#Sodor island Forums

[joezworld]

Express Engines

I gave Gordon a friend!

The news that The Fat Controller had found a new engine - and a steam engine at that! - had caused an uproar. The subsequent revelation that there were two increased things to an almost unbearable furor. 

“Oh please sir,” James begged the Fat Controller one afternoon. “At least tell us which Castle it is. Everyone is going batty over it!” 

A skeptical eyebrow raise met this. “James, you and everyone else will find out in due time.”

“But sir!” 

Stephen stopped and hung his head in exasperation. “If it helps you at all, one is from Swindon, the other Crewe. I shan’t tell you anything more, so stop asking!” 

---

“That doesn’t help at all!” the others grumbled when James reported back. 

“What has he done? Buy Duchess of Sutherland or Britannia?” Delta asked incredulously. “That’s the last thing we’d need. Between them and that Castle, they’d make Gordon explode!”

“Maybe he bought a Black 5,” Bear pondered. “I do hope they’re an all right sort. Some of them didn’t have the happiest of lives.” 

“Maybe it’s a diesel,” Henry said brightly. “Perhaps you two can make a new friend!”

The two shuddered. “Oh please don’t let it be a Crewe Diesel…” they said in unison. 

--

“I bet it’s a standard of some kind.” BoCo said to Edward. “I don’t imagine that anyone would be willing to part with anything from before the grouping.” 

“You don’t think so?” Edward looked thoughtful. “I’m sure that there’s some engines to spare. Goodness knows that the Barry Island engines aren’t in short supply.”

“Well what do you think it’ll be?” 

“I bet it’s a goods engine. Something like an Ivatt Mogul - remember them?” 

“All too well. Also, for the record, they became the Standard 2s, so I’d still be correct.”

“Oh hush!”

---

“Maybe it’s a Garrat!”

“Those aren’t Crewe engines, and they scrapped those.”

“A Dreadnought tank engine?”

“Scrapped those too.”

“Patriot class?”

“Scrapped.” 

“LNWR Experiment Class?”

“How do you know that those exist but don’t know that they were all scrapped?”

“Well, what about the-”

“Thomas, are you just listing any LMS engine that you know of?” Percy snapped after a while.

It was a suspiciously long time before Thomas said “No!” in a very defensive tone. 

Silence reigned for a few minutes. 

“What about the E2s?” Toby said, innocently. 

“Wrong region, and I wish they’d scrapped those.” 

“... Hey!” 

------

“You’re all thinking too big.” Oliver said to Henry at the big station. “They built hundreds of tank engines at Crewe. Could be one of them.”

“They also built those Class 91 electric locomotives at Crewe.” Henry sniffed. “And tanks for the army. So it could be anything, if we’re just going to be spouting baseless ideas.” 

“Oi! Who put sludge in your boiler this morning?” 

“I’m sorry, but it has been three days of this. I’ve barely slept for being asked my thoughts on numbers! Standard 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, who do we appreciate! It’s all becoming meaningless!  Half-term’s almost half-over, so whatever this maths problem of a locomotive is, it had better get here soon before we all go completely mad!”

----

Later, Gordon took a train down to the ferry docks at Tidmouth Harbour. Marina, one of the harbour diesels, was shunting trucks nearby. 

Marina wasn’t shy, but she also wasn’t chatty, so the silence between the two eventually grew unbearable for Gordon. “I’m surprised you haven’t started peppering me with questions about these new engines.”

“I’m not particularly concerned, unless they’re coming down here to take my work from me.” She said, shunting a row of vans. 

“And if it is a harbour engine of some kind,” Gordon ventured. “You would be welcome up at the main sheds with open arms.”

“I appreciate the offer,” she smiled. “But shouldn’t I be offering space to you? Rumor is that it’s at least one new express engine.” 

Gordon rolled his eyes. “Please. Pip and Emma have already forced that reckoning. There is no “true” express role on the Island anymore, so I have already “adapted,” as it were.”

“And here we all thought you’d be clinging to the midday express like a drowning man to a life ring.”

Again, his eyes rolled. “Being ten minutes faster than the Limited does not make an express service. There is prestige, and honor, and the promise of onward connections, all of which Pip and Emma have now.” He looked thoughtful. “I’d be far more upset if I weren’t almost 80.”

“Old age giving you a new perspective on life?” Marina wasn’t sure if he was being funny or genuine.

“Ha, no.” He said, face betraying nothing. “I’m just tired. I could stand a rest, to give myself some time to figure out what the next move is.”

“That is… shockingly mature of you,” Marina now was the one being genuine. “And I’m pleasantly surprised to see it.” 

“Well, someone has to be.” A sly look was making moves across his face. “I think Henry is about two days away from shunting James into the sea.”

“Ooh. How will Delta fare with that?” 

“If James makes it three days, she’ll be helping.” 

“And you wonder why I like the harbour so much.”

-----------------------------------

The Works

A jubilant mood was suffusing itself throughout the building. Two major projects had been officially “wrapped” within hours of each other, and a well deserved celebration was in full swing, with high-tempo dance music filtering out of the staff canteen. 

For the two “projects” quietly building steam on the shop floor, it was difficult to not feel giddy. 

“I can’t believe this is actually happening to us.” Samarkand said, feeling the heat of her fire for the first time in almost three years. “It hasn’t really set in until now. I feel… god I feel better than new! I mean, look at me! Roller bearings, automatic lubricators, a water trough scoop, a feedwater heater, and whatever a Lempor ejector is? I’m going to be… so much stronger than anyone else it won’t even be funny…”

Caerphilly barely noticed Sam going on and on. She barely noticed anything, except the absolutely intoxicating feeling of fire inside her once again. It had been almost 40 years since she’d felt this, so long that she’d forgotten what it felt like. What it could be. What she was.    

“I’m going to be an express engine again…” she said as the music from the canteen grew to a crescendo. An excited smile stretched across her face, big enough to crack her smokebox in half.

“I’m going to be an engine again.”

----------

Early the next morning, Henry was trying (and failing) to convince his fireman to pour some coffee into his tender. “Maybe it’ll work this time!” 

“No! It doesn’t do anything but waste it. Buy some yourself if you think it works so much.” 

“With what money?”

Further conversation was broken off as an unfamiliar whistle sounded in the distance. 

“Who could that possibly be?” The driver asked, poking his head out of the cab windows. 

“I imagine it’s one of the new engines.” Said the fireman. “There were a few numbers on the board I didn’t recognize.”

“And you didn’t think to mention it?” Henry stared. 

“When would I have? The first thing I hear is “oh lord I’m so tired, give me that coffee.” It’s like being home with the wife!”

Henry chose not to respond, and instead stared intently towards the rapidly growing cloud of steam in the distance. “It doesn’t sound like a tank engine…”

“Maybe it’s the Western engine?”

“Points are lined for the goods platforms. You think the Fat Controller is putting a Castle on goods work? It’d be like asking Gordon to shunt.” 

The engine kept getting closer, a steady chuffing sound reverberating across the station throat. 

Eventually, finally, surprisingly, the train came into view. 

“Well I’ll be damned.” The driver said. “I didn't think they'd found something like that.”

“I suppose with all the talk of standards, we did forget about that one.” The fireman mused. “Hopefully the firebox isn’t as big as it looks.”

Henry was speechless for a long moment - long enough for the huge engine to clank past him with a call of “Hi!” 

“You’re enormous!” he squeaked at last, and the engine laughed her way into the station.

----

Gordon had fallen asleep in the middle of Barrow yard (only the truly desperate tried to rest in a shed where Bloomer was awake), and was rather rudely awoken by the weeshing steam of another engine. “Gurghr-have you no decency? Can’t you tell that I’m asleep?!” 

The other engine’s laughter was a euphonious sound that emerged from the cloud of steam. “Forgive me, but we’ve been put onto the same train back to Tidmouth. The stationmaster said to whistle in your ear until you woke up, but I figured this was kinder.” 

“I stand mistaken,” Gordon rolled his eyes. “You have an incredible well of decency, madam. Even if you act on the orders of far more juvenile creatures.”

Another laugh that rang like a bell. “Oh goodness, I haven’t been madam in decades; let’s not start now, lest I become old and stuffy.”

“Well, if there wasn’t a massive cloud encompassing me, I might be able to see who it is you are.” 

“Perhaps I’m trying to be mysterious. Have you considered that?” 

“Puh. Any Crewe Engine would have relished at the chance to whistle until I was deaf. Which means…” There was next to no chance the other engine could see him, but the eyebrow raise was compulsory. “What sort of bilgewater is it that you drink, Westerner?” 

A sharp gust of wind blew through the yard, dissipating enough of the steam for the shadowy outline of the other engine to metamorphose into the Castle class he was expecting. 

Then he read the nameplates. 

“Only the finest - sourced directly from the hull of the Great Eastern.” Caerphilly Castle said with a half-smile. 

Gordon would never admit it, but it took a lot of discipline to keep his facial expression in check. “You know, I was under the impression that the pride of the inter-war Western had been locked away in a museum, far from anyone who would ever care for her properly.” 

The half smile grew slightly. “Circumstances changed, and my old jailors found me to be nothing more than unsightly decor. Then the new ones found me far too ‘mouthy’ for their tastes, and rid themselves of me at first opportunity.” 

“And the Fat Controller presumably turned their loss to his gain?” 

“And yours!” Her eyes sparkled in the mid-morning sun. “I’ve been led to understand that I shall be taking over your duties once your boiler ticket expires. I assume it’s only correct that one top link engine is replaced by another?”

Gordon’s expression was inscrutable. “You’re very different to the last Western engine we played host to.”

The smile wavered, and grew slightly sharper. “I should hope so. Will you take my word that I have no plan for mayhem and destruction?” 

“Around here, we call it ‘confusion and delay.’”

The smile became genuine once again. “You remind me of another engine I knew once. I feel like we shall get along just fine.” 

-----

A little later, and the two were coupled together at the platforms, Caerphilly in front. 

“Now then,” Gordon said behind her. “This is merely a learning trip for you, dear Caerphilly, so try not to exert yourself too much. You need to be aware of the line’s foibles, and let me assure you that there are many of them!” 

“Oh god, he’s doing the teaching voice.” Both crews had been conversing on the platform, and covered their faces with their hands in four-way unison. 

“Excuse me, but what tone would you find acceptable then, hmm?”

“Do not mock him! He is the instructor. I need to know this!” 

“oh no there’s two of him now.” Caerphilly’s fireman said with dismay.

“And you should be grateful for it.” Caerphilly said firmly. “Express engines are few and far between, so to have two fine examples on the same line is a marvel in the current day.” 

“Well said!” Gordon beamed. 

The crews looked horrified. 

---

It was still some time before the train left, and Caerphilly was watching in interest as the station pilot added yet another pair of coaches to the train. “I say. I can’t recall the last time an express working had… what is it now? Fifteen coaches?”

“Oh, it shall only get worse.” Gordon murmured as the little diesel - on loan from some heritage railway somewhere - scuttled away for yet another coach. “It’s the last weekend of half-term, and there was some form of sale on tourist class accommodations.”

“But still, on an express?” 

“Goodness no.” Gordon almost rebuked, before catching himself. “The morning express is London-bound only. This is the Limited; slightly slower than the Express, but much faster than the all-stop trains.”

“This railway can support three tiers of passenger trains? I thought that everything had been replaced by motorways?”

“You are correct that many people have turned to automobiles for their travel choices, but rest assured that they do not do so here.” Gordon explained. “While many of our mainland connections like the Sudrian and the Leeds Express have long since made their final departures, within the island our domestic service level has not changed much since the 1970s - and that was hardly changed from the 1950s!” 

“You’re serious? There’s no A or M road across the Island?”

“They tried to build a motorway across the island once. I’m told that the blueprints were so beautiful that the road decided to stay on them.” Gordon boasted. “So instead, we trains take the strain of travel.”

“I’m sorry, have I gone back in time to the War? Is there still fuel rationing?” 

“Caerphilly, I think you will find that we do things quite a bit differently on this island.” Gordon was approaching almost radioactive levels of smug self-satisfaction, and his crew was in mild agony listening to it. 

Not that Caerphilly noticed in the slightest. 

“I’m beginning to see that.” She said with a hint of eagerness, excited smoke rings puffing from her funnel. 

After a few more minutes, the shunter came back. Gordon and Caerphilly watched him roll past. 

“Gordon?”

“Yes?” 

“Don’t take this as a slight, but I don’t think any engine could get twenty coaches started on their own.”

“That is not an incorrect statement.”

“Can you teach while we both work?” 

“I can believe I can give adequate instruction - provided of course, that you can listen while pulling the train?”

“I think that you’ll find that I am just as good at learning as you are at teaching.”

“This is somehow worse than them fighting.” A voice crackled over the radio. 

“Shut it!” 

“Be quiet!” 

--------

Later 

The run was going so much worse than the crews ever could have anticipated. Instead of fighting with each other, or trying some childish game of one-upmanship, Gordon and Caerphilly were working together, puffing in not-quite-perfect unison to get the train up to the absolute maximum speed limit any section would allow for. Station stops got earlier and earlier, and by the time the train stormed out of Killdane station like they’d left most of it behind, they were almost three minutes ahead of schedule and gaining fast. This fleetfooted pace was suiting the engines just fine, but the crews were less than enamored with the footplates getting progressively bumpier and less workable as the two engines bounced off of each other's buffers high-spiritedly. 

“Gordon!” The driver yelled, holding onto the throttle with a white-knuckled grip. “Just because the signal is green doesn’t mean the next one won’t be!” 

“You never complained like this on the express!” Gordon bellowed as they careered through Cronk station. 

“This isn’t the express!” 

“Tell me, how many more stops do we have between here and Tidmouth? Is it zero? The timetable said zero!” Gordon sounded like he was smiling. This was very bad. 

“Is an express run now?” Caerphilly whistled at the front, her voice distant and distorted from the wind roaring past as they crossed the Cronk viaduct.

“Only the midday limited stops in Wellsworth!” Gordon called ahead to his trainee. “The morning and afternoon trains would conflict with Edward’s local services!”

“Do we have to worry about any local trains being in our path?” 

“Not at all! We’ve got an express path to the big station, non-stop!” 

 “Excellent!”  Black smoke poured from Caerphilly’s funnel, and she lunged forwards, sending the fireman stumbling into the coal pile with a yelp. The train continued to pick up speed as it made the uphill charge towards Maron. Gordon’s driver advanced the throttle like it might hurt him, and the bouncing on the footplate took on a new sideways element as they thundered over the crossovers just outside the station. 

“Gordon! What are you going to do about the hill?!” The driver shouted. “We’ve got to slow down for it!” 

“Cut off steam and coast once we’ve hit the summit! Don’t you remember how we did it with the express?” 

“Gordon, the express was seven coaches, not twenty!” The fireman was not thrilled at this plan, screaming at his engine even as he tried to get the coal in the firebox.

“Chaps?” Caerphilly’s driver sounded remarkably calm over the radio. “Should we be concerned about that storm in the distance? Any rain or leaves on the line?”

Looking ahead, Gordon’s driver felt yet another surge of dismay. The “storm” on the horizon was a towering wall of thunderclouds that reached thousands of feet into the sky. High-spirited engines, pulling a heavy train, in the driving rain?  Oh, spiffy. 

