly zoned out, staring blankly into space while waiting for the departure. She’d only come back to reality when several of the semaphore signals at the end of the platform had clonked into the “proceed” position several minutes ago. One of them was for her, but she wasn’t too worried, as the guard hadn’t yet blown his whistle. The other one was very interesting, as it was for an “up-bound” train traveling east towards Barrow, but on the westbound “down” slow line, - she’d heard that Sodor often ran trains “wrong main”, but she’d hadn't yet seen it herself.
That “wrong running” train turned out to be Osprey, who had evidently regained control over the train somewhere between Wellsworth and Cronk, as she was in fine spirits as she flew through the station, the coal trucks screaming at her to slow down all the while. An A4 going at full tilt was a sight to behold all by itself, but the sheer calamity of Osprey’s train drew every eye to her, and everything else in the station momentarily ground to a halt until the train had disappeared into the distance.
“Oh!” Exclaimed Sven, who was now looking towards the end of the platform. “We’ve got the signal.”
He scanned the platform and found no sign of Sidney. He hadn’t seen the old man leave the café, so he was probably still in there. Ordinarily, he communicated with the train crew through the radio, but half the train crew was standing next to him, and his radio was in the guard’s compartment of the rearmost mail carriage.
Oh well, The stout Swede thought to himself. Guess I’ll have to do it the old fashioned way…
Taking a few steps back from the train, he blew his whistle as loud as he could, and waved his green flag.
Siobhan and Declan had both covered their ears in order to not be deafened by Sven, and kissed one last time before going their separate ways. “You gonna be home before seven?” She asked.
“Should be. I thought the match was on at 7:30?”
“We gotta eat first! I ain’t cooking during a - what the fuck?!”
Sidney hadn’t emerged from the café yet, and Siobhan was standing on the platform. There was nobody in Tornado’s cab. And yet, within a few seconds of the Sven blowing his whistle, Tornado sounded hers and began to move away from the platform!
-
At the front of the train, Tornado hadn’t been expecting the guard’s whistle, and started quickly, very aware of the amount of time she’d have to make up. The train rapidly pulled out of the station, and within a minute was out of sight, on its way towards Kildane.
-
On the platform, Sid threw open the door to the café and watched as the train vanished into the distance. “Damn it all!” he groaned to no-one in particular. He’d told them to mind Tornado, but clearly they hadn’t experienced an engine of such… independent spirit before.
“Sidney!” Came a voice from further down the platform. It was Sven, who was sprinting towards the station buildings. “Radio! Call it in! It’s a runaway!”
Sid’s hand stole to his belt and found nothing but an empty holster. “It’s in the cab.” He said, before trying to calm down the guard. “But don’t worry - she’s no runaway.”
“What?” Sven gasped from his exertion, already heading towards the stationmaster’s office. “Nobody was in the cab! Someone must have gotten in!”
Oh blimey. Sid thought, wondering how many times in the next half hour he was going to have to explain the peculiarities of Tornado’s operations to panicked railwaymen. “C’mon.” he said, guiding Sven towards the station building. “Let’s find Siobhan and the stationmaster and I’ll explain it to you all at the same time. There’s nothing to worry about. Trust me.”
How can you be so calm about this?!” Sven was unconvinced. “The train has run away, and Siobhan had to jump on it!”
“What?!”
---
Moments Earlier
Siobhan had been forced to bodily drag Sven onto the train by his lapel, and dragged him through the carriage to the guard’s compartment door. “Locked. Ye got yer keys?”
“Um, love, I don’t think I’m going to be able to help here.” Siobhan spun around to find her husband behind her. A formless curse fell from her lips as she looked at her hand, which was clutching Declan’s shirt, not Sven’s.
“Fuck!” She exclaimed, not for the last time.
“What’s going on?” Declan hadn’t quite grasped what was happening yet.
“The train’s doing a runner!” She explained as she tried and failed to kick down the door to the guard’s compartment. It was a steel door, and kicking it with her steel toed boots did nothing but hurt her feet. “And the brake cord is in there!”
Declan paled. “What do we now?”
“Find the next one!” And with that Siobhan was off, shoving open the door to the mail sorting compartment and running through with decided urgency. Declan, unsure of what else to do, followed in her wake.
--
The Stationmaster’s Office - Cronk Station
“What?” Sven screamed. “He’s ill? Now!?”
“As I have been saying,” His assistant said, her expression getting more and more fed up as Sven continued. “He is ill, and if you will just wait a minute, the assistant station master will speak with you!”
Sidney had given up trying to calm Sven down, and just held his head in his hands. This was only going to get worse before it got better…
--
The Main Line
It really was a wonderful day, Tornado thought to herself as she rolled towards Kildane. The sun was shining, she had a train behind her, and it was smooth sailing all the way to Barrow. If she didn’t know any better, she’d think it was the 1930’s.
The clatter of the AWS system reminded her that it wasn’t the 1930’s, or indeed even the 20th century. She acknowledged the warning and eyed the signal. It was yellow over green, with a pair of lamps - one blue and one white - illuminated below it: En-route Mail and Newspaper delivery - reduce speed to 40.
That was something the NWR had developed for the newspaper deliveries, she remembered, and she began braking the train to comply with the incredibly rare speed restriction.
That is so cool! She thought.
--
The Train
The guard compartment in the next carriage was locked too, and Siobhan had nearly broken her foot on the door when the train began to slow down.
“Thank fuck!” She yelled as a signal slipped by the only window of the carriage. “Must’ve tripped the AWS - we’re gonna stop.”
“Well,” Declan said, leaning against a wall now that it was clear the danger was over. “That was exciting.”
“Yeah.”
“You know, for all the yelling you used to do about how unrealistic that television show the kids watched was-”
“Don’ say it!”
“- this seems remarkably accurate.”
Siobhan didn’t say anything, and instead threw her gloves at him.
---
Cronk Station
“- I don’t care that you got left behind!” The assistant stationmaster shouted back. “I’m not causing a ruckus and stopping the ruddy train just because you couldn’t get out of the café in time!”
Sven spluttered incoherently. “I - he- I wasn’t - He was in the café!” He shouted, pointing to Sidney. “And the train left without anyone!”
The assistant stationmaster’s look spoke volumes.
“Just call them!” Sven shouted again. “Even if it is nothing, it’s against policy for the train to be without a guard, so do your job and stop the train!”
---
The Main Line
Tornado whistled hello to the mail staff on the platform as she chuffed through Kildane. Several of the men waved back, before turning their attention to the mail basket, which was prepared for the inbound post. A little further up the platform, a single mail bag hung from the mail crane. This whole process had already taken place several times already, but Tornado still found it all novel - this was her first ever mail train, after all.
After clearing the platforms (and it was very disappointing, in some childish way, that there was no appreciable jolt to the train when the mailbag was collected), the train rolled past the signals protecting the end of the platform, went through the junction that served the electric branch and the Motorail terminal, and continued onto the main line.
“3B02, Control.” The radio crackled.
Tornado waited a moment for Siobhan to answer, but when nothing happened, she mentally shrugged and answered the call herself. “3B02.”