“The storm will hold!” Gordon crowed. “Can’t you feel the air? I’d say we’ve got at least half an hour before it really kicks off!” 

Maron station had come and gone in a flash while they discussed the storm, and Gordon’s crew shared a look of wide-eyed horror as Caerphilly whistled to the signal box just before the summit. 

Anyone watching from the lineside must have had the most incredible sight - a GWR Castle and a Gresley Pacific, whistling fit to burst, roared over the summit of the hill like they intended to fly to Tidmouth, twenty coaches clattering along in their wake and a trail of leaves and dust dancing in the slipstream. Above them, thunderclouds towered over the landscape, the first bolts of lightning streaking through the black mass. 

In seconds the train was gone, whistling into the distance like a banshee, the red light on the rearmost coach vanishing down the steep slope of the hill into the pre-storm darkness. 

 -----

It was perhaps fortunate for both engines’ reputation that no other engine was present when the Limited screeched into the big station a full seven minutes ahead of schedule. Gordon and Caerphilly were laughing and whistling like newly-built tank engines as they let off steam. Behind them, the passengers began to stream out of the coaches, and the silence of the platform turned into a dull roar of people and staff. 

The disheveled, bedraggled crew staggered out of their engines, waiting for the world to stop shaking. 

“What happened to you?” The yard crew, there to take the train back to the shed, looked with confusion between the cheerful engines and the haunted-looking crew. 

“Shut up.” Gordon’s driver said, slapping some paperwork against the other man’s chest before staggering off to the station offices.

-------

A little later, the two engines were parked at the coaling stage. The yard crew had taken one look at the sky above, with lightning arcing through the sky, and had decided that there were far safer places to be than directly under the steel structure that jutted fifty feet into the sky. 

“You were right.” Caerphilly said. “The rain hasn’t come yet. How did you know?” 

“The one advantage of age,” Gordon said, eyes never leaving the sky. “Is experience. I can feel the pressures in the air. Once it starts to drop, then we have our rainstorm.” 

“Yes, but,” Caerphilly looked away from the sky and back to him. “Barometric pressures often drop hours beforehand, not minutes. It’s basic weather science. How can you put such a fine timeline on it?”

“What are we, if not vessels containing water, wind, and pressure?” Gordon mused. “After a certain point, you just begin to know. Truth be told, I’m far more surprised that you don’t know. Usually ignorance of instinct is left to the dunderheads like James.”

“You forget that I’ve been indoors for forty years.” Caerphilly watched as a distant bolt of lightning streaked through the clouds. “In a science museum. I could tell you all about textiles, rockets, agriculture, even medicine.” She looked wistful. “But weather? I can talk about cyclones and pressure systems until I am blue in the face, but it won’t change the fact that I’ve forgotten the feeling of the rain.” 

The wind picked up, and the air shifted noticeably. “Did you feel that?” Gordon said knowingly. 

“A little.”

In the distant staff room, a radio snapped on, and a soft song began wafting out over the yard. 

“Focus on that.” Gordon advised. “It means you’re about to feel something you haven’t in years.” 

“What-?” Caerphilly started to say something, and then stopped as the first drops of rain fell onto her. “Is that-?

“Oh yes.” Gordon’s eye had a tiny hint of a sparkle in it. 

The rain began to pour down from the heavens, joined by the winds and the lightning. 

Caerphilly’s glee could be heard across the yard.

-

“Oh what is that idiot doing now?” James scoffed. “He’s getting the new engine all wet!” 

“I don’t know…” Henry said thoughtfully. “They look too happy to be wet. Maybe they’re under the coaling stage enough that they’re dry.”

“What are you talking about? Look at them! They’re shining like they just got waxed!”

“Well they could have been-”

“No they haven’t! What do you know about rain on paint? The last time you tried to develop an opinion on that you got locked inside a tunnel!”

“Well maybe they don’t mind getting their paint wet, unlike some engines I could name in this shed…”

“Gordon? Not mind something? Pah!” 

“Are they always like this?” Samarkand whispered to Delta and Bear on the other side of the shed. 

“No,” Delta replied at a normal volume, knowing that neither engine would notice her. “Usually Gordon is in here and then it’ll go on until tomorrow.” 

“But it’s ten in the morning?” 

“That’s nothing,” Bear rolled his eyes, voice colored by many years of experience. “One time they kept going for two whole weeks. By the end of it they didn’t even remember what they were arguing about.” 

“Are you being serious?” Samarkand looked like she was reassessing her life choices.

“Oh yes. They’re very tenacious when it comes to things like that.” 

“The worst part,” Delta said with a faraway look in her eyes. “Is that after a while you start to find it incredibly charming.” 

“Yep…” Bear had the exact same look. 

“What?” Sam looked from one diesel to the other. She found no clear answer. This was very disconcerting.

[houseboatisland]

I'm curious, have you any lore on The Old Iron Bridge?

Sorry for the wait answering; my mind’s been occupied with other cartoons hehe.

Uhh, let’s see.

This one “Duncan Gets Spooked” Audio Production from Sodor Island Forums (ick) interpreted the bridge to belong to some other impoverished, unnamed 2’ 3” gauge railway besides the Skarloey or Mid Sodor Railways, but apparently being not too far from the former. It then goes on to say that the reason the Skarloey engines are now on it is because it has been absorbed as an extension of their railway after it had laid closed for several years and never connected to the Skarloey. My headcanon basically aligns with that.

For a while, on this blog too, I flirted with the idea of the Skarloey and the Mid Sodor Railways briefly, and unsuccessfully, being a single company for a few years in the vain hope that it would help them survive their ongoing hardships. They would then split up, and the MSR close while the SR limped on. The railway The Old Iron Bridge used to belong to, would’ve been part of the connection between the two separate railways.

Now though, I’ve decided to revamp my headcanon: The SR and MSR never united. (They did think about it, though.) The railway that The Old Iron Bridge belonged to, (let’s call it “The Third Railway” for the sake of this post since I can’t properly name it right now) existed east of what became the SR’s Lakeside Station, and again, never connected with either the SR or MSR.

The Third Railway was built not long after the Skarloey Railway, in the 1870s, also to exploit minerals, (slate I guess, and maybe theirs would turn out practically worthless for selling,) and hopefully drum up tourism. The railway was more of a speculators’ toy than an actual railway with a purpose: it had very little going for it on its own, and its backers were betting everything on the SR buying them out once they got started up. The SR never did, and The Third Railway eked a miserable, hand-to-mouth existence, never profiting and usually not breaking even either.

The Third Railway of course wouldn’t have had many engines, because there wouldn’t be much work for them to do in the first place. I’m sure it wasn’t more than three. By the 1920s, one had already been sold or scrapped for funds, and the railway should’ve considered itself lucky to have lived this long. As with the Talyllyn Railway in real life, the surviving engines’ work would have been so undemanding that they would have existed for eternity with the minimum amount of care, quick patchup on basic engine designs and no excessive damage. Then, in the 1930s, The Third Railway decides it needs more money again, and sells/sells for scrap their second engine. Reeeeally playing with fire, now. Goose laying golden eggs, etc.

That leaves one engine: the engine later made infamous by Rusty’s story. He falls off The Bridge heading home one night, is never recovered, people claim to see his ghost, etc. His death is definitely the last straw for The Third Railway; they close immediately after they’ve collected their pittance of an insurance payout. The railway hadn’t had hope for its entire life, and they were lucky to have enough work for ONE engine at the time of his demise. (Why was he returning home at night if he barely had work to do in the day? I have to figure that out.)

Uhh. In terms of when the accident was, I’m gonna say it was immediately after the Second World War, (1946-48) and NOT during it, because then it instantly would have been eaten up for scrap metal, including The Old Iron Bridge. You’d think The Third Railway’s Company would have sold off the track and everything to pay off its debts, but I guess for one reason or another they were just never able to. That’s how the Skarloey engines can find it in one (crappy) piece when the events of “Duncan Gets Spooked” happen. My headcanon is that Season 5 basically was the Seventies, so at that time the SR is buying The Third Railway’s remnants and cleaning them up for expansion. Hence “clearing the railway of branches and overgrowth.” It wasn’t the Skarloey Railway that was all crummy and shrub-ridden in the episode: it was their new assets, the former Third Railway.

So, in my headcanon, the supernatural is real. Ghosts and crap. (It’s a show about choochoos with faces. Some kooky presence or non-mortal plain/dimension/whatever existing isn’t entirely off the table.)

Duncan definitely saw The Engine’s Ghost, and what workmen at night have seen him too from Rusty’s retelling. It’s a good time now to note that what happens in my headcanon doesn’t follow that what the show and books show is gospel, and some things may happen differently than what’s onscreen. So while the episode may show The Engine’s Ghost to merely have been fireflies, in my version of the episode it was deadass, on God and his Timberlands, the ghost. Duncan’s freakout was waaay worse too, (oh, and his crew, don’t forget them,) and the fireflies explanation was merely his way of coping with what he saw. He spent many a sleepless night rewriting his memory to be that it was fireflies, however stupid that was. (I’m not gonna go into detail but I’ll just say The Engine’s Ghost’s face was absolutely unmistakable with a bunch of flickering bugs. If you saw what Duncan saw, you’d see just how stupid his rationalization sounds. “Dude are you blind??? That was NOT bugs, yeesh😱💀” you’d say.)

I have little in the way of headcanon for The Engine himself set in stone, headcanon-wise. But I can say for certain he felt cheated by life, and that’s why his restless spirit still roams the place of his death. In my headcanon, The Engine’s Ghost must have heard Duncan calling Rusty’s story rubbish, and that’s why Duncan’s the only engine to ever, as I said, come face to horrific-gross-terrifying-ghost face with him. The Ghost was livid and thought Duncan had earned himself a one way ticket to Scare the Soot Out Of Youville for his insulting him. Duncan’s also the only engine to ever “face off” with him all this time later. This particular spooking seems to have sated The Ghost’s hunger for attention for several years, for he wasn’t seen again for at least a decade.

But The Ghost does start appearing again after that, just to keep his legacy going and, truth be told, he revels in the new attention his story has gotten since the comparably tame TV adaption. He’ll appear if he knows people are camping out to see him, or maybe during the day, become invisible and secretly be responsible for something non-maliciously being where it shouldn’t. (You have to pity the poor coach or truck that happens to be moved, though. What a freaky thing to live through and then just keep living with after the fact.) Lots of the campers have seen him making his usual “round” on his bridge, and as you can imagine try to record it, but I guess ghosts in this world never show up in photos or video the same way vampires don’t appear in reflections, and because ghosts are seen so rarely, that’s what helps along a majority of people into thinking ghosts aren’t “real” when they are.

The Skarloey Railway still runs the former Third Railway since buying it and reviving it. (It’s barely recognizable with the old thing. Much prettier.) Duncan, naturally, is banned from being scheduled to run on it for PTSD reasons. It just makes sense to do, if you’re a railway traffic coordinator.

[kiwiflame]

Local person of TASTE. You actually said most of what I was gonna say! I love pointing out George Carlin specifically, and how he was SO warm and kind about it. In an interview with Sodor Island Forums, Rick Siggelkow (co-creator of Shining Time Station, along with Britt Allcroft), he talks about what a positive presence Carlin was on the show, and Allcroft herself goes on to write a beautiful tribute to Carlin in a piece for The Los Angeles Times.

I love imparting the wildness that is this movie onto people who aren't Aware, but considering how popular Thomas the Tank Engine WAS in the 90s, it's actually not all that surprising to see it with a movie in theaters with this level of budget and creative freedom. This is personal opinion influenced by cast interviews, but I think Britt had something special about her that just made people really believe in her vision. Working on this weird movie, the main stars talked about what a good experience it was talking and collaborating with her. Although the original books and TV series are set as alternative history, it's genuinely interesting kinda seeing the signs of this movie way ahead of time in the way Britt Allcroft talks about the series. She has a very romanticized version of it in her head, and I believe she wanted to convey the idea that Sodor was a place you could go in your dreams.

This movie went on to do so poorly at the box office that it actually began the domino effect responsible for how the series is today, but I believe this movie puts something powerful and wholesome into the world, if you take the time to understand it. It's a completely bonkers adaptation of a series that the original author of the books would have gnashed his teeth over had he not passed away recently when the movie was made. It's entirely wrong on every level, despite Allcroft having been directly responsible for adapting the books for TV. And yet, it EXISTS. She had so much passion and belief in this project; the movie went in and embraced its insane concept from start to finish, unafraid to be weird and hard to understand. It's creative freedom in its purest form, something that I believe more works should embrace the spirit of. Thomas and the Magic Railroad defied odds and went to theaters - why shouldn't the writer in you let go and be just as free? Cringe culture was always dead, and it started with a little blue tank engine.

If you want to know more about the production of this movie, I recommend The Unlucky Tug's video where he talks about a really big chunk of behind the scenes content.

worlds most poster

[autisticpod]

(Transcript included below) 

IT’S HERE! 

Friends and foes, I am UNIMAGINABLY excited to share with you the trailer for Across the Spectrum! Featuring music by the singularly spectacular Maki Yamazaki! You can find more of her work on her Bandcamp, and I highly recommend that you do 

I’m waiting for my rss feed to be accepted by various podcatchers and Spotify, But you can subscribe by pasting the RSS feed url into your podcatcher of choice: https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/1726646.rss

Thanks so much to everyone who has supported the show this far and I will see you with the very first episode on April 1st! 

TRANSCRIPT: (Also available on Google Drive)

[Trailer music begins]

Mark 1 : Hello?

Mark 2 : Hello

Mark 3 : Hi!

Mark [Narrating]: Hello! And welcome to

[multiple overlayed voices]: Across the Spectrum

Mark: A podcast about special interests! I'm your host, Mark Spark, and today we're talking about:

Guest 1: And he travels through time and fights space aliens

Guest 2: Oh, batman is SO autistic

Guest 3: Yeah they've been around since... the late nineties, early two thousands

Guest 4: There must be no evidence that anything other than the sheer power of the universe is putting these flowers together

Mark: Are you autistic? Have you ever stopped getting excited about something because someone said you were talking about it [mockingly] "Too much"?

Mark [Interviewing]: It pains me to say we will need to wrap this up soon

Guest 2: This is fair, this is fair

Mark [laughing]: Because this- this is really interesting and I'm very much enjoying this conversation

Mark [Narrating]: What if, instead of that, we talked about it EVEN MORE, and we put it in a PODCAST, for people to LISTEN to?

Guest 4: That- is by far my favourite thing that I have ever personally worked on

Mark [Narrating]: I believe that passion is a truly beautiful quality, and shouldn't be stifled

Guest 5: I guess what's cool about that is, being a Sodor Island Forums user is what turned me into an adult Thomas fan, and not the other way around

Guest 1: And we never got a third game. That's it.

Mark [Interviewing]: Oh my god- That's it?? You never find out what happened to Ecco?

Guest 1: Nope

Mark [Narrating]: So join me and my guests every fortnight as we celebrate being autistic the best way we know how.

[beat]

Mark (Narrating): By info dumping.

[Music swells]

Mark: Across the Spectrum, premiering April 1st.