“3B02, you’ve got the Limited coming up behind you sharp-ish. Can you stay ahead of it?”
“How fast are they going?”
“They’re passing Cronk right now. If you can get to SJJ 170 in ten minutes you’ll be fine, otherwise we’ll redirect you to the slow line.”
Signal SJJ 170 protected the west side of Kellsthorpe Road station, about seventeen miles away from Kildane station. Tornado was not the best at math, but understood that it was theoretically possible for her to make it. “I can do that.” She radioed back.
“Understood. No speed restrictions to report. Good luck.” Came back the reply.
Tornado smiled excitedly, and began to pick up speed.
--
Rail Traffic Control - Tidmouth
The controller watched on the “big board” as 3B02 began to pick up speed.
“Think they’ll break the ton?” His coworker asked him.
“Dunno about the ton, but with Tornado on it they’re bound to break something.” He said.
The phone rang, and he answered it.
“What?” He said disbelievingly into the handset. “I just spoke to the crew, that’s impossible. Told me so? What- hello?” He put the handset back. “They hung up on me!”
“Who was that?”
“Cronk station. Said that the train left its entire crew behind and was a runaway.”
“Didn’t you just talk to them?”
“That’s what I told him!”
“What’s going on?”
“I don’t know…” He said, picking up the phone to call Cronk station again.
--
The Train
The relief both Siobhan and Declan were feeling had evaporated when the train had stopped slowing down as it approached Kildane. They’d rushed into the next mail carriage, intent on finding the emergency brake cord there, only to find the hustle and bustle of a traveling post office train at work. This carriage - Elodie - had both the mail unloading mechanism as well as the catch netting, the installment of which had forced the removal of the guard’s cabin and the emergency brake cord.
Shoving their way towards the next carriage, Siobhan stopped dead as a friendly whistle was audible through Elodie’s open doors.
Rushing to the nearest door, (and ignoring the Royal Mail staff who shouted at her to get back) she leaned out of the doorway and looked down the train. There was a slight curve going into the platforms at Kildane, and she could see into Tornado’s cab: it was empty.
“What the fuck is going on?!” She shouted, drawing the attention of the mail staff on the platform. They gawked at her, and shouted for her to get back, and she ignored them, trying to see if someone was hiding inside Tornado’s cab.
This meant she wasn’t paying any attention to the platform, and she was surprised when a hand grabbed her by the shoulder and yanked her into the train just before the train passed the mail crane, the mail bag just inches from her head!
Spinning around, she found Declan staring at her in shock. “Pay attention!” He shouted, more out of fear than anything else, before clutching her tightly.
She blinked a long, shocked blink, letting him hold her. “Nobody’s driving, but we’re still going. What’s going on!?”
---
The Main Line
Tornado watched the permitted speed sign as she rolled past it. Before now she hadn’t really given it much thought, as she had been on the front of slow goods trains, or stopping passenger services that halted at Kellsthorpe Road.
But now she was on a fast train.
One that didn’t need to stop at the next station.
One that had been specifically instructed to go as fast as possible.
The A1 Trust hadn’t yet received clearance from Network Rail to run her above 75 miles an hour, but this wasn’t Network Rail track…
“Look out Ossie!” She called out at the fading trail of smoke that Osprey had laid down when she’d gone along the line a few minutes earlier. “I’m catching up!”
Inside the empty cab, the speedometer needle slowly crept upwards…
--
The Train
Constance the newspaper van hadn’t been built as a passenger carriage; she’d been built as a “General Utility Van”, and therefore had no equipment other than electric lighting. When she’d been reactivated for mail train service, she’d been retrofitted with gangway connectors, but that was all. Notably, she did not feature an emergency brake cord.
Siobhan had discovered this the hard way when she’d charged into the van and discovered the walls to be entirely bare, with nothing but a light switch anywhere. She growled, just a little, before wading through the bags of newspapers and heading for the door at the front.
“Where are you going to go?” Declan asked, too invested in this to stay in the mail cars where it might be safer. “This is the front of the train.”
“Corridor tender!” Was the only reply she gave.
Striding forward, Siobhan threw open the door at the other end, intent on stopping this train once and for all.
What she said next was thankfully lost to the howling wind that blew past her and sent loose newspapers flying.
The door to Tornado’s corridor tender was locked.
--
The Lineside - Between Kildane and Kellsthorpe Road stations
The utility company survey crew had just broken for lunch when the first steam train had gone by. Being native Sudrians, none of them could quite contain themselves when a Gresley A4 had roared past with a goods train (?!), and they’d moved their lunch spot a bit closer to the railway line in order to have a better view of the tracks, should something else exciting come along.
Just a few minutes after that, something else did.
They first heard the sound of a steam locomotive approaching rapidly in the distance.
Several of them jumped up to see what it was.
Almost before they could move from where they were standing, the train rocketed by.
A steam engine moving faster than seemed possible and a few coaches, it was gone almost as soon as it had arrived. The wind from its passage was strong enough to send sandwiches and drinks flying!
The foreman stared into the distance. Already the train was out of sight. “What was that?!”
--
The Main Line
Tornado could see Osprey’s smoke trail get darker and darker as she caught up with the A4. She wasn’t sure how fast she was going, but it was certainly faster than she’d ever gone before!
--
The Train
Constance’s gangway connector had not been made very well, and the resulting gap between tender and van was big enough that Siobhan hadn’t wanted to risk trying to kick the door down, so she’d started scrounging around for something that she could use as a battering ram.
“Found something!” She yelled, producing a crowbar from underneath a pile of bagged newspapers bound for Barrow-in-Furness.
At that moment, the train leaned into the curve that sat between Kildane and Kellsthorpe Road. It was deeply banked in order to allow trains to run through it without slowing down, which usually helped the train stay level. However, in the case of the newspaper van, it caused just enough lean for a precariously perched pile of papers to collapse.
Despite the seriousness of the situation, Declan had to smother a laugh at the sight of his wife getting buried in an avalanche of news.
--
Rail Traffic Control - Tidmouth
“See, she did break the ton.” Remarked the other controller.
“Remarkable.” Said the first controller. “Do me a favour and see if you can raise Cronk. They’re not answering and I’ve got Kellsthorpe calling.”
--
Kellsthorpe Road Station
“What do you mean, ‘you won’t do it’?” The stationmaster yelled into his phone.
“I mean,” Came the voice of “control”. “That you’re supposed to call at least half an hour ahead. I’ve already lined their path for a clear run to the mainland - unless you want to rip the hooks off when they take the mail at a hundred!”
“But this mail is important!”
“Then why didn’t you call before now? I’ve got the Limited coming up behind them, they can’t slow down - the signal timings are tight enough.”
“I didn’t know it was coming, you horse’s arse!” The stationmaster shouted as he slammed the phone down, before turning to the sheepish Royal Mail driver. “This is on you now - go set out the hook if you want, but they aren’t going to take it!”
The driver didn’t hear much more beyond “put the hook out”, and sprinted off to the platform.
--
The Main Line
Tornado could see the tail end of Osprey’s train as it bucketed down the line towards Kellsthorpe Road. She let out a jubilant blast of her whistle, and was delighted to hear Osprey sound hers in return. She picked just a bit more speed, careful to remember that the end of the high-speed segment came soon after the end of the station’s platforms.
Inside the cab, the speedometer needle was bouncing at its stop.
--
The Train
Siobhan had actually managed to create a wicked-looking breaching tool by attaching the crowbar to a handle pulled from a newspaper cart, and Declan was holding on to her for dear life as she stood in the gangway and prepared to smash down the door to Tornado’s tender.
Unnoticed in all the chaos, the attendant who was supposed to ride in the newspaper van came sprinting in the back door. “How could I have forgotten?!” He asked himself as he searched the stacks of papers for the right one. “It must be here somewhere!”
He was so intent on his task that he blocked out the world around him, including the chaos going on at the front of the van!
--
The Main Line
“Ow!” Tornado yelped as something crashed against her tender’s rear door. “What was that?!”
It happened again, and she yelped again, this time reflexively unlocking the door in the process.
--
The Train
Siobhan yelled in victory as the door sprung open on the second attempt. Throwing down the improvised club, she jumped between Constance and Tornado and ran to the front of the tender.
Behind her, Declan looked down at the gap (and the rails flashing by below it), said a prayer to whichever Hindu god applied to this situation, (Vishwakarma, maybe?) and then made the jump himself.
--
The Traveling Post Office
The newspaper attendant came bustling back in with just a minute or so to spare and handed off the bag of newspapers to the lead mail clerk.
Kellsthorpe Road, not being near either of the towns it actually served, didn’t get much mail, so the mail clerk took the bag of newspapers and a small sack of mail and consolidated them into a single pouch, before sliding open the door to the train.
Traveling post office cars like Elodie have metal arms that swing out of the mail doors and hang away from the train. Mail bags are attached to these arms, and are then swung out by mail clerks to be delivered into nets set up along the lineside.
Ordinarily, these arms are not hard to load, but with the fierce wind blowing into his face, the clerk bungled the attachment several times before eventually getting it.
--
The Main Line
Tornado was deeply confused by the feeling of footsteps in her corridor connector, but was even more confused by the signal she was getting from Kellsthorpe Road.
It was a standard “proceed” aspect, and the lights indicating newspaper and mail delivery were dark, but in spite of that, a man was attaching a mail bag onto the crane anyways!
Unsure of what else to do, she sounded the whistle code for “mail pickup”, hoping that the mail crew could hear her. She slowly started to apply the brakes, trying to get the train down to a more reasonable speed without jolting the mail crew, who were presumably hanging out of the mail carriages right now!
--
The Traveling Post Office
The mail crew exploded into action as they heard the whistle blow. Unforeseen mail was common, but at this speed they needed to be ready sooner rather than later.
The mail chute was quickly deployed, and a clerk readied the mailbag to be swung out of the door the instant the platform came into view.
--
Kellsthorpe Road Station
Delta had been taking several coaches from Crovan’s Gate to Rolf’s Castle, and was waiting at the junction to be allowed onto the branch line to Kirk Ronan.
She’d been waiting several minutes, and had watched with interest as two clouds of thick black smoke had risen over the horizon.
The smoke had slowly been revealed to have been attached to a pair of engines, each of them racing along the opposite sides of the main line.
Optical illusions are a funny thing, because for a great while it seemed like the trains would never get any closer, but all of a sudden, both trains were upon her at once! First Osprey’s hopper train roared by, and was followed immediately by Tornado, who seemed to be traveling at the speed of sound. The diesel’s eyes practically spun in their sockets from the wind and the dust and the sound of the two Pacifics and their trains!
--
The Traveling Post Office
The platform edge came into sight. The clerk heaved the bag into the swung out position.
The bag made it about halfway out of the train before the straps connecting it to the metal bars came un-done.
--
Kellsthorpe Road Station
The Royal Mail driver had never used the mail crane before, and was struggling to attach the bag to the hook. The train was getting so close he was in danger of getting hit by it if he stayed where he was, so he took a panicked step backwards and tried to come up with a different plan.
The train sounded its whistle, and he could see the mail chute unfold from the side of the carriage.
It was now or never, his panicked mind realized, and he came up with the only plan that came to his mind.
The chute wasn’t that far off of the ground, reaching about head-height…
As the train got closer still, he took a deep breath and hurled the mail bag straight up into the air, before he dropped prone onto the platform.
At the same time, the sack of newspapers came undone from the metal arms. The bag, still being shoved out of the train, flew through the air at a slight angle. Traveling at over 100 miles per hour, it raced down the platform like a speeding bullet, passing over the head of the Royal Mail driver before continuing on towards the station building.
The train thundered by, neatly but improbably scooping the thrown mail bag out of the air. Elodie yelped at the sharp jolt of the high speed pickup, but the netting held, and the bag tumbled into the carriage, where it was swiftly picked up by the mail crew.
In the station, the stationmaster watched as a large object flew off of the train. It took him several seconds to recognize what it was and where it was going, and he had just enough time to throw himself to the ground before the inbound mailbag smashed through his office window!
Continuing on its path in a shower of glass, the mailbag continued through the stationmaster's office, punched a hole through the door, careened through the waiting room, shot through an open window on the other side of the building, and flew out into the carpark. There, a policewoman trying to issue a parking ticket had to jump out of the way as the bag ricocheted off of a “No Parking” sign, flew through the air some two dozen feet before flying into the open back doors of the illegally parked Royal Mail van sitting in the station carpark, where it landed with a catastrophic THUD! and an explosion of letters against the bulkhead separating the cargo compartment from the driver’s seat.
--
The Train
Siobhan stormed out of the connector corridor, and was baffled to find that the cab was empty. She probably would’ve stood there longer, but Declan running out of the cramped corridor and into her back forced her into motion.
“What the fuck is going on?!” She bellowed, trying to pull back on the throttle. The lever didn’t budge, much to her confusion.
“What?” Tornado was trying to see why everyone at Kellsthorpe Road had thrown themselves to the ground just as she went by, and wasn’t really paying any attention to Siobhan as she also began applying the brakes to slow the train down for the curve outside of the station.
She also had a moment of personal pride as the train sailed past signal SJJ 170 in exactly ten minutes.
Siobhan squealed like a little girl and jumped back as the brake lever moved on its own. After a moment’s hesitation, she grabbed it with both hands, trying to haul it back into the full stop position, but as soon as Tornado got the lever where she wanted it, it stuck fast.
Siobhan didn’t say anything after that, instead watching as Tornado expertly worked the throttle, brakes, injectors, and coal stoker, along with acknowledging the AWS alarm. The train rolled through the curve like nothing was wrong, and continued on towards Crovan’s Gate.
“What are ye doing?” She asked again, this time quietly.
“Driving the train?” Tornado was deeply confused.
“Why?”
“Because I’m the engine? You haven’t said anything about it?”
“When would I have?”
“What do you mean?”
Siobhan collapsed into the driver’s seat, unable to believe what she was hearing. “Lassie, ye left everyone behind. Ah’ve just run the whole length o’ the train thinkin’ ye were a runaway.”