[Music ends]

[araitsume]

One of my many regrets:

Around the time that I first entered high school, I joined the Sodor Island Forums, a community consisting of Thomas and Friends fans (alongside other franchises with an anthropomorphic vehicles premise). Unfortunately, I was also going through a lot of stuff at the time that led to me being unfiltered, crass, and inconsiderate. My posts tended to fly off the handle and got me into serious trouble with the moderators. But I think the worst part was that I ruined the reputation of my faith in my conduct. And when I had the opportunity to make amends for the acts that got me banned (this was when they opened the site temporarily to visitors for an anniversary), I went on a similar rant and got I.P. banned in return. It didn’t help that I used my first name as a login from the beginning. Finally, I sincerely apologize for my actions so long ago, and I can only hope that the community could forgive me (though it seems unlikely based how undeserving I am).

[5yn]

I used to be on the Sodor Island Forums but I never checked out the fics much... A lot of them seemed quite nice though. Also I think this was when I started fucking up my sleep schedule because there were one or two watch parties for THOMAS that I wanted to join in on

[joezworld]

😍

Aw, thank you! The TTTE/RWS fanfic network can be... kinda disparate. Some fics knock it out of the park, and some don't!

If you want some recommendations - and other people feel free to reblig with their own suggestions - I'd say start with the Sodor Island Forums. They're not always winners (in fact a lot of them aren't), but a great deal of the stories have good plot seeds and generally stay true to the spirit of the RWS, even if the stories themselves often fail to imagine anything beyond the ordinary.

I swear I can only barely find any actually GOOD RWS/TTTE fics anywhere. It’s all bizarro dreck except for the few good ones I’ve seen out there. Like, FutureRust on FF.net is cool. @mean-scarlet-deceiver and @joezworld I also rate pretty highly. But aside from them, it’s hard to find good fics out there.

[wolfnanaki]

bexar-bandito replied to your post: yo w h a t you like thomas and friends too??

that reminds me, were you ever on sodor island forums? because i remember there being someone called “nanaki” but that was, like, over a decade ago. i haven’t been a member in many, many years but when i was a young'un it was pretty much my gateway to internet culture as a whole.

Yup, that was me! I’ve used the name Nanaki on the internet for as long as I can remember. “Wolf Nanaki” is relatively new.

[joezworld]

Express Engines

So, recently some friends of mine (@sparkarrestor chief among them) finally got me to watch some TTTE fan videos on youtube. I really never got into that stuff - I’m “an old” by Tumblr standards, and my first exposure to TTTE fan video content was back in the days of wooden models filmed with potatoes, and Trainz productions that still had the Fraps logo onscreen. Things were dire, and I never bothered to really investigate further in the intervening decade+. Watching it now, I’m absolutely astounded by the level of quality and skill that a lot of people on youtube have gotten up to. I find writing to be tedious and slow, but at the least I get a few new paragraphs or pages at the end of each night to read back through. Filmmaking, especially the animated stuff that these people are making, is such a long game that I don’t think I could stand it. 

One of the first things that Sparks (and @weirdowithaquill) showed me was Rhydyronen’s Express Engines, the superbly made adaptation of the second book in Sodor Island Forum’s (SiF) Extended Railway Series. (ERS)  I could honestly go on about the production quality and filmmaking skill involved in this for some time, but I feel as though after a while it would stop being constructive responses and more just me pointing at the screen and mumbling things about camera movements, so I’ll relent for right now. Just assume that I really enjoyed it and keep coming back to it.  

(That being said, watching “Fourth Time Unlucky” and “Keeping Up With Castle” made me feel like my third eye was opening several different times. I had no idea that some of the filmmaking techniques in this were even possible, especially the big conversation set piece in Fourth Time Unlucky.)

---

All that being said… I do have quite a few issues with the story itself. Not the cinematography, the animation, or the voice acting, but the heart of this work - the script. It’s not a problem with Rhydyronen, the creator, instead it’s something inherent to the work itself. 

Allow me to explain:

SiF’s ERS was very formative to me as “a young,” entering the fandom in the late -00s and early -10s. I read literally of them, and even went through the long-since-retconned V1 archive that is still present on the “Your Own Railway Series Style Stories” page. There’s a non-zero chance that I know more about this series of works than anyone who isn’t an active or former contributor to the ERS. Even to this day, I check in every other Saturday to see what they’ve put out. A lot of my works are based in no small part on the real world setting of Sodor-in-the-present that they’ve done. It’s a huge part of my life, and even if I never log in to the site again, its influence will hang over my life for years or even decades to come.

There’s just one problem with all of this: The ERS is, from a very fundamental standpoint, bad. 

I don’t mean this in a critical “this is terribly written” way - far from it, in fact. The real issue with the ERS is more fundamental: they created a world, a rich tapestry of words and stories, that draws from the works of Wilbert and Christopher Awdry… and then they made it profoundly miserable to be in. 

Now, this is not a bad thing, as @mean-scarlet-deceiver has rather masterfully written, but with SiF, it’s a more cloying and existential form of misery that doesn’t really do anything or go anywhere. Sodor is on its face a normal place to live, like any other part of England, but read almost any story and you will find things happening that seem to go against the grain of most TTTE fic writers, but also of just basic understandings of human decency. 

Starting off from the beginning, ERS book 42 Evan the Private Engine is a great example of what I’m talking about. Evan, the titular engine, is a privately owned narrow gauge engine operating on the Skarloey Railway. At one point, many years ago, he broke down and was abandoned by his owner in situ. Now, for everyone who is a dyed in the wool TTTE fan like me, search your feelings and think of what happens to this engine next. Is he adopted by the Skarloey engines? Do they re-home him somewhere else? Is this actually a story being told by Skarloey to the other engines? Vote now on your phones. 

[Buzzing noise] Wrong answer! What actually happens is that Evan is left where he is for so long that everyone forgets about him, and he’s covered in the overgrowth out by the lake. When he’s discovered “many years later,” he’s lost his memory, and will never get it back. 

This is the first book in the ERS. I told @lswro2-222 about this and she’s still mad about it. 

Things do not improve from there. The ERS is filled with countless stories of: 

Engines being forgotten about for decades, (ERS #152 – Scrapyard Engines) 

Engines being threatened with scrapping after suffering from mechanical issues (ERS #58 – Brave Mountain Engines)

When said engine (quite reasonably) tries to ensure their place on the railway by sabotaging someone else, they’re sent away for scrap anyways (ERS #70 – Norman the Mountain Engine)

Engines rather abruptly deciding to leave the island of Sodor, for almost no in-text reason. (ERS #221 – Dane the Electric Engine)

Engines rather abruptly deciding to leave the island of Sodor, just as their character arc was reaching a high point (ERS #320 – Procor the Mainland Engine)

Massive interpersonal conflicts between members of railway staff that would in any other universe result in someone quitting due to the toxic work environment. (ERS #462 - The Joint Controllers, ERS # 464 - The Fat Controller's Birthday Party)

Extremely out-of-place bouts of anti-diesel racism all the way in the 1990s (ERSN #9 – Dockside Engines)

The Fat Controller (among others) treating engines like children, property, or in some other extremely dehumanizing way, even if they had no control over the situation. (ERS #452 – Lorries and Engines, among many others)

I could go on for some time, and many of these are far from the worst examples. There’s also a huge number of baffling choices, like creating an engine that can only talk in horse noises, and then much later having this engine have a mental breakdown over his inability to communicate. (ERSN7 - The Pegasus Railtour Campaign) They also killed off Stephen Hatt, but did it in a way that rubs me the wrong way and does nothing to really add to the character's legacy. (ERSN #15 – The Hatt Family’s Engines) I could go on about this one for about as long as I could go on about Pegasus, but I don’t have that much time at any point between now and forever, so we'll leave it at that.) 

Meanwhile, interesting characters are often created and then immediately set aside in favor of things that are nowhere near as interesting. Now that I know this is a matter of taste, but would you rather read about a diesel engine placed in storage for so long that she turned malevolently insane, (ERS #169 – Sudrian Diesel Engines) or various background characters like a skip lorry that interacts with almost none of the “main” cast of the island? (ERS #475 - Rocky the Skip Lorry) I know which one I want to see, which is why the insane diesel hasn’t gotten a story all to herself since her introduction in (checks notes) 2011. 

However, all of this pales in comparison to the real issue with the ERS - all of this is more or less subjective, but there’s a real, substantial, problem here: Nobody actually seems to like each other. 

Reading through the stories, there’s this overwhelming sense that none of the characters - engine, person, or otherwise, actually enjoy each other’s company unless it’s explicitly stated in text. Even then, that measure is sometimes shaky, as characterizations can change from book to book. Engines can be on good terms with each other in one, and the next, they can be snapping at each other for no clearly defined reason. 

Well, they might try to define it, but the ERS is rather insistent on following the short, easy to digest four-story format used by the Awdrys, which means that any character development occurs suddenly, and with little room to flesh things out. What this results in is often poorly-explained conflict that could be salvaged if they ever strayed away from the standard 4-story format. A good example of this is ERS# 340 - BoCo & the Freight Diesels. This book is actually one of the better ones in terms of character arcs - it follows a pair of class 60 diesels (Spartan and Wakefield) as they deal with the fallout of their brother/leader leaving Sodor unexpectedly. (ERS #320 - I could go on about that decision as well. The character was written out because it conflicted with what the actual, IRL locomotive he was based on was doing. Meanwhile, I’ve got City of Goddamn Truro running rampage through Sodor.) These three engines have better-than-average characterization due to the absolutely god-tier introductory story they received (ERS #151), but even still, the relatively short length of each book/chapter means that the contents of book 340 and the preceding stories don’t exactly give us enough insight into the engine’s psyches to fully grasp what’s happening. It’s not so much of a case of “telling instead of showing” as it is “this comes at you quickly and without any real advance warning.” This is probably more true to life with how people act under stress, but… this is fiction. You can show the audience what’s going on. There’s a good reason why some of the best works in the ERS are the long-form ERS Novels that allow characters room to breathe. 

(Also, in #340, the Fat Controller just absolutely rips an engine a new one for causing an accident, in the process completely sidestepping the fact that said engine had a driver and a second man on board the entire time. SiF does their level best to infantilize the engines whenever possible while at the same time making them 100% responsible for the failings of the people around them.)

Another great example of this is Daphne - the NWR’s Deltic that I stole for my own fan works because there’s a solid core to the character, but she’s been sadly let down by the works that follow. In the ERS she has a decently traumatic backstory, with lots of room for expansion of the character or at the very least, hints of other things. However Daphne is at most a secondary character to the ERS, and often appears in other stories, rather than her own. In these, the writers follow a handy rule of thumb for writing her: 

Deltics are loud, and so naturally, Daphne must be loud. Loud people are annoying, so Daphne must be annoying. Because Daphne is annoying, she must often speak without thinking. Because she speaks without thinking, she must be the most irritating bitch anyone has ever seen. 

I mean this seriously. Daphne’s entire role in a lot of the ERS is to show up, say something unintentionally insulting, and then drive away. She had a good introduction to the ERS in book #135, but since then she’s mostly been a loudmouth side character. Even her entry in the ERS guide says so: 

Daphne is best known as the big diesel with the big mouth! There is little denying that she is a good worker when she wants to be, but her occasionally spiky temper, bossiness and boastfulness can often lead to her fall from grace. She also has a knack of speaking without thinking, something that has caused many an upset or unfortunate incident over the years.

This is not an interesting character. This is an annoyance of the highest order and I don’t know why they keep her around.

At no point since her introduction over a decade ago has anyone tried to change this. They let her stagnate in the background while the fucking horse engine gets his own novel! 

-

I apologize, I’m getting slightly off track here. What I’m trying to say is that the ERS fundamentally does not understand its characters, starting at the Fat Controller and working their way down the list. There’s hundreds of episodes of someone getting yelled at for an incident outside their control, even when it’s plainly obvious that it had to be. Characters vary wildly, and act outside of what you would expect, considering when a story might happen in-universe. 

A great example of this is in Book #338. Honey, a new-build diesel shunter, is bought by the Ffarquhar Quarry Company and in short order, pulls every capital-D-Diesel trick in the book to get Mavis replaced… and it works. Mavis is hauled away on a lorry to an uncertain future, (she eventually gets bought by the NWR, don’t worry) with everyone in real fear that she’s going to get scrapped. Now, in my works, Thomas and Co. would probably commit murder; a lot of more normal folks might have the entire Ffarquhar branch in an uproar - something like the deputation that saved Donald and Douglas way back when. 

What SiF does… is nothing. Absolutely nothing. Thomas and Co. not only don’t try and get Mavis back, but they eventually welcome Honey into the branch line family a few books later (ERS #368 – Christmas at Ffarquhar) despite Honey being one of the only engines in the ERS or the original RWS to succeed in her evil mission. 

This is such a fundamental misunderstanding of the characters, starting with the most obvious one - Thomas the Tank Engine - that this almost would have to be set in the 1960s or 1950s. Nobody has grown attached to Mavis yet, and Honey isn’t obviously evil or something. 

Naaaaaaaaaaah. This story canonically takes place in 2018 and Honey speaks in Gen-Z/Millenial slang while actively sabotaging Mavis in broad daylight. I wish I was making this up. 

------

Apologies, I got off track again. 

So, what does any of this have to do with the Express Engines youtube video that I linked up top? 

Well, I think it shows rather clearly how the ERS rather wantonly misunderstands its own characters. Writers far better than I (@mean-scarlet-deceiver) have written pages and pages on the mental states of many of the RWS cast, most notably Gordon, who is the main character of Express Engines.

Again, Jobey has written far more on the subject than I have, but suffice it to say that by 1996 - the “canon” date of Express Engines - Gordon has mellowed out significantly. Even if he thinks that he’s going to be top dog on Sodor forever, he definitely isn’t up his own ass about it like how he was in the early days. He’s getting old and he knows it, and when Pip and Emma eventually do show up in the RWS, he’s remarkably mellow about the whole thing. Granted, that’s about 10-15 years further up the line, but it goes to show that he’s not going to go ballistic or act like a child at the first sign of his dominance being threatened like he might have in the 1930s. 

(Actually, having read all the books, I don’t think he’d act like that at most points after maybe WWII. A lot of his “I’m the fastest and the best!” schtick came from being a very big but very solitary fish in a very small pond, and getting him someone his own size to play with might have taken the edge off of his sense of self-importance.) 

Quite naturally, that’s exactly what he does in Express Engines. 

In the “book” version of the story, the main source of conflict is him lying to newly-arrived Sodor Castle about whistle codes, and this goes directly into the time trial section of the story, before wrapping up with a neat little bow of Gordon going off to get an overhaul. 

As a side note, the SiF-standard infantilization of engines starts off strong with this book. The primary conflict is Gordon feeling threatened by the arrival of a new express engine. What nobody has told him is that said new express engine is there primarily to cover for him when goes in for an overhaul. Why has nobody told him this? Because nobody told him he was getting an overhaul. The poor engine was going insane and picking fights based on literally nothing but a misunderstanding. 

Now, this is all fine and good - it actually reads a lot like Gordon just giving the new kid a hard time while working through his own insecurities, (something we can probably all relate to) but the video adaptation adds more stories, and goes… a lot further. 

For those who haven’t seen it, in the video, Gordon is basically being sidelined to the nth degree following Sodor Castle’s arrival, and it is driving him up the wall. Following the events of Fourth Time Unlucky, which covers the whistle code scene, Gordon and Sodor Castle are in a near constant feud, which comes to a head in the next (all-new) episode Keeping Up With Castle. In it, the primary set piece is a scene that @lswro2-222 called “Gordon McFuckin’ Loses It,” because, frankly, he does. There’s an extended race scene between a borderline-crazy Gordon and an all-too-smug Sodor Castle (seriously, he’s approaching unlikeable levels of smug and snooty) that ends with Gordon dangerously overshooting the platforms at Wellsworth. It’s very well shot, very well edited, has some great voice acting, and absolutely positively does not make sense within any existing characterization of Gordon that I have ever seen. 

I’ve thought about it for some time and maybe if this happened during the height of the modernization plan in the 60s, when everyone’s spirits were at an all-time low, it might have worked. It might have fit with the desperation and malaise of that era, maybe. For this story to take place in the late 90s, this is an almost impossible characterization of Gordon. I hate to be prescriptive of other people’s fan works and go “he would not fucking say that” but… he would not fucking say that. At all. Under any circumstances. It just wouldn’t happen. 

In a similar vein to that, the characterization of the other engines really chafes at me. Sodor Castle shows up, seemingly displacing Gordon to the slow services, and the immediate response is to embrace the newcomer while mocking Gordon. This is perhaps the closest to “canon” I would say the video comes - the engines would do that at first; Gordon getting one-upped so publicly by a Westerner would be hilarious for a good long while. The issue, however, comes from the fact that nobody ever seems to notice that Gordon is legitimately upset by this whole development. They either continue mocking him or actively take Sodor Castle's side, which isn't something you do unless you have a rather strong dislike for someone. Not exactly the way you'd think the engines would act after being shoved together for 50-70 years… unless you write for the ERS. 

Also, I have a particular bug up my ass about Sodor Castle in this video. He's almost too smug and prissy to be likeable. A lot of his lines work really well as singular lines, but the instant you realize the circumstances they're said in it all falls apart. As an example, during the race scene in Keeping Up With Castle, you'd think he'd be concerned or worried when Gordon goes screeching through Wellsworth with his brakes hard on. Even if he dislikes Gordon by now, the passengers must have gone through the far walls of the coaches, and instead Castle takes the time to gloat. It's the little things like that that really get me - the writers are obviously aware of what's going on, and choosing this particular response says a lot in a very unintentional way.

And, on the subject of saying things, I do want to make one point clear: This is not a mean-spirited “takedown” of the ERS. Any fan work that’s gone on for literal decades, with hundreds of distinct stories and characters, is commendable just in the sheer effort exerted by those involved. I will gladly applaud SiF in their work to have a consistent quality and tone to their work, even if it's not one that I universally agree with. 

Furthermore, I like the ERS. While many of the stories in it are misses, when they hit it out of the park, they really do it. The ERS Novels, especially numbers 1, 2, and 9 (The Life & Times Of Jim The Jinx, The Peel Godred Railway, Dockside Engines) are unironically good.

Many of the characters, especially those introduced in the ERS’s early days like Daphne, Winston, Samarkand, Zelda, and the Class 60 trio, are legitimately interesting, and had captivating introductions to the franchise. Sometimes, SiF even predicts the future, adding Pip and Emma to Sodor years before Chris Awdry did, and did so with an excellent set of stories that heavily influenced my own interpretation of the characters.  (and then, in a classic SiF move, they de-canonized those stories once it became clear that they couldn’t be reconciled with new Awdry canon) There is a lot of genuine skill that has gone into the ERS, and it’s definitely influenced the entire TTTE fan community whether you realize it or not. (Everyone calls the works diesel Wendell. Why? SiF named him.) It certainly influenced me, and that’s why I feel the need to write this all out. This series has been a significant part of my life for a significant part of my life, and it disappoints me to no end that it stumbles so often. This isn’t a callout of “you suck,” instead it’s a callout of “do better, please.” 

--------------

This viewpoint has taken me several months to collate into a single thinkpiece. I kicked the idea around for a bit, thought it out more, watched the video a few more times, and then realized that I’d have to talk about SiF a lot. (oh no, what a tragedy.) So here it is. Hope you enjoyed it.

------------

Oh, one other thing. 

While I was watching the video, and thinking about how wrong this all was, and then I thought, “well I’d do this differently.” 

And then I did. 

And then things got very out of hand. 

I may have stolen some characters from SiF. 

(Don’t worry, they’re some of the ones that I like, from the few books that I enjoy.)

Anyway, here's Express Engines. 

2001 

It was barely spring on the Island of Sodor, and already the railway was being pushed to its limits. Congestion at other ports on the mainland had forced more ships into the port of Tidmouth (and, by extension, the ports of Knapford and Arlesburgh), and so the cargo trains got longer and more frequent. 

At the same time, the Easter holidays coincided with a spate of unseasonably early warm weather, so the island was swarmed with people seeking sunny beaches and scenic getaways. Tourist class tickets were in especially high demand, and on some days the Limited and the Midday Express would strain under the weight of five, seven, or even ten third class coaches. 

Fortunately, none of the engines were “down” for heavy maintenance, so while there wasn’t a scrabble to find available motive power, some… interesting schedule choices had to be made. 

-

“Henry, it’s occurred to me that I haven’t seen you leave to pull the Kipper in some time.” Gordon said one morning. 

“I haven’t been.” Henry yawned. “BoCo’s been taking it.”  

“BoCo?” 

“He said yes, don’t worry.” Henry said blearily. 

“But why aren’t you-”

“Because I’m getting about two hours of sleep if I take the Kipper and the morning stopper train, and that’s if someone isn’t snoring loud enough to shake the dust off the ceiling beams.”

“I assure you that I do not-”

“S’not you, you daft thing. It’s James. I think there’s something wrong with him.”

--

Bear growled in displeasure. It was a deep, bass-y sound that seemed to echo through the ground, and Bill and Ben fled back to the clay pits in terror. 

“-and if I catch you pulling that ever again, I’ll be the last thing you ever see!” 

Edward looked on in awe. “Can you teach BoCo how to do that?”

--

Duck goggled. “I think I’ve seen it all now.” 

Emma smiled meekly. “I know it’s a little unusual, but-”

“I didn’t mean it as a bad thing., Duck cut in graciously. 

“Oh thanks.” She looked around. “I wish we didn’t have such a long train, we could probably come down here more often. It’s very pretty-”

“Oi!” cut in Mike, from the Small Railway’s tracks. “What’s wrong wit’ Oliver?”

Looking back, Duck could see Oliver trying and failing to hide from Pip, much to her chagrin. 

“Don’t worry about it! He deserves it!” he said after a moment’s deliberation.

--

“Excuse me,” the big EWS diesel asked as he rolled into Crovan’s Gate with a line of flatbeds. “But is this a heritage railway or something? What are you doing here exactly? Are you on a railtour?” 

“Railtour?” James sniffed. “I’m not a railtour! I'm late! Ta ta!” 

And he steamed away in a hurry. 

“That… didn’t answer my question.”

----

During this time, the Fat Controller was nowhere to be seen. Rumours flew between the coaches and trucks that he was out finding them another engine, but the engines themselves knew better. 

“From where would he find a King class?”

“I don’t know! But there’s a biiiiig engine back there under a sheet, and a bunch of paint all labeled “GW Green” sitting around - more than Duck and Oliver could need put together!”

Well, some of them did. 

“James, what now?” Henry groaned as he rolled into the shed. All he wanted to do was sleep,but it seemed like this wouldn’t happen soon. 

“Look,” James spluttered, as Gordon and Bear stared with skepticism heavy on their brows. “All I know is: Engine, sheet, paint, and soon!”

“Soon?” Bear scoffed. “Soon what? Soon the hols will be over? Soon that summer will come? Show me some proof.”

“Oh for- what about that tarped over thingy that came in last Christmas? I saw it! That’s real!” 

“That could be anything!” Gordon butted in. “There’s dozens of preserved lines that wish to make use of our facilities. For all we know, it is a King class that’s being restored for a museum!”

Henry suddenly felt very bemused. He had something to say now, but it needed to be timed perfectly.

He waited a few minutes, as Bear and Gordon continued grilling James over details that he couldn’t possibly have known. It was quite funny, but not as funny as what he had to say. 

Finally, as his eyelids drooped and his fire died down to embers, he saw his chance. “Excuse me, if I may.” He yawned. Gordon and Bear stopped mid-sentence to look at him. From the startled look Gordon was hiding, it seemed like they’d forgotten he was there.  “But I did overhear from the coaches on the Limited, who themselves overheard from the Fat Controller, that we are getting another engine - just not a King, but instead, a Castle!” 

The reactions of the others were priceless, and held just long enough for him to close his eyes and fall happily to sleep!

-----

The next morning, The Fat Controller arrived as the sun rose. “Well, my ears have been burning all morning,” he said jovially. “So I assume you already know about the new engines,-”

“EngineS?”

----

Last year - around Guy Fawkes Night

Stephen Hatt strode into his office to find his secretary holding the phone about three feet from her ear. Even at that distance, a great commotion was clearly audible. 

“The National Railway Museum for you sir,” she said, straining to keep the phone as far away as possible. “Mind the volume when you answer.” 

He gave her a wide berth and an askance look as he entered his office. Sitting down at his desk, he picked up the handset out of reflex, and quickly set it back down again. Carefully, he moved the phone to the other end of his desk, and pushed the speakerphone button with the corner of a particularly tall book. 

Pandemonium burst forth from the device, and it took a moment for Stephen to pick out the sound of a human voice over what sounded like a fully-involved riot in the background. “Hello? Stephen? Are you there? It’s Andrew. Look, Stephen, I shan’t mince words with you, but we’ve made a terrible mistake and you’re the only person left who can fix it.”

Stephen, having recovered from being assaulted by a wave of sound, raised an eyebrow. “Fix it? I haven’t even been told what the problem is yet!” 

“What? Can you speak up- oh for goodness’ sake!” There was a sound of a phone handset being put down, and then the sound of a door opening. The sounds of the riot became louder and more pronounced for a moment, and then there was a bellow of “QUIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEET!” that shook the phone. 

The door then shut with a suddenly audible click, and then Andrew was back on the phone. “I’m terribly sorry about that.”

“What is happening over there?” Stephen asked, agog. 

“My problem.” Andrew said, his tone hasty. He clearly expected the noise to start up again. “We’ve done some, uh. re-arranging of our collections you see, and two engines were put together who really have no business being anywhere near-”

“CITY OF TRURO I WILL KILL YOU TONIGHT.” A female voice came through loud and clear, to the point where the speakerphone vibrated halfway off the desk. “KEEP TALKING AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS.”

Stephen’s expression became slightly more fixed, and he stayed quiet for a long moment. 

Andrew could feel his hesitation. “Please. We haven’t been able to open for three days. They’re on opposite sides of the building and they’re still at it. We have to get one of them off property.” 

“Andrew…” Stephen said slowly. “You do recall that City of Truro had a most remarkable change of fortune some years ago, correct?”

“Stephen,” Andrew was close to begging. “Nobody will take him. We have to do something!” 

“Your use of the word 'we' is very inspired, Andy.” Stephen was actually going to have to get up and walk around his desk to reach the phone. 

“Wait! Wait!” His finger stopped inches from the “end call” button. “We’ll do anything! Name it!” 

The Fat Controller smiled. “Anything, you say?” 

-------

The engine had been brought in under cover - both tarpaulin and darkness. Once it had been delivered, it had been immediately shunted away into a far corner of the works, away from prying eyes. 

It was only then that the cover was removed, and the engine was revealed. A six-coupled Westerner, one of the great Castles of yore. She - and she most definitely was a she - was resplendent in Great Western Green and Gold, complete with all the little filigree marks that only a steam-era Swindon would apply. The paint had barely lost its luster, and it appeared from the outside as though this engine had been shunted through a portal in time. 

The only part of her that showed any age at all was her face. Around her eyes and brows were laugh lines and wrinkles, a generation of smiles and conversation physically worked into the structure of her beauty. 

She wasn’t smiling now, though. Frown lines cut into her face unnaturally, as she sent a venomous glare in the direction of the man standing by her pony truck.

“You were much more compliant back at the Science Museum,” he said, continuing an argument that had been ongoing since the moment he’d arrived in her line of sight. 

“I was valued at the Science Museum,” she snapped, putting heavy weight on the word valued. “And then you deaccessioned me.” 

“We were renovating!” He protested. “I would’ve thought that you would have loved being amongst your own kind. You were to be put in your own special museum!” 

“I was in the Museum longer than I ever was on the rails, but you never cared enough to find out which setting I preferred, did you?” she hissed. “All you wanted was Neil’s job!” 

“Sir Cossons stood down to run English Heritage and you know it.” 

“All I know is that you were in there for less than a month before I was 'better suited for display in York!'” 

“So you could be put in Swindon when the museum there was ready!” 

“But I didn’t want to go to Swindon!” she screeched. “And in any event, This. Isn’t. Swindon! You and Andrew sold me rather than deal with Truro!”

“Truro is more…” 

“Say that he’s more famous than me. Say it. That’s all Showboat Sharp ever cares about. Not that he’s totally unsuitable for public display, or that he-”

“He can keep his mouth shut when Andy tells him to, which is more than I can say about you!” He looked at her with disgust in his eyes. “You are a train! You are supposed to be seen and not heard, and no more!” 

Whatever she was about to say in reply - and it would have been vicious - was cut off by the opening of a distant door. A top-hatted figure emerged from the outside, and made his way towards them. 

“And,” the man whispered. “We didn’t sell you. I gave you away. It’s the only way the fat bastard would take this deal.”

There was a quiet “so glad to be valued...”, but it was lost in the arrival of the top hat wearing man. “Ah, Dr. Sharp, and Caerphilly Castle, I’m Stephen Hatt. Wonderful to meet you both in person.” 

“Charmed.” Lied man and engine as one as a small crowd of workmen filed in behind the man. 

Without prompting, the portly man clambered up onto Caerphilly’s bufferbeam to address the room. To her surprise, he did so gracefully, managing to not snag himself on her lamp irons, and his shoes were sturdy boots that gripped the metal properly. Maybe he wasn’t an officious fop after all?

“Well everyone,” he said, facing the group. “This is the surprise that I have been talking about. Without going into too many details, it seems as though the Science Museum’s recent renovations have left Caerphilly Castle without a home. Now, she was originally relocated to York, however a…” He paused diplomatically. “Certain engine caused much trouble for her there, and she has now made her way to us. I’d like to thank Dr. Sharp, the director of the Science Museum, for this kind contribution to our railway.”

“How much did you pay for ‘er?” came a voice from the front of the group of men. “Was it market value for once?” It was followed by poorly-suppressed laughter from the crowd. 

Even with his face away from her, Caerphilly could see that Stephen’s body language turned slightly defensive, but before he could say anything, Dr. Lindsay Sharp PhD., head of the largest  Science Museum in the United Kingdom, spoke up. “Actually, you have received her gratis.” he said with a smarmy smile. “We’re just glad to see her go to a good home! Hopefully you can put her on display someplace where the public can learn from her.”

Less-suppressed laughter met this. Stephen Hatt turned to look down at the other man. “Lindsay? Forgive me for disagreeing with you in public, but you do know that we intend to restore this engine to traffic, right?” 

There was a not insignificant amount of spluttering and swearing. Dr. Sharp had absolutely not known that. 