Tornado had finally come abreast of Osprey and her train, so the exact words she’d said were lost in the clatter of the aggregate hoppers, but the horrified whistle she made got the point across!
---------
Later…
Osprey was tired, dirty, and hurt all over, and yet she had never felt so good in her life. She was sitting in the sheds in Barrow, waiting for her next train and luxuriating in the ache of a job well done, when Tornado backed in next to her.
“Hullo.” She said with enthusiasm. “What happened to you? You caught up with me at one point.” They'd run neck and neck for a while, but then Tornado had fallen behind and stopped at Crovan's Gate.
Tornado said nothing, and waited for her driver - an older woman who was unmistakably furious with something - to leave the shed and enter the station. “I left them behind.” She said quietly, as though her driver might hear her across the yard.
“Left who behind?”
“My crew.”
“What?!”
“Yep. I did a hundred and eight, all by myself.” She paused. “I am in sooooo much trouble.”
“You broke the ton?!” Osprey was ecstatic, then took in the rest of what her friend had said. “Alone? How?”
“It’s a long story.”
“We’ve got time, don’t we?”
“Not that much time.” Tornado’s driver was already coming back out of the station building, a group of serious looking men in hi-vis jackets behind her. They were stopping to investigate the mail cars first, but they would definitely be on their way to sheds soon.
“Oh…” Osprey could see where this was going.
“On an unrelated note, does it always feel like this?”
Osprey looked over at Tornado. She looked strangely relaxed, despite the huge amount of trouble she was apparently in. It was an expression Osprey knew very well, having seen it on the faces of her brothers, sisters, and cousins many times before. It was what her owner liked to call a “runner’s high” - the feeling one gets from doing hard work. She felt this way herself, right now.
“Yes. Yes it does. Have you ever…?”
“Nope. Sheltered life, remember?” Tornado paused for a moment. “Feels nice. I feel like a real engine for the first time in my life."
"It does feel nice. I suppose I never considered that you would have never experienced it before."
"Oh yeah." Tornado looked almost pensive - a strange look for someone as absentminded as her. "I want this. I like this."
"Come again?"
"Work." She looked serious. "They're treating me like a real engine, not a showpiece."
"Sometimes I forget that you and I haven't had the same life experiences."
"Mhm. You got to work for years. Is this better? Than preservation?"
Osprey closed her eyes. Mr. Cameron was wonderful, but life in preservation was... slow. "Yes. I think it is."
"Then let's stay."
"What?"
"We're famous. We can boss people around if we want to." Tornado and "serious" was an unexpectedly frightening combination. "Let's just stay here. On Sodor."
"You want to stay here?" Osprey asked again. "Even after what's going to happen once they get in here?"
"Oh yeah." Just like that, the serious look was gone, and Tornado was back to being blissfully unaware of the world around her. "It'll be totally worth it."
"Isn't this a touch cruel?" Esso the tanker asked.
"Shut it." Percy snapped. "If we take her down a peg maybe we can get some sleep!"
The new engine - her name was Tornado, and Percy was sure that he'd heard of it before, even if he couldn't place it - was very cheery seemingly all the time. Since her arrival several days before, her endless supply of excited energy had started to wear at the engines on the branch. ("It’s like dealing with the stationmaster's dog!" Daisy had griped yesterday. "She doesn't quit!")
Percy, who already had to deal with passengers, coaches, and Gordon, was virtually at the end of his rope, and had devised a scheme to pay Tornado out a bit:
The various industries and businesses in Ffarquhar and Elsbridge kept a steady supply of goods traffic that went to the junction with the Main Line, as well as the harbor in Knapford. Percy usually took one or two short goods trains down the line each day, however, with Percy covering for Thomas and Bloomer out of action, the goods wagons had been piling up in the yards. Additionally, the quarry at the top of the line had been on a tear recently, with Mavis bringing more and more stone trucks each day. After just a few days, the yard at Ffarquhar was jam-packed.
The stationmaster had planned for Tornado to run as many as four or five goods trains per day in order to clear the backlog, however Percy had remarked that, with Tornado being as big as she was, it should be easy for her to take the entire load in one go.
Toby, Esso, and the stationmaster had all been suspicious, but Tornado ignored them and agreed readily.
Percy, eager to see the inevitable result of this, had even offered to shunt the train together.
The Fat Controller had long since fitted all of the railway's rolling stock with air brakes, meaning that Esso was the last wagon on the long train, with no brake van. "Ye seem sure she can't do this." The tanker looked at Percy. "She's a bigg'un."
"Oh please!" Percy scoffed. "She won't make it to the river before something goes wrong - and it'll take her so long to clear it up that I'll be asleep when she gets back!"
Esso rolled his eyes as Percy was uncoupled from the train. This is going to come back and bump him, I just know it.
--
Percy had barely departed with Annie and Clarabel when Tornado's tender was finally filled. ("Nine tons? Will there be any left for the rest of us?" "Don’t be rude, Percy." "Oh! Big talk from the engine who measures his coal on a postal scale! You'd have enough if the bin was empty!") Esso watched with some interesting as she set off.
Ordinarily, the big engine (And what was Fatt Hatt thinking, sending someone of Gordon’s size up the branch?) was a whirling dervish from the moment she set off - steam blowing everywhere, eyes bouncing around like she was trying to look two places at once, it was enough that some of Esso's fellows had started making plans to be troublesome from the moment she showed up.
But now she was different. Easing alongside the line of trucks with hardly a single whoosh of wasted steam, she rolled to a stop at the end of the train.
"Hi there." She addressed Esso and several of his associates. "You're Esso, and that would make the two of you… Boxer and Daedalus?"
Grunts of surprise came from the old van and the grumpy flatbed behind him.
Pleased at getting it right, the big engine smiled. "Pleasure to meet you finally. I'm Tornado."
Esso blinked slowly as she spoke. Was she introducing herself?
She continued: "Today this train is going all the way to Knapford Harbour. There I'm going to shunt out some of you, including you Daedalus, to be loaded and unloaded at the docks before I add on trucks bound for the junction with the main line at Knapford, as well as the stations at this end of the line. Then I'm going to take the whole train back up to the junction and shunt those of you who are going to the main line into the sidings. Does that sound acceptable? Is there anything else that I should know?”
All three trucks stared at her, speechless, which she took as acceptance, and so she moved on down the train, stopping every few trucks to speak to them in groups of three or four.
After several minutes of speechlessness, Esso finally found his voice. “Wha was that?”
“Oi t’ink” Daedalus spoke up. “T’at’s sommeit t’ey do on t’e mainland - when kettles run on tour trains and whatnot - ‘cause all t’e coaches now need everyt’ing to be told to ‘em so they don’ freak.”
“She looks prissier t’an Red, oot on t’e Main. An’ Oi never seen her before, so Oi betcha t’at she hasn’ pulled the loikes o’ us in donkey’s years and plain forgot t’at we’s isn’ prissy coaches.”
Esso rolled his eyes severely. Passenger engines pulling freight, Percy pulling coaches, whatever else could go sideways this week?
Then he had a thought.