Caerphilly hadn’t known either. “You want me… to run again?” she said, not quite believing what she was hearing. 

“Of course!” Stephen said kindly. “Gordon, our primary express engine, is coming up on his boiler ticket, so we need another express engine to fill the gap.” He paused seriously. “Did you think that we were going to stick you on a plinth somewhere?” 

“I… I really did sir,” she said quietly. “I didn’t think that anyone wanted steam engines anymore.” She blinked. “Goodness, if I’d known, I would have insisted on having someone else come with me! Lord knows that Evening Star is never going to run under the current administration.” 

Stephen missed the acid glare she sent Dr. Sharp’s way. “Oh, how funny it is that you mention that. We actually have a 9F that we purchased recently. You’ll be meeting her soon enough, her name is-”

[6kate6kate9kate]

I spent most of my life as a Thomas & Friends fan, and was a moderator at Sodor Island Forums for a couple years. I became good friends with @chrissignore there, and to this day, it's one of the best things I've ever been a part of. I wrote a parody episode, contributed voice roles to several fandubs and audio dramas, and just all-around had a good time. (I was basically the fandom grandma there, too, but I preferred the title "High Priestess of the Temple of Edward".)

*whispers* I’ll let you guys in on a secret. The reason I’m new to the Trolls side of Tumblr is because I spent years on the Transformers side of Tumblr.

[kahran042]

Fanfic recommendation: SiF Audio Productions

Well...not quite “fanfic” so much as “audio drama adaptations of Railway Series books and also a couple of fanfics”. Pretty interesting, but don’t take my word for it. Check it out yourself here.

http://www.sodor-island.net/sifproductions/audio.html

[joezworld]

Express Engines

New chapter dropping. The soundtrack album for this is gonna be strange.

Part 1: Caerphilly

Gordon and Caerphilly quickly formed an enduring friendship, something that did not go unnoticed by the other engines… 

---

“I don’t like this,” Henry confided in Percy at Knapford Junction. 

“You don’t like anything.” Percy retorted. “Be more specific if you want my sympathies.”

“Gordon and Caerphilly, as if there was anything else going on.”

“Oh please,” Percy rolled his eyes. “They’re smokebox over buffers for each other, simple as.”

“I don’t think he’d know what that phrase means.”

“Oh come on! Don’t be an idiot - he has to be.” Percy scoffed. “Otherwise he’d be scheming ways to shove her into the ocean by now.”

“Yes, but-” Henry tried and failed to find the words he needed. “I don’t think he knows how to feel that way. When would it have come up? And with who? Me? James?” 

“Henry, I’m going to politely ask you to never bring that up again. I don’t need that mental image.” 

Before Henry could say anything else, there was a distant poop poop, and Gordon came loping around the bend with a down-bound stopping train. He rolled to a stop at the far platform, giving Percy’s disgusted expression significant leeway. “Do I even want to know what you two are discussing?” he said at last. 

“Oh, just something James said earlier.” Henry lied quickly. 

“Ah, of course.” Gordon sounded like he was rolling his eyes. “He said much the same to me this morning. Can you imagine the absolute cheek of him, thinking that he would be a viable replacement to myself or Caerphilly on the express workings? It’s almost vulgar.” 

“Oh - oh yes.” Of course James actually would say something like that. “Uh, Gordon, on that subject: how… how is Caerphilly doing on the express runs? Everything up to your standards?” 

“As much as it pains me to admit it,” Gordon’s tone hovered somewhere between boastful and contemplative. “But she’s a credit to Swindon’s craftsmanship. Certainly the best engine for the job… other than myself of course. Certainly better than James, the little imp. He thinks that he’s just the dog’s bollocks, puh! More like the dog’s breakfast…”

Gordon continued muttering about James until the guard’s whistle blew, and he stormed away towards Tidmouth. 

“See?” Percy said as the coaches rolled out of sight.

“See what? Him being the exact same he always is?” Henry wheeshed. “He’d be in a much better mood if that was happening, let me tell you!” 

-------

The express receded into the distance, and Caerphilly huffed in displeasure. “I do hope he’s not trying for any record-breaking today.” 

“Oh?” Edward pounced on the possibility of gossip. “Whyever not? Surely he’d manage it if he wanted to…”

“One of his axleboxes is acting up.” She said, staring at the vanishing cloud of steam. “His driver is an imbecile and so intends to see to it after the day’s work is done. Stupid man…”

“Oh,” Edward wilted slightly. “So… there hasn’t been any record attempts that we don’t know about? No competition to see who’s fastest?” 

“Goodness me, no!” Caerphilly laughed. “He’s worn out!” 

Edward brightened up significantly. 

“What sort of a competition would that be?” Caerphilly continued on obliviously. “I’m fresh from the works and he’s about to go in for a full overhaul. We’d never get a reproducible result with him in this state. Best to wait until next year when he’s back in fighting form.” 

Edward’s face fell, and remained that way until Caerphilly left. 

“You,” BoCo said from the yard, having heard everything. “Are a gossipy old woman and should be ashamed of yourself.”

-----

“Ach, you’re all jus’ stupid.” Donald remarked one night in the sheds. 

Vulgar noises met this. 

“Ach! Let me fuckin’ finish, aye?” He snapped. 

“Well get on with it!” The other engines retorted. 

“Well,” he said, keeping an eye on the yard outside to see if Gordon or Caerphilly were lurking about. “Forgive me for mixing a metaphor here, but Ah think what has happened is that… the Big Yin has found his Yang.”

“The what has found his who?” Multiple engines looked at him with confusion. Only Bear seemed to understand what was going on. 

“Aye, they’re all morons.” Donald whispered to himself. “The Big Yin is - oh forget it, Ah’m no explainin’ that if’n ye don’ already know. What Ah am trying to say here is that he’s found a kindred spirit. Or, puttin’ it a little bit neater - a friend!”

“And what are the rest of us then?” James sniffed. 

“Annoying!” Came several different voices all at once, and James grew deeply offended. 

“I am not!��� 

“Jamie…” Delta said gently. “Don’t take this the wrong way… but friends don’t argue for two weeks straight.”

------

Eventually, after several more days of worrying positivity, James decided the best course of action would be to introduce a conflict in order to restore some form of normality. Everyone else thought that was a stupid idea, and told him so, but critically couldn’t stop him from putting his plan into action. 

“You know,” he said one night, trying (and mostly succeeding) to slot his plan into an existing conversation. “I don’t think that we’ve really learned all there is to know about you, Caerphilly.”

“Such as?” The Western engine looked at him funny. She hadn’t exactly been concealing anything about herself. 

“Well, I for one am curious as to what they taught you over on the Great Western.” James said, trying to play innocent. (It wasn’t working but Caerphilly didn’t know him well enough to notice.) “Gordon has all sorts of stories about how the LNER made him “absorb culture” and other dreadful things like that.” 

Caerphilly laughed. “Ah yes, the grand old tradition of the “Cultured Express.” Indeed, we had that on the Western as well. There were so many different things - stageplay, music, great literature - in fact, we even had our own theatrical company in the shed at Old Oak Common. Those were the days…” 

“Really now, theater?” Gordon raised an eyebrow. “Tell me there were at least works of drama.” 

“Oh no,” Caerphilly smirked. “As old Edmund Kean once said, ‘dying is easy, comedy is hard.’” 

“Comedies?” Gordon was in full pomposity now, and James fought to keep down a smile. Around him, the other engines suddenly had a sinking feeling, as though something was about to go dreadfully wrong.

“Oh don’t look at me like that! What was it that they forced down your boiler tubes? Shakespeare and Marlowe? Can you recite Tamburlaine the Great from memory?” To an untrained eye (like James) Caerphilly seemed slightly put out by Gordon’s response. 

With that in mind, James took this moment to strike one final blow. “Oh, he just loves opera!”

Now, in James’ mind, this last word was accompanied by theatrical scare chords; opera was stuffy, boring, and pretentious - perfect for Gordon, and loathed by everyone else.

For the other engines in the shed, scare chords did present themselves, but not at the mention of opera. Instead, the chords accompanied the absolutely delighted look that crossed Caerphilly’s face. “Like Gilbert and Sullivan?” 

“I don’t particularly care for their works, (and I daresay I’d consider them Opera) but I do know of them, why?” 

“Oh, everyone at Old Oak loved their work!” Caerphilly raved. “We must have done Penzance two or three dozen times!”

Gordon’s eyebrow raised. “They put on… Gilbert and Sullivan in your shed?”

“Oh yes! I always tried to play Frederic, but it always ended up going to one of the boys - Pendennis or Raglan. I ended up playing Mabel most of the time.”

Gordon’s eyebrow got even higher. “Frederic is a tenor. Mabel is a soprano.”

“I can do a baritone if I need to!” She sniffed. “I’ve got the steam for it!” 

“Baritone.” 

“This is all very judgmental from someone who probably doesn’t have information vegetable, animal, and mineral.”

Gordon made a face at that, and Henry, Bear, Delta, and Donald could all feel a sinking feeling in their frames. On the other side of Gordon, James’ smile slowly melted from his smokebox. 

“I think,” Gordon said with a tone so slick it could lubricate bearings. “That you will find me the very model of a modern major-general.”

“Oh no”  James whispered. 

“Ah told them…” Douglas said quietly. 

🎶 “I am the very model of a modern Major-General,

I've information vegetable, animal, and mineral, 

I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical

From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical; 🎶

Gordon started slowly, while staring at Caerphilly expectantly. 

🎵 I'm very well acquainted, too, with matters mathematical,

I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical,

About binomial theorem I'm teeming with a lot o' news, 🎵

Caerphilly picked up exactly where he left off. 

“Lot o’ news…? Ah yes.” Gordon picked up at the pause, and James was suddenly aware that he should have listened to everyone else. 

🎶 🎵 With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse.

I'm very good at integral and differential calculus;

I know the scientific names of beings animalculous:

In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,

I am the very model of a modern Major-General! 🎵 🎶

They were singing together. 

This kept up for over an hour as the two worked their way through what must have been the entirety of the Pirates of Penzance. 

Then, just when it seemed like salvation was at hand, Samarkand backed into the shed, in high spirits from the day’s work. James and Henry both looked at her plaintively; they hadn’t yet gotten to know her very well, but they hoped that she’d be willing to put a stop to this. 

Delta and Bear had gotten to know the big 9F, and were much less hopeful.

Gordon and Caerphilly were finishing “When the Foeman Bares his Steel,” and she brightened up significantly. “Oh, are we singing? I love HMS Pinafore!” 

There was a very quiet squeak from one of the others - who exactly was unknown. Gordon and Caerphilly looked at each other, and then all three engines started into Pinafore. 

-

Later

Henry backed down onto the Flying Kipper looking like death warmed over. Marina decided not to press, but as she kept shuttling back and forth with the fish vans, she kept hearing something. 

“Are you… humming HMS Pinafore?” she asked at last. 

“NO!” Henry shrieked, and she scuttled away with a wide-eyed look. 

Later still, Salty came by, singing a tune as he moved a string of container cars. “I thought so little, they rewarded me By making me the Ruler of the Queen’s Navee!”

Henry’s eye started twitching. 

----------------------------

Part 2: Sam

As freight traffic increased on the main line following the growth of Tidmouth Harbour, more trains were scheduled to cope. In turn, a new division of the company was founded: “NW Cargo Operations,” which handled most main-line goods trains going into the new millennium, ranging from the Flying Kipper to the Pick-Up Goods. It was often hard, dirty work, and many of the established mainline drivers felt that such duties were beneath them, and refused to take these trains unless directly ordered to. As such, many of the drivers who filled the ranks of “Cargo Ops” were younger, either promoted from the branch lines or hired directly for the purpose. (Main line crews rather derisively called the whole lot of them “Childcare Ops,” a nickname that had surprising levels of staying power) 

This was especially true on the steam traction side of things,where the crews were a strange mix of branch line crews who took an “easy” promotion, relatively junior main line crews who had  jumped at the chance to get more throttle time without having to deal with Gordon or the people whose primary career goal was driving Gordon, and rank amateurs who had only just proven that they could be entrusted with a coal shovel. There were shockingly few “adults” on the staff, meaning that more often than not, the most mature person on a given crew was the engine; this was fine for Henry and the Kipper, but James on the pick-up goods was far more common and far less ideal.

It was into this mixed bag of professionalism and skill that Samarkand - Sam or Sammie for short, if she was feeling nice - steamed headlong into. The crews were overjoyed; growing train sizes meant that more and more often they were dealing with an underpowered engine (James) on a long train (the pick-up goods, now thirty or more cars long), or the daunting process of filching a bigger engine from the passenger services. (Henry, because nobody was suicidal enough to ask Gordon) Sam, with her massive, ten-coupled frame, a power class of 9, and Crovan’s Gate “improvements” was a gift from the heavens, and they put her to work immediately on the heaviest trains. 

---

“I dare say,” Henry remarked a few days afterwards, as Sam’s container train receded into the distance in a cloud of dust and steam. “It’s like the 1960s again.” 

“I’m not sure I follow?” Caerphilly raised an eyebrow.

“Oh, I suppose you weren’t there for this,” Henry said. “But as steam faded from the mainland, many of the most junior drivers and firemen were given footplate space on what had been the crack express engines. I recall hearing from a Southern engine who came here once that a close sibling - who at that point was more rust than engine, mind you - was brought beyond a hundred miles an hour on a boat train in 1967 by a crew of boys no more than twenty-five.”

“You’re kidding!” Caerphilly wished she’d been able to find out more about what had happened in that last horrible decade, after she’d been locked away. “And so, what? We’ve just handed Sam over to the daycare center and told them to flog the wheels off her?” 

“I suppose you could put it like that,” Henry mused as the signal rose. “But she seems to be enjoying it, so don’t view it as a bad thing.”

And he left, leaving a very contemplative Caerphilly behind. 

---

Contrary to what some engines (James) thought, Sam was enjoying working with “Childcare Operations.” Crews on the heritage lines she’d previously found herself on often treated her strangely: those who knew about her, her lineage, and Star treated her like she was made of glass; those who didn’t often treated her with mild indifference - she was a big engine, with big engine problems, but none of the glory that came to the ex-express engines. (Of course, some of those probably poisoned the well for her, so thanks Mallard.)  The rest, well, they were veterans of BR in the 60s or earlier, and as such treated her like they treated all the other engines - like property, to be ignored unless needed. In comparison, these fresh-faced youths who still didn’t fully know their way around an engine were a breath of fresh air, laughing and joking their way through a driving shift, and making sure that she was in on the fun. They even made references to things she’d never heard of - movies, television shows, songs, and even novels - and then bothered to explain them to her.

As this happened, it occurred to her, for the first time in her entire life, that she wasn’t the youngest one in the yard.     

----

“Something occurred to me yesterday.” She said one morning at the big station. 

“And what might that be?” The other engines - Gordon, Delta, Pip, Emma, Daisy, Caerphilly, and Marina - all turned to look at her. 

“I’m old.” she said simply. “Like, I’m one of the youngest steam engines there is and I’m over forty.” There was a very long pause. “I don’t know how to feel about that.” 

“Well don’t I just feel ancient and withered.” Caerphilly fixed her with a wry look. “Practically a fossil - I should be put on display in a museum, oh wait…” 

Delta and Marina both looked at each other across the platforms. It was clear to see that both diesels were doing the math in their heads as to exactly how close they were to Sam’s age. It looked to be concerningly close. Daisy, meanwhile, said nothing, but made a face that rather neatly expressed “oh god, am I really older than some steam engines?”

Pip chuckled lightly. “Well, I suppose that not all of us can be young and beautiful like Em and I, hmm? All you lot will have to settle for aging gracefully in the rest home.”

Caerphilly emitted a vulgar noise, and Gordon rolled his eyes. “Speaking as the elder of this moment, I believe I shall take my leave before this devolves into a feud.”

“Age before beauty, eh Gordon?” Delta pounced, trying to draw attention away from the sudden sense of insecurity she felt. 

This time they all heard the eye-roll, even as Gordon began to pull away with his stopping train. “Not only am I just as beautiful as the rest of you, but take note that you are only ever as old as you feel, and today I feel rather young indeed. Good day, ladies.” 

He left in a cloud of self-importance, leaving some of the other engines gobsmacked. “When did he get so… secure?” Daisy asked. 

“And calm?” Delta watched the coaches leave. 

“Did he just call us all beautiful?” Pip raised both eyebrows. 

 “Is that… not supposed to happen?” Caerphilly looked confused. 

The other engines all looked at her. 

“What?” she squeaked, suddenly unsure of what was going on. She had to tamp down a momentary feeling of panic as four different diesels looked straight into her eyes.

“Caerphilly,” Delta said carefully. “Is there… anything you want to tell us about yourself and Gordon?”

It took several seconds to parse. “Certainly not!” She spluttered. “And what business would it be of yours anyway?” 

“Aside from the fact that Gordon is one of the engines holding this island together?” Marina said thoughtfully. “And means a great deal to us?” The thoughtful look quickly turned wry, and she continued before Caerphilly could respond. “I can’t speak for anyone else, but I often wonder if he even knows what he’s saying. It would be most relieving to learn that he does.”

“What?” Sam broke in, eyebrows high. “How can he not know? He’s like, ninety!”

“And he has spent almost every one of those years on this island.” Marina was firm, and Delta looked like she agreed. “From whom would he have learned? James? Henry? Thomas?” 

Sam remained steadfast. “No. No. No way. He has to know! They - he can’t be that stupid!” 

Silence hung in the air for about ten seconds after this. Then, uproarious laughter split the atmosphere in two. Daisy started to turn red. Delta began crying. Marina was actually shaking. Pip and Emma - who have not been on Sodor that long! - were laughing so hard that their headlights flickered on and off. 

Caerphilly and Sam looked at each other, unsure of what to do. “This bodes poorly for us, doesn’t it?” Caerphilly said over the sound of Daisy’s helpless wheezing. 

Sam paused, long enough for her crew to emerge from the station building. They looked deeply befuddled at the howling diesels, but didn’t stop to question it. 

“I…” Sam said as they hopped into her cab and readied the train for departure. “Think that I need to be somewhere else before I catch whatever they have.” 

Delta tried and failed to say something, which instead came out as a gasping whimper. 

With concerned looks sent all around, Sam left in a billow of smoke and steam, the pick-up goods trailing behind her. 

The laughter continued, but abruptly began petering off as the pick-up goods kept going. First ten cars, 

Then twenty, 

Then thirty, 

Forty, 

Forty-seven cars were between Sam and the brakevan as she hauled the train away from the station, not once seeming to notice the immense load. 

The others watched her go with dropped jaws. 

“Remind me again,” Delta said eventually. “Why we were so revolutionary, when they had engines that could do that?” 

-----

The pick-up goods was a long and often tedious run up the island, stopping at every station and fishing cars out of goods yards before dropping new ones in their place. It often took every minute of the standard 9-and-a-half-hour driving shift, and if the size of the train while it was in Tidmouth was any indication, Sam wouldn’t be back in her shed until close to midnight. 

One advantage of the slow, plodding run? The chance for gossip to clear the engine/crew divide. 

“So,” Siobhan leaned out of the cab window as they waited in the Wellsworth goods loop. Caerphilly had just thundered by with the Limited, and it had seemed like a good time to bring it up. “Wha’ exactly was going on wit’ all ye at the platforms?” 

“Oh, nothing… just some girl talk?” Sam did not sound incredibly sure of herself. 

“Sounded more like the girls laughing at ye, than anythin’ close to talking.” 

“Well, it wasn’t supposed to be funny, but they all started laughing!” 

“So what’d ye say?” 

“I’d rather not… it’s too… gossipy.”

Siobhan recoiled. “An engine that don’t wanna gossip? What is the world comin’ to?” She disappeared into the cab. “Oi, oi, Will. Come ‘ere. No, no, come here. I gotta show ya somethin’.” 

She reappeared a moment later with the fireman - a young, barely trained teenager named Wilma - and pointed forwards in the vague direction of Sam’s face. “See tha’? That’s an engine that won’t give up the gossip! I’ve been doin’ this fer seventeen years and I’ve never seen that before. Make a note o’ it or somethin’, ‘cause it may be the only time ya ever do!” 

Sam blushed with irritated embarrassment. “I don’t know if it’s true! I couldn’t ask any more questions because they just kept laughing! I’m not gonna go around and tell lies!” 

Will ignored all of this, and focused on the important details. “How have you been doing this for seventeen years? My mum is barely older than you.”

“I signed on when I was sixteen, figured it’d keep me out the house.” Siobhan paused for a long second. “And, I know yer mum - she’s a slag, that’s how she’s barely older than me with a kid yer age.”

Will turned bright red and swatted at Siobhan. “Fuck you!” 

“Aye, that’s what yer mum was saying!” Siobhan dodged the swat and the lump of coal that followed it. “And that’s how ye fuckin do gossip, yeah!” 

“I don’t think I needed to hear any of this.” Sam remarked to nobody in particular. 

Inside the cab, nobody heard her. “Oi! Put that hose down!” 

“Stand still!”

“Don’t ye fuckin dare…” 

“Stand still! There’s coal dust on your face.”

Sam rolled her eyes, and very quietly directed more pressure to the injector running the in-cab hose. 

Bssssssshhhhhh “ACKSBTHLTHGH!” 

 ----

When the train eventually reached Wellsworth, Wilma was on the platform before Sam stopped moving, and was patiently waiting for the stationmaster to take the bills of lading for the cargo they were dropping off. 

At the other end of the platform, BoCo watched with some interest as Sam tried mightily to cover up a smile. He didn’t have to wait long for an explanation, as a sopping wet Siobhan squelched her way along the platform, checking each bearing as she went. 

“Do I even want to know?” He asked Sam quietly. 

“See that girl down the platform, talking to the stationmaster?” 

“Yes..?”

“I think she’s going to fit in very well on this railway.” 

Siobhan was close enough that she heard them anyways, and squeaked her way up the platform, leaving a trail of water behind her. “Aye, listen ta me closely, you giant green abomination. This shite is my fault, but I am gonna blame ye fer it, see if I don’t.” And she squeak-squeak-ed away to check on other parts of the train. 

“How are you liking Childcare Operations?” BoCo asked, full of innocence. 

Sam allowed a smile to light up her face. “It’s some of the best work I’ve ever had. I have to see if York would sell us Evening Star. He’d love this.” 

--------  

Later Still

They’d reached Killdane around lunchtime, and took their time setting out cars of alumina bound for the aluminum company in Peel Godred, before collecting cars of ingots for the mainland. 

“Isn’t this a little much?” Will asked as they shuffled the train around to put the heavy loaded cars at the front. “That’s, like, fifty five or sixty cars now.”

“I can take it!” Sam chirped, and Siobhan frowned. 

“Aye, lassie. It’s not that I think ye can’t, but at this stage I’m worried about losin’ a coupling somewhere.” 

“It’s downhill, it’ll be fine! Besides, if we don’t take these now, someone’s got to make a special trip before tomorrow, and who do you think that’ll be?” 

“...” Siobhan had a laundry list of reasons why this wouldn’t work, but decided to let the big engine figure it out for herself. With the electric engines looking on in wonder as she built up the train to a titanic sixty-one cars, Sam felt perfectly confident that everything was going to work. 

Then it didn’t, but in a way that no-one was expecting. 

“I’ve got no air pressure," the guard radioed in from his van. “I think the train’s too long for the air to pump up back here.” 

 No air pressure meant that the train’s brakes wouldn’t release, so they really weren’t going anywhere now. “So what do we do?” Sam asked in confusion. She didn’t even know this was possible, and had no idea how to solve it. 

Siobhan and Will were similarly befuddled, and were conferring with “control” on what their next move should be when a weak honk sounded through the yard. 

It was Delta, who limped to a stop with the mid-day Limited, looking exhausted. 

“Well, I think that these traction motors have just about had it," she said weakly. “I don’t think we’re going to make it much further.”

As if to prove her point, there was a sudden arc of electric light from the space between bogie and platform, and a thin plume of smoke rose into the air. From inside her cab, there was shouting and scurrying, before a weighty mechanical chonk rang out, and the smoke tapered off to nothing.  

“Are you alright?” Sam and Siobhan were wide-eyed at the whole display. 

“No, but don’t worry about it.” Delta’s expression had tightened quite a bit. She was in pain and not thrilled about the situation; she was even less happy about the dozen or so station staff now swarming over her. “The works were supposed to change the traction motors on that bogie next week. Bloody inconvenient timing if you ask me.”

It took some time to tend to Delta’s sudden and very prominent issue - the fire brigade had been called, so now the entire station was at a standstill. Sam, Siobhan, and Will, at a loss for anything else to do, had started re-arranging the train, assuming that they’d be breaking it into sections anyways in order to deal with the air brake issue. 

This was still ongoing when Wendell rolled in from the works to rescue the coaches from the calamity. “60 cars isn’t long enough for that to be an issue," he remarked after being informed of the problem. “They ran fish trains that long all the time on the mainland. Must be a leak somewhere. Or your air pump is bad.”

He would have explained more, but he was too busy shunting Delta out of the way, and then he was off, taking the Limited the rest of the way to Barrow. 

Meanwhile, this revelation meant that Siobhan, Will, and the guard were clambering over Sam and the trucks trying to figure out what the issue could be. 

Doing this took so long that everyone eventually lost patience, and started putting the train back together. “If it doesn’t work,” Sam rolled her eyes. “Then we’ll just treat it as an unbraked train. Not like we were going very fast anyways.”

Everyone seemed annoyed, but satisfied with this plan, but then Will had a thought as they began shunting the lines of trucks together. “Hang on, aren’t we taking her to the works?” She motioned over to Delta, who was sitting by herself, front bogie coated in fire retardant and liberally wrapped with caution tape. 

Delta heard her, and smiled self-effacingly. “I’m fine. They isolated everything, so I can go there on the motors in the rear bogie when there’s a gap in the timetable.” 

Siobhan and Sam both raised eyebrows, about to ask why she was moving on her own at all, when, as if to prove a point, Wendell flashed through the station with the midday express, clearly covering at least some of Delta’s timetable.

Will had a pensive look as the express’s lamps faded into the distance. “Hey, wait a second. If she can move on her own, and we’re having air brake problems, why don’t we just put her on the back and have her pump air from the rear? Should solve that problem, and she doesn’t have to drive on one motor set.”

It took a few moments for everyone to ponder that, and quite a bit longer for “control” and the stationmaster to sign off on it, but eventually everyone agreed that it “was the best bad idea” they’d heard today, and Delta was soon coupled between the brakevan and the train. The guard was very happy to report that the brake line was charging normally, and a brake test showed that there was full brake pressure up and down the train. 

Of course, there always had been. A group of mainland trucks had felt very troublesome indeed - something about being bossed around by a tea kettle - and had decided to cause mischief when they had the chance. This came to a head when the train was put together in Killdane yard, and the mischievous little things had held their brake valves shut, preventing the brake pressure from propagating up and down the train as usual. They all found it very funny, and had felt very proud of themselves indeed when the train had become so delayed due to their handiwork. 

The other trucks on the train - mostly trucks from other parts of Sodor - also found this funny, but only a few of the cannier mainland trucks realized that the laughter was… not directed at the same place. 

“Oi,” an “ECC INTERNATIONAL” hopper whispered to a “SODOR FUEL OIL CO.” tanker as Sam began to build up steam. “What’s about to happen?”

“You’ll see…” The tanker sounded positively giddy. 

With a hiss, the brakes came off, and the line of mainlanders waited just a moment before clamping their brake shoes against their wheels. The hopper, sensing that he was on the precipice of making a mistake, did not follow their lead. 

Behind him, the wounded diesel that had been shunted onto the train at the last moment gave a sigh. “Oh, they think they’re clever.”

Up front, the steam engine whistled loudly, and set off with a roar of exhaust, steam shooting into the air with each cacophonous chuff. 

The train quickly jerked into motion, and there was a yelp of pain from further up the train as all ten of the mainland trucks were yanked into motion with their brakes hard on. Screaming and shouting, they skidded across the yard and almost to the main line before they realized that this engine was not stopping for their prank - perhaps she didn’t even notice. They released their brakes - too little too late, in the hopper’s opinion - and began rolling, albeit with huge flat spots that painfully thump-thumped their way down the main line. 

The tanker in front was in hysterics, as were most of the other Sodor trucks. 

The few mainland trucks that didn’t participate were horrified. 

Behind, the big diesel was awestruck. “She’s like a machine,” she said. “Why did the Western Region have to get her?” 

-----

 Later

Eventually, finally, the train clanked into Barrow, fifty-seven trucks trailing behind Sam. The yard shunter gulped mightily at the sight of it, but Sam paid no notice as she rolled off to the sheds for coal, water, and a short rest. 

Caerphilly was also “on shed,” having brought in the mid-day express, and the conversation was flowing before Sam came to a halt. Will and Siobhan saw the opportunity, and scampered away to the station building unnoticed. They may have enjoyed being on Sam’s footplate, but after seven hours they needed a break, a sandwich, and a floor that didn’t move when it got excited. 

It was maybe an hour or so later, after their much-needed rest, Siobhan trotted back to the crew rest area with a sheaf of papers and a rather self-satisfied look on her face. Will saw her coming from across the room and sat up, not liking her expression one bit. “What?” She asked with some trepidation.

“So…” Siobhan tried not to look like the cat that got the canary. “Del’s in the works, Henry’s on a container train, Wendell’s in Knapford, and the two nutcases are on the Limited and the boat train, which means that the Northern Belle’s got no engine."

“What? You joking?” 

Siobhan wasn’t. The Northern Belle was an all-Pullman luxury charter train, operated by the same company that now ran the Orient Express. It catered mostly to wealthy tourists, taking them to various cities and historical sites across Northern England. It visited Sodor twice since it had been introduced last year, and while the train (and its passengers) had been resoundingly trouble-free, the management of the luxury train company was another story, apparently demanding special treatment from the Fat Controller despite refusing to pay for it. As a result of the prior two experiences, a notice had been sent around the various sheds that the train would be given to “any engine that is available,” with the heavy implication being that Wendell - arguably the “least famous” engine on the Island, and notably not a steam engine - would be the one taking it. 

But now, Wendell was clear across the island, it took very little dot-connecting for Will to realize what Siobhan was saying. “We’re gonna take a Pullman?”

“Looks like it.”