The backed up state of the yard had meant that a lot of trucks from the main line had been stuck up here for several days. Unlike older branch line trucks like Esso, Daedelus, and Boxer, these vans, hoppers, and tankers were still stupid, young and ornery, always intent on making trouble for engines. If they thought that Tornado was patronizing them instead of acting without thinking, they’d be all over her like flies on a rubbish bin. And with this train being as long and heavy as it was, if something started… it probably wouldn’t end in anything less than disaster.
“Wha’s the mood from everyone else?” He called back to Daedelus, who was closest to the rest of the train.
“Why’re you always askin’ me?” The flatbed called back. “S’not like Oi can read their moinds.”
Boxer, who was facing forwards and could see over Daedelus, was watching as the big engine finally backed down onto the train. “Theys seem quiet. Dunno if anyone’s spoke t’ them like that before.”
“They seem upset?”
“I said I dunno! What’s gotten yer brake lines in a knot?”
“If they start something, we’re gonna have to stoppit, savvy?”
A pause fell over the other two trucks. They were by far the oldest trucks in the train - they’d long stopped enjoying being nuisances - being in linside smashups hurt - and... builder damn it all, they liked this branch line, and wanted to stay on it; which meant that if they wanted to save their own buffers, they’d have to help an engine.
“I don’t see anyone lookin’ upset much.” Boxer strained his eyes to look up towards the front.
“Oi!” Daedalus biffed the hopper in front of him. “Whaddya t’ink o’ the girlie pullin’ us?”
The hopper was new, probably going back to the mainland somewhere, and didn’t object to being bumped. “I like her! She’s nice!”
“Ye gonna cause any trouble?”
“Nope!”
The truck in front of that one spoke up as well. “Nobody’s ever spoken to me like that. I like that.”
This went on for some time, until the entire rear half of the train was practically singing Tornado’s praises!
--
An hour later
Percy had made good time to the junction, and was fairly surprised to see the branch’s signal set against him. “I didn’t think she’d make it this far.” He remarked to his driver.
“Maybe she’s better than she seemed.” His driver supplied helpfully. “Or at least stronger than they are.”
“Eh. She’s about Gordon’s size, and that lot would stall him out for certain.”
Percy’s fireman quirked an ear towards the line. “Does anyone else hear music?”
“Is the Mister Whippy van about?” The driver laughed. “Because if not, then it must be her.”
The music grew loud enough to become a recognizable tune, and the volume of the driver’s laughter grew along with it. “Goodness me! I remember being annoyed by that song when it came out - she’s a young one, all right!”
Hey ya! Hey ya!
Hey ya! Hey ya!
You think you've got it
Oh, you think you've got it
But got it just don't get it when there's nothin' at all
The music grew louder and more discordant as Tornado got nearer. Percy frowned - not only had his plan failed, but Tornado’s taste in music was about on par with Toby’s - bloody awful!
The train rounded the last curve before the junction and Percy’s jaw dropped. There was a slight rise in the tracks coming out of Dryaw, and heavy trains usually struggled here. Tornado, on the other wheel, was steaming freely, and singing along to her music like there wasn’t even a train behind her.
She passed Percy with a carefree whistle and continued on like nothing was wrong - although Percy didn’t pay much attention to her after that, because the trucks were singing as well!
If he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes, he’d never have believed it - and he was going to have trouble explaining this to Toby, he just knew it - but yet, there it was! The trucks were rolling along smoothly and without issue, each one singing just as loud as Tornado had been.
The end of the train came into view, with Esso still at the tail. The old tanker and Boxer were distinctly not singing, (although Daedelus was, horrifyingly enough) and exchanged a panicked look with Percy as he went by. “The world’s gone mad!” He yelled. ‘Gemme outta here!”
Percy said nothing. He had no idea of what to say!
And then, just as soon as it had arrived, the train was gone, clattering away towards the docks.
Nobody said anything for a long while afterwards, and the silence was only broken by the crackle of the driver’s walkie-talkie.
“Did anybody else just see that?” Came the voice of the guard through the radio.
This story is going to be a little out of place chronologically in the upload order - the story just before this will come out on Day 21.
-
More LNER engines can only mean less trouble, right?
-
Thomas Makes Some Friends
April 10, 2015. Tidmouth Station - Stephen Hatt’s Office
The phone rang suddenly, startling Stephen as he tried to eat his lunch. Grumbling under his breath about unexpected callers and unfortunately-timed secretarial vacations, he managed to swallow a bit of his sandwich before answering. “Stephen Hatt, with whom am I- John! How are you?”
“Yes, yes, that business with West Coast is quite unfortunate indeed. Have you any news?”
“Really? Tangmere said that? On record?” He sat back in his chair, incredulous. “My god, I thought he had more sense than that!”
He took a sip of his coffee, which turned out to be a mistake when the next sentence from his friend almost made it come out of his nose. “No! They wouldn’t - not permanently! Would they?”
“Good God man, I can’t. I simply don’t have the manpower to take on more than a few of their services - and even then, if they had that sort of safety culture going on, I certainly wouldn’t be able to hire any of their people without retraining them first, and that would take all season at least.”
“What’s that about Union- sorry, Osprey?”
“Bored? John, sometimes I wonder if you spoil those engines sometimes.”
“I hired Tornado because she was in Barrow already, and we had a temporary power shortage, and - free you say?”
He sat up, eyes twinkling. “You drive a hard bargain, John, but I am forced to accept! We’ll be expecting her!”
He hung up the phone with a decisive click just as his son knocked on the outer door of his office, before letting himself in anyways. “Was that John Cameron? He’d called my office by mistake so I transferred him over.”
“Yes it was, and I’d ordinarily ask you not to do that without telling me first,” Stephen said as he scrabbled for pen and paper. “But on this occasion I feel like a few minutes’ inconvenience has benefited us greatly.”
“What did he want?”
“Well, it seems that Osprey - which is what Union of South Africa still wishes to refer to herself as - has had her tour schedule curtailed because of West Coast's problems, and has already grown restless.”
Richard stared for a moment. The mischievous look in his father’s eye was stronger than ever. “What did you agree to?”
“I think it might be worthwhile to put on an enthusiast special or two - it seems that we’re going to have a locomotive surplus instead of a shortage.”
------
A week later
Real work! What a wonderful change! Osprey thought to herself as she rolled into Crovan’s Gate station. She’d arrived late last night, and instead of the usual fettling and fussing that came with excursion trains, the firelighters had shown up just before dawn, stoked her fire into a roaring conflagration, and left her simmering away less than an hour later. Then they’d put her on, of all things, a slow goods train that meandered down a branch line to drop off a few vans before heading into the works’ yard for her next train.
She was slightly groggy, probably in need of a washdown, and was going slower than she had in ages, but she felt great! This must be why nobody here does railtours - they don’t need to!
Slowly, she made her way into the yard at Crovan’s Gate. It was still early in the morning, but already a few engines were in the yard. Both were very familiar, but for very different reasons…
“Ossie!” Cried Tornado as Osprey pulled into sight. “What’re you doing here?!”
“The same thing that you are, probably.” The A4 said slowly, looking at Tornado for the first time. “What-”
“Oh!” Tornado yelped. “Have you met Thomas before? You have to have met Thomas before - he’s, like, the most famous engine ever!”