Will looked at Siobhan, and then herself. They were so thoroughly coated in coal dust and sweat that they looked like Victorian chimney sweeps. “Do we need to do our hair or something? Should we get the polish? Do we need to get Sammie?”

Siobhan was already holding up a hand to forestall the questioning. “Yard crew is gettin’ Sam righ’ now, I don’ think I can do the hair unless I’m dunkin’ myself in the water tower, and stationmaster had “orders from above” that we only needed to do ourselves up if we wanted to, which is a diplomatic way o’ sayin’ “I hope ye lasses look like shite so those wankers won’ come back.””

“Are they that bad?” 

“Aye! Ye should’ve heard the fuss they kicked up with the Fat Controller when James had to sub in for Gordon at the last moment…”

---

Later still

Siobhan and Will, looking every bit a pair of Victorian ragamuffins, left a trail of sooty bootprints down the length of the platform directly in front of the primped and polished Pullman coaches. A few passengers looked out the window and raised an eyebrow. One particularly loud voice could be heard through the double-paned window, a brash Texas accent saying something about “miners.” 

The coaches sighed and rolled their eyes. They were well aware of the reputation their management had foisted upon them, and were grateful that most railways seemed willing to judge corporate and personal sins separately. 

Further up the platform, and the diesel that brought the train here was gone, replaced by Sam, who did not look her best when still streaked with coal and brake dust from the long trip to Barrow. Her green paint and brasswork were dull under the crud. “Do we not have time for a washdown?” she said, slightly scandalized. “These are Pullman coaches!” 

“No’ today,” Siobhan chirped as she swung into the cab. “Tell ye all about it once we get goin.”

“It’s a whole thing,” Will chimed in, despite not fully understanding the circumstances either. 

“Excuse me, but what exactly do you think you’re doing?” A shrill voice called from the platform. A pair of impeccably dressed men in pressed and starched driver’s overalls stared imperiously through the cab window. 

It didn’t work. “Well Clancy,” Siobahn leaned out the cab window and gave a disaffected stare. “It appears as though I am gonna drive this train to Tidmouth.”

Clancy, who was slightly taller and had a thicker moustache than his counterpart, puffed himself up, the received pronunciation in his accent getting stronger. “And who authorized such a thing? You drive goods trains, not Pullman services!”

Siobhan reached into her breast pocket and produced a stick of chewing gum, carefully unwrapping it from the foil, before sticking it in her mouth. She balled up the foil and tossed it at Clancy, who recoiled. “I would say that my authorization came from the duty sheet I was given by the stationmaster.” She produced the duty sheet, gum snapping away noisily. “I believe ye know ‘im. About yea tall, named Burton? Brown hair, little round glasses an’ a bow tie?”

Clancy’s face screwed up in displeasure. “Yes, yes, I am well aware of our… egalitarian taskmaster, but you and he should know that this is not a service for Cargo Operations. It is a premiere service, and main-line crews should be taking it-”

“It is a charter service and ye well know it,” Siobhan shot back. “Cargo Ops has free fuckin’ reign of them just like ye do. Also, this is the Northern Belle, an’ there was a whole circular abou’ this thing getting wha’ever was available, so we’re it!”

Clancy looked like he had already been tightly wound before he walked up the platform. Now he was liable to explode. “This is an express working! You’ve got a child on the footplate! She should be in school, not firing an engine! Does she even know what she’s doing?” 

Will sat up, thoroughly offended. Siobhan got to him first. “An’ she’s doin’ a fine job o’ it. I ain’t heard no’ one complaint about ‘er all day!”

The man standing behind Clancy took this moment to open his mouth, revealing an equally posh accent with a characteristically flippant tone. “Yes, well, it may be all well and good, but we all know exactly how… permissive the engines can be. I can assure you that if something has gone wrong today, you would be ignorant of it.” 

This was the wrong comment to make.

“Have I been fuckin’ eatin’ glue the last twenty years?” Siobhan yowled. “Do I not know wha’ a fuckin’ fireman does?”

“That’s a lot of talk for someone with clean fingernails and shiny boots!” Will seemingly teleported across the cab, and was almost entirely out the window. “I bet you haven’t lifted anything heavier than a pencil all month, Rupert!”

“I’ve been called a lot of things, but quiet and permissive isn’t one of them.” Sam was utterly bewildered. “What a comment to make!” 

Rupert recoiled, and Clancy went on the attack. “Don’t be hysterical! You’re both barely out of nappies and you think that you can take an express train? Get out of the cab and let someone experienced do the work.”

“How long have you been doing this for?” Sam retorted dryly. “I imagine that it hasn’t been day in, day out, for almost forty years.”

“I don’t recall asking you for your opinion, 92250.” Clancy seethed. “But, if you must know, I signed on with the Southern Region in 1967.”

“The Southern Region that ended steam in 1967?” Sam’s tone was acidic. “What diesel did you hire onto?” 

Rupert could see that Clancy was struggling, and tried to save him. “Now see here! I will have you know that we are both very experienced drivers in the heritage rail industry, and have many hundreds of hours at the throttle of -”

“Engines like me?” A majestic voice called from behind them. It was Caerphilly, who did not look thrilled with the goings-on, to the point where the yard crew who had brought her to the platforms beat a hasty escape back to the sheds. “I imagine you did. Tell me, how does your experience of driving two or three miles through the countryside at a snail’s pace translate to running crack steam express services?”

“We have been gainfully employed on this railway for years doing exactly that!” Rupert’s voice was starting to crack.

“I know. Gordon mentions you. Frequently.” 

They were losing the battle, and they knew it. Clancy was turning a deep shade of red, and went for what he thought was the kill. “Oh for the love of God! Get out of the cab you stupid cows! This is our assignment and I will not let a woman take it from me!” 

There was a moment of silence, during which Clancy and Rupert took absolutely zero notice of how completely surrounded they were. 

KSSSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

The silence was then broken by the sound of Caerphilly and Sam venting steam at the two men, turning the far end of the platform into a cacophonous sauna of noise, heat, and steam. 

It went on for well over a minute, only stopping when the signal in front of Sam turned green, and she slipped away with the Northern Belle rolling smoothly along behind her. The passengers looked out of the windows in awe at the display, totally ignorant of why it had happened. 

In the deafening silence, Clancy and Rupert laid flat on their backs on the freshly steam-cleaned platform. Their clothes were soaked completely through, stuck to their bodies as though they had just been fished out of the Walney Channel. Indeed, if one ignored the slightly red tinge to their skin, the two men could be mistaken for recovered drowning victims. 

Slowly, a pair of footsteps click-clicked their way across the platform. It eventually resolved into a man of average height, wearing a dark suit with a bow-tie and round glasses. A nametag on his breast revealed him as C. BURTON - STATIONMASTER. 

“I have rostered you two on the Kirk Ronan boat train,” he said in a soft American accent. “Number four is the assigned engine.” 

He dropped a clipboard onto Clancy’s chest, and walked away.

Slowly, as the footsteps faded, Clancy and Rupert’s heads turned to look towards the sheds. 

There, in the dark shadows, Gordon’s eyes glinted furiously.

[joezworld]

Express Engines

Got you guys yesterday, didn't I?

Just so that everybody knows, I am stealing OCs from SiF. Usually it's because I think they deserve better but in this specific instance it's because I like her enough I wanted to wrap her into the stories I make one way or the other. She's one of Rhys B. Davies' contributions to the ERS, which is why she's actually a good character.

1963 - Severn Tunnel Junction Yard

“Samarkand. I’m looking for an engine named Samarkand.” 

“Well she’s not ‘ere, so why don’ you take yer Swindon self and git, awright? A’fore we’ve got ta stop bein’ so polite abou’ it?” Their response was crude but to the point, and Evening Star took his leave with dignity. 

It wasn’t their fault, truly. Hating him came naturally to a great many of his kind. The eldest - those with grease in their bearings far older than he - hated him for his “coddled” nature. He was “special” to London, marked for immortality before he’d turned a wheel in revenue service. His brass always shone, his movements were oiled promptly, and he was put on special, lighter duties just to keep his condition as close to perfect as possible; Should something break, it was replaced instantly. It did not take a surplus of brains to figure out why they hated him, as they sat on sidings, barely raising enough steam to keep the diesels at bay. 

Similarly, the “middle” of their clan despised him too. They were younger, Crewe-built to a tee, except for a small class of ten Swindoners - his predecessors, as it were. There had been tension around these two groups, well before he was built; the Swindoners had been sent to the East, and the Crewe-ers had taken the blame for that from the great many engines of other classes who still held onto the non-secular trappings of the former Western. When more of their shared class had once again rolled out of Swindon's famed shop doors, the Crewe engines were primed for hatred. It was an honest hate, and he felt somewhat comforted that they would have hated him even if his status had been less… special. 

The youngest - his own “cousins” as it were - hated him as well, but unlike the callous detestation of the elders and the sectarian dislike of the middles, he had no idea why they hated him so. At first, he’d assumed it was much of the same: His own Swindon brothers had no quarrel with him - indeed they did their best to treat him as an equal - so the dislike from the Crewe engines seemed to have sectarian origins.  

But they kept bringing up her. 

Who she was, he had no idea, but as he questioned the hurled abuse it became very clear that he had wronged her in some way. It was the world’s best-kept secret, known to all Crewe built, and hidden from the Swindoners on pains of death. 

At first, he was willing to let sleeping engines lie. Perhaps it was some misunderstanding, or childish jealousy; either way, he would not stoop to such levels, not allow himself to sully the name of Steam Traction over a petty grievance. 

But, as the years went on, and it became increasingly obvious that his kind was being snuffed out, his mind turned again to the mysterious her. Would he really go quietly into the good night, leaving an unknowable number of past sins to turn in the breeze? 

No. No he would not. He would find this mysterious engine, and make peace with her if it was the last thing he ever did.  

He learned things, here and there. Most of his information came from the crews; they had no truck in his private quarrels, and spoke freely if caught at the right moment. “She” was another of his own class - sister, cousin, whatever she chose to be, really. The crews spoke of her well, but mentioned that she seemed slightly “uppity". It took him time to figure out what this meant: unlike many of his fellows, who were awarded nicknames from their crews, or he - who had been named from the moment of his creation -  this engine seemed to believe that she was owed a name of her choosing, and was quite insistent that she be referred to her chosen moniker. The crews didn’t like this, and it was probably to her benefit that she was of the female persuasion: she reminded them of their daughters and nieces, headstrong but still a “silly girl” whose concerns could be pushed aside. He had no doubt that a male engine would have already been deemed “insubordinate” and sentenced to an… undeserved fate. 

Then there was the matter of the name itself. Samarkand. 

He’d learned, through his drivers, that it was the name of a great city to the east, far beyond the British Isles and even more distant than Europe. Older than anything he could fathom, it existed for millenia. It stood as the capital of a great empire at one point in long-ago history, and the king had erected his mausoleum there, forever tying the metropolis to his legend. 

That king had been named Tamerlane, and he’d lived a thousand years ago. A great ruler, his legend lived on into the modern day, and in the early days of the 19th century, a locomotive had been named after him. 

That locomotive had been the first engine to emerge from the works at Crewe. 

And now there was a locomotive who called herself Samarkand, the city where Tamerlane was laid to rest. 

Evening Star was not a moron. He could read between the lines. This engine thought that they deserved a spot in history that fate had given to him. 

But had it? 

That was the little voice in the back of his mind, traitorous and deceiving. It often spoke the darker thoughts, the ones he’d rather not have. It played at his thoughts as his driver slowly moved him to the coaling stand. Every engine had to come through here, at some point. She was assigned to this yard, and so he would find her today. 

Did fate really choose you? Or was it just men? the little voice sneered, tone laced with sweet, cloying venom. 

He grit his teeth, trying to tune it out. Ordinarily an easy task, this time it stuck there. 

You heard them when they put the name plates on. 

He’d been far too young then to understand what they said. (he was far too young now)  They’d spoken at length of things that mattered to mortal men: pride, vanity, groupings, legends, and of course, the Great Western. His lineage was, to them, not just the endling of steam, but the last gasp of a great railway. To them, he was Brunel’s last scion, and the world would treat him appropriately, whether he deserved it or not. 

There had been mutters and scowls from the few men who did not worship at the altar of Brunel. They spoke of concepts that he found foreign: unknowable things like production stoppages, and “slow-rolling” the builds. At the time, he had no idea why “fifteen engines in a year” was “bloody shameful.”

Now, as he watched the engines working the yard, he understood. He was, by all accounts, the last steam engine; the final word in a storied lineage that went back to the promethean origins of Stephenson’s Locomotion. 

And yet… he was number 92220. 

The engines who had just evicted him from their shed were 92229 and 92237. Across the yard, an engine was shunting a goods train. Its number was 92250. 

How could he claim to be the last, when they out-numbered him so? 

Admit it, you’re just a fraud, sniffed the little voice. The least deserving immortal. 

He blew off steam in irritation, the vapor billowing into the night. His crew, who had been getting ready to oil his joints, took one look at their engine and found that they needed to be elsewhere. Evening Star was left alone with his thoughts. He did not enjoy the solitude, and disquieting little thoughts buzzed around his smokebox like bees.

After some time, a distant horn sounded, and the Cardiff-bound Blue Pullman roared into view. The train thundered through the station, a wild wind whipping in its wake. Shortly thereafter, a second horn sounded in the other direction. A slow goods train with a Hymek on point was bellowing for a banker, and a prairie tank scrambled out of the yard to serve the diesel. 

I haven’t got much time, Star thought. All of this will be gone soon. 

“Haven’t got much time for what?” A voice said next to him, and Evening Star almost jumped out of his frames in surprise. While he’d been ruminating, the engine from earlier, 92250, had pulled up next to him. 

“I’m sorry,” he said instinctually. “Just thinking about something.” 

The Hymek honked loudly, and the slow freight began rolling past them with a roar of diesel exhaust. 

“I’ve been thinking about that too,” the other engine said, eyes looking at the plume of diesel exhaust rising into the air. “They’re building more of them every day.”

The train continued past, the prairie tank shoving hard against the brake van, crew building steam for the steep grade in the tunnel. 

“What do you think will happen to him?” 92250 asked. Now that the noise had ceased, Evening Star could hear her properly. She had a quiet voice, one accented by both Wales and the West Midlands, with a hint of London thrown in. Most likely a Crewe engine. 

“The same thing that will happen to the rest of you, I suppose.” He hated this question. No matter the answer, he was instantly the exception, the other. The one who would live forever.  

“I suppose so.” She didn’t scowl at him like he expected. “At least they’ll save you.”

His eyes widened. “Forgive me, but most engines don’t view that as a positive.” 

The smile she gave him was upbeat, yet melancholy. “It’s better than none of us making it.”

“I suppose…” he allowed. “It just feels as though most engines would prefer it to be someone else.”

That elicited a curious look. “Who else could it be? You’re the last steam engine! If there’s anyone to save, it would be you.” 

“Many would agree with you,” He tried to keep the various emotions from his voice. “But a number of our fellows feel as though there is another… one who is more deserving of immortality than me.”

She laughed. “What? Does someone think you plucked the number off their side? What cheek.” 

He didn’t find it funny. “Nothing so gauche, but I’m inclined to agree with them. A great injustice was committed against someone, and I became the beneficiary.” 

“What great injustice?” She sniffed. “And who has been telling you that? I’ll straighten them out right quick.” 