“I believe I have.” She said as her driver pulled her next to the tank engine in question. “1987, right?”
“Yes it was.” Thomas said. “Almost thirty years ago, now.”
“Oh wow!” Tornado squealed. “You two are already friends! It’s such a cool thing that we all know each other; like, you’d think that the country would be big enough that someone wouldn’t know someone else but I guess not! Or maybe it’s just because we’re all really famous and everything…”
As Tornado kept on going, Osprey whispered to Thomas: “What is up with her? She’s normally not that chatty.”
“I think she’s nervous.”
“Of what? She hasn’t enough sense to be nervous!”
“... like, I can’t even imagine what it’s like to not be famous. Does that sound strange? It probably doesn’t but I’m feeling a little self-conscious today, if you get what I mean!...”
“I think she’s a little star-struck.”
A long disbelieving glance at the blue tank engine revealed he was serious. “Of course you aren’t joking. She meets everyone from Mallard to the Queen without batting an eye but you she’s nervous around.”
“I understand where she’s coming from.” Thomas said gently. “Those stories impact a lot of different people - you would not believe who has said that I’m an influence on their life. Why not an engine too?”
“Those books make you seem much less mature than you are.”
“I have my moments.”
“... and then he ends up calling himself Quackers and I thought everyone in the Great Hall was going to die - like, OMG, they couldn’t keep it together for more than ten seconds…”
“She really is on edge around you, isn’t she?”
“I think she’s excited about the paint, too.”
“I was going to ask about that.”
“I have no idea. She was like that when they pulled me out yesterday. Bloomer mentioned something about a lorry full of paint?”
“I swear she could cause an uproar in an empty shed.”
“Sounds like some other engines I could name.”
“... so anyways I’ve got a tattoo on my running board that says “Party Engine” in German and I keep lying about what it says whenever someone from the Trust asks me because I know they wouldn’t approve but I don’t really care that much because when you really think about it I’m the A1, so the Trust should just do whatever I say…”
“Oh, by the way - could you keep her “new-build” status under your dome if it’s possible? Somehow, everyone else on the Island thinks that she’s an original A1, and are going mad trying to remember when the Fat Controller bought her. This new paint isn't going to help them.”
“... Thomas, I think that you and I are going to be fantastic friends.”
I don't know what it says about me when I see a prompt called off the rails and immediately do 1,800 words about Bulgy before a train is even mentioned.
(Also, this happens just before the events of Day 14's story)
-
Smashing!
Bulgy is a rather disagreeable old bus on the Island of Sodor. Many years ago, he had gotten stuck underneath a bridge on Duck’s branch line, causing damage to both it and himself. As a result, his owners abandoned him in a field next to the line and the farmer who owned it used Bulgy as a henhouse!
However, this was not the end of Bulgy. Farmer Drury, his new owner, was a very successful man who owned several farms across the Island. As his business grew, he repaired Bulgy and put him back on the road as a farm transport vehicle and rolling storage bin - a duty that Bulgy hated even more than being a henhouse!
He complained bitterly about his treatment for many years, often irritating Farmer Drury in the process, and thus ensuring that he would never be anything more than a dirty work vehicle for as long as Farmer Drury owned him!
Eventually, Bulgy’s fortunes improved - although his attitude didn’t - when Farmer Drury retired and handed the business over to his son David.
David Drury had gone to school on the mainland, and unlike most Sudrians, was rather obsessed with old cars instead of old trains. He owned several classic race cars and the Island’s only Ferrari, so when he discovered Bulgy in the back of his father’s barn he was immediately taken with him. Almost before Bulgy knew what was happening, David Drury had restored him to ‘concours condition’, and he went from a dirty, dusty, and creaking work van to a pristine ‘show bus’ so fast that his eyes spun!
Now Bulgy was more or less permanently retired, living inside a nice warm garage on the outskirts of Marthwaite village. He never had to work, or get dirty, or even go out in the rain!
Except for one time…
April 13, 2015
Bulgy was startled awake by the door to his garage being thrown open. “Whassat?!” He groaned, trying to blink the sleep from his eyes.
“Come on Bulgy!” It was David, his owner. “We’ve got a sticky situation down in Hackenbeck. Let’s go!”
Far, far too quickly for Bulgy’s liking, he was started up, put into gear, and driven away. “What’s wrong?” He asked. “Where’re we going?”
“Those moro-” David started angrily, before calming himself. “I have been trying to rebuild the roof on one of the storage barns in the Hackenbeck farm for a month, and when the roofers finally show up, they didn’t check the weather, tore off the roof with no plan to finish it, and it’s going to rain this afternoon, so we need to finish the roof today or the entire harvest will be ruined!”
“Whaddya need me for?”
“The van broke down! You’re the only other big vehicle I’ve got that’s road legal!”
“You’re gonna make me work?!”
“I’m sorry Bulgy, but it’s only for today - look, I’ll make it up to you later, okay?”
Bulgy acquiesced, but grumbled all the way to Hackenbeck.
The barn was located near the railroad line, accessible by a dusty and rutted tractor path that crossed the line at one point. Bulgy grimaced as he bounced down the “road” - this was no place for a show bus - even the four wheel drive pickup trucks were complaining about the potholes, and he could feel his paintwork getting dirtier with each passing second.
It didn’t get any better after that - his owner was serious about him working, and Bulgy made five trips into town for supplies like wood planks, nails, lunch, scaffolding, and even huge buckets of tar. It was disgusting and dirty work, and he hated every minute of it - at one point, men had to stand on his roof to do work, and after that he was quite literally dirty from top to bottom.
Then the rain came.
According to the weather forecast, the real downpour wasn’t to start until later that night, but the broken clouds started to knit themselves back together as the clock struck four. The men had just enough time to hang tarpaulins over the unfinished sections of roof before the deluge started, so the grain harvest wasn’t spoiled, but everything else was soaked. Anyone who couldn’t hide in the barn took refuge inside Bulgy, and he growled as muddy boots clomped across his floors, sweaty clothes fouled his seats and dirty water dripped off of his bonnet and into his eyes. “I thought I was done with this sort o’ nonsense…”
Fortunately for Bulgy, the rain shower was short-lived, and everyone resumed work after it passed, leaving him alone for the first time since the morning.
“Oi! Mate!” Evidently he couldn’t be alone for too long, could he?
Cracking an eye open, he found a big Volvo HGV with Irish registration plates idling next to him. “Can you please bother someone else?” He asked, doing his best to be polite.
“Rude.” The lorry said before continuing on anyway. “But I’m in a bit of a pickle - ya see, I’m supposed to be in someplace called “Wellsworth”, but my GPS conked out me, see? So now I’m lost.”
“Have your driver talk to Mister Drury - it’s his farm you’re on.” Bulgy said dismissively.
“Driver?” The lorry said, before looking at Bulgy more closely. “Oh, this is one of those places.”
Then the lorry drove away, leaving Bulgy confused and feeling vaguely insulted. “Well I never...!” He said, before realizing that he probably had at some point.
“Well, s’not my problem anymore.” He said after a moment. Seeing as everyone else was occupied, he closed his eyes and tried to take a nap.
“Come on Bulgy, no rest for the weary!” David Drury said as he hopped into the driver’s seat.
“What now?”
“That lorry has gotten himself good and lost, so we’re going to show him the road into town.”
“Why’ve I got to do it? I’ll sink into the mud!”
“You’ll do it because everyone else is busy.” David said. Looking over at the other quad bikes, four-by-fours, and Land Rovers, Bulgy was forced to admit that he was the only vehicle not in use at the moment and so he bounced and juddered and sloshed along the now-muddy path towards the road.
Then there was trouble.
The railway line was on a slightly raised embankment to allow for drainage. This hadn’t been an issue before, but now the small hill leading to the tracks was nothing but slippery mud. Furthermore, the path itself was narrow, with only enough room for one vehicle to go through at a time - if two were coming in opposite directions, one of them would have to pull off to the side of the road. As they approached the crossing, an orange tractor with caterpillar treads was pulling a trailer over the line, so Bulgy and the lorry pulled over at the bottom of the hill to let him pass. As they set off, neither Bulgy, David, nor the lorry realized that the road up to the tracks was nothing but mud - the tractor had made it look easy with his treads, and didn’t say anything more than “Hello!” as he passed them. Not realizing what was about to happen, David drove Bulgy up the hill from a standing stop.
If they’d been traveling at speed, they might have made it, but when Bulgy’s front wheels bumped over the rails, his back wheels weren’t going fast enough to push him over, and he stuck fast on top of the tracks, his rear wheels spinning furiously but unable to gain any traction in the slick mud.
“Oi!” Yelled the lorry as mud pelted him. “Stoppit! Yer stuck there! Get a chain and I’ll pull ya free!”
A rummage through storage compartments in both Bulgy and the Lorry revealed that neither of them had a chain strong enough. David called back for one of his employees to send a thicker chain - they arrived on a quad bike, along with the orange tractor - who introduced himself as Terrance - and his driver.
“I say,” Terrance observed idly as the men tried to figure out where they could attach the chain without damaging Bulgy. “You picked a most inopportune time to do this - Thomas will be most upset if his passengers are delayed.”
David, Bulgy, and the lorry went very still and very pale.
“You did call the railway, didn’t you?”
“Jus’ hook that chain to anything!” Bulgy bellowed. “Get me off of here!”
“Now let’s… let’s be calm.” David sounded anything but as he poked his mobile phone urgently. “We still have time to call - all we need to do is find out what the bleeding number is!”
As it turned out, they didn’t have time.
A steam whistle sounded in the distance, putting everyone into a panic. David’s employee tore off on the quad bike, trying to stop the train before it arrived, while David and Terrance’s driver tried desperately to mount the chain. “It’s not going on! There’s no hook on this end!” They yelled.
“Get in, put him in low gear, and when I say, step on it!” The lorry ordered. David scrambled into the driver’s seat, and frantically engaged first gear.
The whistle sounded again - the noise echoing off the surrounding hills to the point where its location couldn’t be determined.
The lorry grimaced. “This is gonna suck.” He muttered, before revving his own engine. “Now!”
Bulgy’s engine roared, and mud flew everywhere. Black exhaust poured from the lorry as he engaged his low-range gearbox and charged up the incline.
With a thunderous CRUNCH he slammed into Bulgy’s rear bumper.
The whistle sounded again, this time much longer and more urgent. The quad bike must not have gotten very far, which meant that the train was close indeed.
The lorry’s wheels spun, but he revved his engine well past the red line on his tachometer as he put all of his considerable strength against Bulgy.
The train appeared from behind the trees. Terrance noted with some detached portion of his mind that it wasn’t Thomas pulling the train, but rather a big engine he’d never seen before. As soon as the engine saw Bulgy, they yelled in panic and put on their brakes, but it wasn’t going to be enough…
The lorry’s wheel dug deep enough into the thick mud to find dry dirt. With a lurch and a roar he surged forward, shoving Bulgy off of the line and onto the downhill on the other side. Seconds later, the lorry followed, his back wheels clearing the tracks in just a few seconds.
But there was still his trailer. It was a long canvas sided box trailer, fully loaded with cargo, and its wheels sank into the mud a few inches as it rolled up the hill. Those few inches were the differences between safety and disaster, and the trailer’s low-hanging side underride guards caught between the rails with a screech that brought the lorry to a standstill.
“Go!” He shouted to Bulgy as he roared his engine, trying to break free.
Bulgy needed no encouragement, and raced forwards as the train got closer and closer.
The lorry pulled so hard that the trailer’s king pin snapped in half, and he shot forwards, leaving the trailer sitting astride the train tracks.
Terrance and his driver could only watch in horror as the train got closer and closer, before…
Later
Stephen Hatt arrived at the crash site to find a much more colourful scene than he’d been expecting. “Is that… paint?” He asked the Hackenbeck stationmaster, who was acting as the incident commander.
“Yes sir. The lorry was full - over thirty tons worth.” The man said as he strategically stepped over puddles of silver and yellow that were soaking into the ground despite the best efforts of the cleanup crew. Tornado had still been going at well over thirty miles an hour when she impacted the lorry, and paint had been fired in every which way as the trailer had more or less exploded on impact. Following that, there was a two hundred foot long streak of Dulux-coated destruction leading down the trackbed as the mangled trailer had been dragged along before it came apart at the seams and was deposited along the lineside.
Then there was Tornado herself, who had collided with the trailer before it started to come apart, and had therefore been impacted by individual cans of paint, instead of a fine spray of liquid colour. As a result, her LNER green was covered from buffer to cab in huge blotches of dull green, bright yellow, metallic blue, glossy red, vibrant purple, and flat white from individual cans smashing against her. In some spots, the colors had mixed together, forming steaks of orange, brown, black, and gray that ran down her boiler in a way vaguely reminiscent of a Jackson Pollock painting.
Fortunately, no one was hurt. Tornado was pulling a goods train, and despite some minor damage to her buffers and front end - miraculously, her smoke deflectors hadn’t been damaged thanks to the trailer having canvas walls - she had only derailed her leading bogie, and was actually smiling as gold paint dripped down her nose. “Well, I think I caused some confusion and delay, didn’t I?”
“Now, now,” Stephen said as he inspected her himself - the Trust was going to have a conniption as it was, so he’d better make damn sure that there was nothing seriously wrong. “I wouldn’t say you were responsible for this,” His eyes sparkled mischievously as he looked over her damaged front end. Nothing seemed to be too amiss other than the obvious, thankfully. “But I would say that you have busted your buffers.”
Tornado laughed as the rest of the breakdown crew sighed deeply.
--
It never did rain that night, (“Whaddya mean it didn’t rain?! I almost died for nuthin?” “Calm down Bulgy.” “Calm down?! Mister Drury, those blasted trains almost turned me into scrap! See, I was right! We need to rip up all the rails and turn them into nice smooth Boulevards!” “Not this again…”) and with the dry conditions, it only took Wendell and the breakdown train until midnight to finally get Tornado to the works. It was very late, and everyone was very tired, so Tornado and the cranes were already asleep when Wendell shunted them away.
Wendell was himself exhausted, and rolled into his berth at the works intent on sleeping until someone came to wake him up.
“Oi - wha’s the score with the mystery one?” Bloomer hissed from where the men had been working on him.
“I think she was at a heritage railroad for a while.” Wendell groaned as his crew set his brakes and left. “She definitely knows more about BR than any other engine I’ve met.”
“How so?”
“She knew the firing order of my engine - I think it’s safe to say that she was someplace with an archive, or the NRM has gotten very loose with their records department.”
“Huh,” Snorted Bloomer, who, like any engine that had been within earshot of Gordon in the last few years, was well aware of the NRM’s fall from grace. “Mebbe she’s just a smart egg.”
“Easter egg, more like…” Wendell yawned. “Hard boiled and painted and all; She just took a lorry’s worth of paint to the face and thought it was the highlight of her day.”
“Paint?” Bloomer peered outside of the shed doors. “Mercy me! Look at her! She’s coated!”
Wendell didn’t respond, and when Bloomer looked over, he found the diesel already fast asleep.
“Ugh, young engines these days!”
----
Several days later
The men had had their work cut out for them. The paint was latex and enamel based house paint, and it didn’t want to come off without strong solvents, the use of which also stripped off Tornado’s paint and undercoat. It took two whole days for the men to find all of the paint - it had worked its way into every crease and crevice in Tornado’s body, and if the Fat Controller hadn’t authorized copious amounts of overtime, it likely would have taken far longer.
This process was not helped by the fact that removing Tornado’s plating revealed the numerous modifications she’d received from her time in Germany - while they were safe from the paint, they weren’t safe from the deeply curious mechanical staff, who swarmed over her with cameras and notebooks, trying to determine what everything was. If it weren’t for the works manager telling them to get back to their jobs, they likely would have stayed there all day!
Eventually, the mechanical staff were shooed away, the paint was stripped off, a spot of rust on her running board was found and cleaned, the workers were able to finish, and Tornado was finally reassembled and rolled into the paint shop to be repainted into LNER green.
Except…
“We don’t have any green? On this railway?” The foreman stared at the head painter disbelievingly.
“Not this shade.” The woman said. “And somebody didn’t clear it with me before they started stripping, which means there’s none to sample, so we can’t make more.” In anticipation of a new coat, they’d decided to strip the paint off of Tornado’s tender as well. At the time it had seemed like a good idea.
“Don’t we have other greens?”
“Yes. Great Western green.” A long pause followed this. “Do you want to be the one who painted the pride of the LNER in GWR colours?”
“BR Blue?”
“Only the diesel shade of Rail Blue.”
“Henry’s Green?”
“On backorder.”
“... James' Red?”
“No.”
“Well, what do we have?”
“In sufficient quantities?” A tin of paint was produced. “This.”
“We can’t use that! They’ll think we’ve bought her!”
“Well it’s either this, or we ask the Skarloey Railway if they’ve got any of their red going spare, but considering she's bigger than all of their engines put together...”
“Okay… point made, but we’re going to have to make sure that we don’t do any of the striping or numbers - I don’t want the rest of the engines to think that we’ve bought her or anything.”
-
Tornado was actually hyperventilating as the paint shop workers buffed and polished the freshly-applied numbers and striping. She’d caught a few glimpses of herself in the mirror mounted on the far wall, and had been unable to contain herself since. “You’ve got the pictures?” She asked the head painter.
“Of course we have,” She said genially. “Now let’s get you outside for some more in the sun. Maybe we’ll even get everyone for a posed shot like they did in the twenties.”
They’d done a pressure test to make sure that nothing had been damaged in the collision, and Tornado had just enough steam left to roll into the yard under her own power.
In the yard, the midday sun was shining, the air was clear, and there were many pictures to be taken of her new paintwork. It took over an hour, and when the workers finally retreated into the sheds to work on “other jobs”, she was left alone.
“I still can’t believe it.” She said to herself quietly. “It’s like I’m really one of them.”
When the paint crew had told her they only had the NWR’s blue paint on hand, she’d been a little excited. Now that it was applied and dry, she was much more so. The red lining and gold numbers on her tender and frame completed the look, and if one ignored the smoke deflectors and squinted slightly, she could almost pass as a copy of Gordon.
Even without any steam, she could feel the excitement bubbling up through her boiler. “I’m a really useful engine you know,” She sang to herself, not really caring if anyone was listening.
“All the other engines they tell me so,
I huff and puff and whistle, rushing to and fro,
I’m the really useful engine we adore!”
She’d found the instrumentals of the song somewhere, and it quietly began playing.
“I’m the one!
I’m the Really Useful Engine that we adore
I’m the one, I’m the Number One
Torna-”
“Peep Peep! Hello Fatfac- oh you’re not Gordon!” A blue tank engine had pulled alongside her.
Told you I wasn't doing every day. Today's prompt is "red and green"
Fic below the break
-
Red & Green
James was the one to meet her next. Arriving in Barrow with the midday stopper train, he found a large green tender engine chatting animatedly with Bloomer.
Or, rather, at Bloomer.
The old single was what the American tourists called a “Chatty Cathy” (whatever that meant), but this new engine was talking at an astonishing clip, and was very obviously overwhelming Bloomer. Seeing James pull into the station, the old engine mouthed ‘help me’ in his direction.
James liked Bloomer, but seeing the sociable engine get trapped by someone even more sociable than he was too funny to pass up. He peeped loudly as he pulled into the station. “Hello Bloomer! Made a friend I see!”
That made the green engine stop talking for a moment, bringing much needed silence to the yard. Bloomer looked relieved, but before he could say a word, she started back up again. “Oh hello James! I was just talking to Bloomer about how the coal from the bunkers here is much better than the ones out in York and London - I think it must be different suppliers or something, but it also just might be regional differences because the NWR needs a steady source of coal so they might have a higher grade for better steaming consistencies…”
James’ driver had stopped him next to the other two engines and left to have his lunch. When he came back a half hour later, he found James and Bloomer sitting there silently, eyes glazed over. The other engine had moved to the yards nearby and was talking the metaphorical ear off of a Class 37, who seemed perpetually astonished that she was talking to him.
“So,” He asked mirthfully. “How was Tornado?”
“Huh?” James jerked back to reality.
“Tornado!”
“What?”
“Ah think it’s a big windstorm.” Bloomer said quietly.
“No!” The driver laughed. “It’s her name! Tornado!”
“How fitting…” James said, a thousand yard stare forming.
“Oh come on!” The driver snorted as he climbed back on James’ footplate. “None of that! She’s just very talkative - nothing wrong with that!”
“She wasn’t talking to you.” Both engines snapped at once.
--
“Well?” Gordon asked later that day. “Who was she?”
“A force of nature.” James said hollowly. “And one of us.”
“What? Are you certain?”
“I’m sure.” He said firmly, although his eyes still looked haunted. “She knew things, Gordon. Private things. Things that I haven’t told anyone but you lot - I’m sure of it.”
Gordon looked stunned. “Have we-” He started carefully. “Have we forgotten an engine on this Island?”