“Oh please, don’t.” He begged. “It’s true.” 

“What is?” 

He tried to find the words. “Look at my number, and then your own. How can I be the last? You are living proof that there’s at least thirty more ahead of me, and there’s probably more after you.”

She scoffed, but he continued. “And do you mean to tell me that the great Swindon works took years to build the last batch? That paragon of efficiency? Or is it more likely that they slowed the production to keep one last prize for themselves?”

She looked at him curiously. “So you think that… Crewe built the last engine?”

“It’s possible that my fate is actually that of another engine,” he said. “The lineage of steam may have been meant to end with the great Samarkand, rather than with-”

“It’s me.” She cut him off, cheeks turning pink with embarrassment. “I’m sorry, I thought you knew. It’s me. I’m the last Crewe engine. I’m Samarkand.”

His jaw dropped to his bufferbeam. “You? But… but, but, but you- I you must- you should-” 

She gathered herself quickly, and cut him off with a stern look. “I nothing. You’re the last steam engine, and don’t let anyone tell you differently.”

“But- but- but-” he stammered. “I’m going to be- and you- and- and, and and and.” 

She kept looking at him. “And, fate dealt us the lives we’ve been living. I can’t be Evening Star, and you can’t be me. The only thing that you have, that I want, is nameplates. Everything else, that’s yours and yours alone.”

Even as he spluttered out something about his life and his paint, and his immortality, he couldn’t help but look at her side, where there should be a set of nameplates. Instead, the word SaMARkANd was chalked on the side of her smoke deflector. Stained and runny from a past rainstorm, it was barely discernible under the muck and grime that caked her entire form. His express-passenger-green paint, polished to a mirror finish, felt… uncomfortable in comparison.  

She kept looking at him, her sad smile turning wan. “Maybe I’ll make it through this anyways. I could always run off to Sodor.” 

He could tell from the way she said it that she knew it wasn’t possible, and he felt the tears prickling at the corners of his eyes. 

“Ah, ah, ah,” she said. “No tears. We’ll both see what the future has in store when it happens, and not a moment before.” 

There was the sound of feet on gravel, and her crew appeared through the steam. Clambering into her cab, they quickly raised steam and prepared to drive her away. “Just remember me, alright?” she said as she left. 

Evening Star had no doubt that he would never forget her for the rest of his life. 

-------------------------------

A few days later

The BR minders were entirely too easy to bend to his will. They saw him as less of an engine and more of a precious figurine; something to be kept safely in a cabinet, away from danger. They didn’t like that he had to venture outside the shed at all, and often rewarded him if he shirked a duty they didn’t like. 

On this day, it wasn’t difficult. The schedulers were in a tiff with management - part of some larger dispute between the trade unions and London - and had assigned him a train carrying literal rubbish. It was trivially easy to pretend that a bearing had seized, and pawn the duty off on a class 37 that had been snickering at his misfortune. 

On this day his minder was an odious little man named Smythe. As soon as he’d returned to the shed and been pronounced to be in “fine working order”, Smythe had oozed out of the shadows and offered him “a suitable reward” if he were to stay in the sheds for another day anyways. 

“Does the suitable reward include boons for other engines?” he asked with as neutral a voice as he could muster.

Smythe had merely smiled, and produced a notepad. 

--

A few weeks later, he was on the point of a limited-stop passenger train, slowly working its way from Cardiff to Swindon. The train was short, he was strong, and the timetabled workings did not include the two stations on either side of the Severn Tunnel. He roared through the station at the maximum allowed speed, the yard flashing by on either side. As he approached the sheds, an ecstatic whistle drew his eyes towards an engine on the nearest track. It was a 9F, just like him - clean and shiny with a new coat of green paint. On her side, a set of brass nameplates shone in the sun. 

He smiled, and roared on towards the tunnel. 

------------

1965 

The end was coming for them all. 

Steam was on its final few revolutions around the sun, and even its most famous member was not immune. Evening Star, last of the Swindoners, and the last steam engine ever built, had been withdrawn from service. A scant five years old, he felt twice that, and looked even worse; as the years had gone on, the maintenance had stopped, and problems had begun to emerge that no amount of cleaning could fix. Eventually, he learned that immortal and invulnerable were not the same, and a hard biff in a Cardiff marshalling yard had put him in the out of use line. Soon after, a cackling diesel had hauled him to the vast yard outside the Severn Tunnel, to wait for a final word on his preservation. 

Of course, what is not provided by fate, luck supplies readily. The yard manager was an honorable man, one who found the extermination of steam disquieting. When an engine as great as Evening Star was deposited in his care, he suddenly found himself short of “suitable engines” for various light shunting duties, and a fire was once again burning inside BR’s last steam engine.

He kept at this duty for some time, and one day a train arrived from Gloucester with a most unusual load. 

“Hey,” Samarkand said weakly, the fire long since gone from her. “Remember me?” 

Star said nothing, afraid of the sound he’d make if he tried. Slowly, and with great dignity, he shunted her into a section of the yard that he tried his best to avoid. In it, engine after engine was lined up, ready for final transport to the scrapper’s yard in Newport. 

“Well, I guess this is where fate puts me,” Samarkand said, still keeping a brave face. “Keep me in your thoughts, yeah?” 

It was the calm acceptance that broke him. “No,” he said firmly. 

“What?” Confusion wrote itself across her face. “No?”

Star ignored her. His crew had done this before, with other engines. They found it best to disappear for a few minutes, to give the engines some last words. They’d never done it with Evening Star, but they assumed that he was like every other engine. 

They assumed wrong. 

Star was smart enough to know things that he wasn’t strictly supposed to, and it was trivial to release his brakes, move his reverser, and put the smallest amount of steam through his pistons. Slowly, quietly, so as to avoid notice, he began reversing across the yard with Samarkand in tow. 

“What?” To her credit, she wasn’t stupid either. “Where are we going to go? We’ll never make it out of the tunnel.”

“We don’t have to go far.” He said quietly, navigating the yard until he came upon a specific switch. It was the work of a few minutes, some pointed lies, and a few direct threats, but eventually a cowering platelayer switched them onto a disused siding behind the sheds. 

“You can’t hide me,” she protested. “I’m enormous!” 

“I’m not hiding anything.” He said, slowing to a halt. “On the contrary, I want them to find us.” 

He jerked his regulator, and his driving wheels spun wildly for a moment. 

That was all it took for the disintegrating ties under them to give way, and the rails parted under them. With a shrieking sound of crunching wood, both engines crashed to the ground, sinking into the soft earth. 

---

The BR men were very upset when they came to confront him. “You stupid great engine!” One yelled. “Don’t you see what you’ve done? If they can’t get you out, we’ll cut you up on the spot!” 

“You won’t,” he said with deadly seriousness. “I’m in the National Collection. You’d have better luck knocking down the Tower of London.”

“Then we’ll find another engine and say that they’re you!” another one spat. “Nobody will notice. We’ll, we’ll just get the last one from Crewe or something! They made your kind there too! Yes! That’s what we’ll do!” 

Smythe was among their number, and he found a sudden interest in the ground near his shoes. 

“Why don’t you look behind you?” Evening Star held eye contact with the man, who eventually did turn. Samarkand’s nameplates, and the smaller plate that said “LAST ENGINE PRODUCED AT CREWE WORKS, 1958” shone under the work lights. 

What the man said next was unprintable, and Smythe was eventually forced to take charge. “Evening Star,” he said in his officious manner. “Why have you done this? Surely there is something we can do to make things right?” 

The second man raged ineffectually about “appeasement,” and Smythe ignored him. 

“You’re going to save her, or you’re going to cut us both,” Star said firmly. “I’m not negotiating.”

The second man got even angrier, and the first man joined him. They swore up and down that they would do horrible things - cut him up while she watched, cut her up while he watched, cut them both up and make a new engine out of the parts, and so on. Eventually, Smythe lost patience. “Gentlemen if you please would stop, this is juvenile and vindictive of the highest order.”

The second man had been smoking a pipe the entire time, and he took it out of his mouth in order to wave it around for effect while he protested. In the process of doing so, a huge clump of half-burnt tobacco flew out and landed on Smythe’s jacket, ruining it. 

The second man abruptly stopped, and Smythe’s glare grew withering. “P-perhaps we could find some arrangement that will suit everyone!” the man stammered, and scuttled away to find a telephone. 

Smythe turned to the other man. “Do you have any further input into the situation?” 

“There’s a heritage railroad in Yorkshire that’s been trying to buy an engine,” the other man said, terrified. “We can reach out to them in the morning.”

“Then the matter is settled.” And Smythe left to make the arrangements.

 The two engines were left in silence. Evening Star felt very pleased with himself, and Samarkand looked teary. “I… can’t believe you did it,” she said at last. 

“I’m Evening Star,” he smiled. “And you’re Samarkand. We can do anything.”

----------------

1999 - Yorkshire

It was an unfortunately all-too-common story in the realm of rail preservation: Rich man buys an engine, then another, and then another. Eventually he’s got an entire shed’s worth, but no railway to run them on. He never wants to own the railway - it’s too much something, be it liability, cash, or hassle. So he spreads his fleet to the winds; engines end up wherever someone has space for them, oftentimes spending months or years under a tarp. He plays at absent parenthood, and wonders why his engines always have some failure that his childhood books never mentioned. The engines he owns don’t mind him - most of the time they don’t ever see him enough to form an opinion… and anything is better than the scrapyard. 

Eventually, things start to change, usually for the worse. The money runs out, or his health fails; Occasionally the interest wanes, but whatever the cause, the engines go to seed. The collection is dispersed - some to museums, some to heritage lines, and some end up sitting in fields gathering rust. It’s an unhappy sight, made only slightly better by the egalitarian nature of it all: steam, diesel, even electric - none are immune. 

On this occasion, the doddering old man had died without a will. His children had jumped on his fortune like starving dogs, and when the dust settled, his “railway collection” was to be sold at public auction. It was sizable, with coaches, engines, various paraphernalia, and even an electric multiple unit going up for sale. 

The vast majority of the collection, (but not all of it - nothing was ever in the same place) had been stored at the big heritage railroad in the Moors of North Yorkshire. They claimed altruism, but all the engines had seen the men from the mechanical department prowling about, looking for those in good condition. (They hadn’t found many.)

Evening Star found it all a touch disgusting, but stilled his tongue once again. Thirty-Five years after he’d turned a wheel in revenue service, engines (and people) still got snippy over his favored position in the National Collection, his immortality, and offering up his opinion was a surefire way to solidify those of everyone else against him. And he needed their opinions of him to be favorable for his plan to work. 

It had to work. It was so important to him that he had to see it through himself, even if it meant agreeing to be an outdoor exhibit for the entire summer.

“Oh my goodness, it’s Evening Star!” The sun was coming up on the morning of the auction, and a steady trickle of people had made their way past him. Each one of them was Important to the heritage rail industry, and he stopped them all. 

“Which lots do you plan to bid on?” he asked, deathly serious in a way that made most of them stop in their tracks and answer him honestly. 

“The coaches, mostly.” 

“That class 40 in the corner.” 

“We might not be buying anything. It’s probably going to be too rich for our backers to absorb.”

“Our Austerity is coming up on his boiler ticket, so we need another tank engine.” 

“Lots 201-230, mostly. Why do you ask?” 

“Oh heavens, whatever the price is right for.”

“I promised the wife I’d only buy one thing, so…” 

“Well, among other things, we’re interested in your sister, 92250.”

“No,” he said firmly, cutting the man off. 

“No, what?” 

“No, you won’t be bidding on her.” 

“I beg your pardon? What gives you the right to-” 

“I don’t know you, which means that you haven’t come from one of the big lines, the ones that can fake an express working on open days. We’re not meant to meander around on tiny branches, so that by itself disqualifies you.”

The man turned pink. “I will have you know that-”

“I bet your works is barely bigger than she is, so you’re not going to care for her appropriately. You know her ticket expires next year?  How’re you going to handle that? Or are you going to stick her outside and let her rot while you make some fundraising campaign that lasts a decade?”

The man wilted angrily, and stormed off without a word. 

“That’s what I thought,” Evening Star said to nobody. 

The next few passers-by were mostly interested in the small pieces - parts, pieces, memorabilia, the few Hornby models that were collected on a table. One group consisted of a dozen people, and they expressed with rather fervent devotion that they planned to own the electric multiple unit by day’s end. He wished them luck.

After them was a group he recognized well - the upper management of the NRM. “Hello, Star!” they said gaily. “Find anything you like at this auction? Anything you think we should be keeping an eye out for?” 

They were joking, in the way many people did when talking to engines, but he didn’t take the bait. “Lot 347. Bid on her and don’t stop until you win.” 

Most of them chuckled, but one had actually read the auctioneer’s brochure. “Star, we already have a 9F. You should know that considering it’s you.” 

“And you’ll have two,” he said firmly. “This isn’t a request. There’s nothing and no-one here that’s more deserving of the Collection.” 

“I would say that there’s perhaps a few more things.” The museum’s director brushed him off without a second thought. “Let me do my job, and I shan’t interfere with yours.” 

The group walked away without another word, leaving a scowling Evening Star behind. “I don’t recall being asked if I wanted to have the job of 'lawn ornament.' You just won’t fix me, you cheap-”

“I say,” a voice called nearby. “I’ve never seen an engine so devoted to an auction that they aren’t a part of! In fact, I’ve seen many an engine not be too interested when they are on the block themselves.” A stout man in a 3 piece suit meandered into Star’s line of view, trailed by several others, all wearing workmen’s coats. “Tell me, what is so important about lot 3-4-7?” 

“An idiot is going to buy my sister,” Star grumbled, drawing suppressed chuckles from the stout man’s entourage. 

“How can you be so certain?” the man said, mirth twinkling in his eyes. 

“They’re all idiots,” Star said, trying to figure out why this man seemed familiar. “They have main line aspirations and tank engine capabilities.” 

One of the entourage let slip a full fledged guffaw, and Star glared at him. “They’ll treat her terribly. She’s too big, too spirited. They’ll buy her for their little Hornby train set in the woods and then blame her for not fitting on the turntable, mark my words.”  

“You certainly have a strong opinion on the matter,” the stout man said. “She must be very important to you.” 

“Someone has to look out for her,” he said, voice rock-steady. 

“I see,” the man said. “And what do you think of me, then? Am I an idiot?”

“Stephen, we came here for the coaches,” snapped a different member of the entourage. 

“And we shall have them,” the man calmed his associate. 

Star narrowed his eyes. “What would you use her for? Excursions?” 

The man snorted. “Oh heavens no. I have a real railway. She’d be pulling heavy goods trains, and perhaps filling in on passenger runs. I do seem to recall that your class was able to run at great speeds with little issue, so the possibilities are endless.” His eyes sparkled with mischief. “Maybe I shall use her for express passenger workings.” 

“We came here. For. The Coaches.” said the other man again. 

“She’s mainline certified,” Star said, unsure if the feeling in his boiler was whimsy or desperation. “Boiler ticket’s still good for a few more months. Whatever you buy, she can pull home.” 

The stout man beamed while his entourage looked at each other in disgust. “You have a problem, and somehow, I always end up dealing with it,” said the other man. 

“You know, I don’t think that’s true,” the stout man said, producing a strange object from under his arm. It was a flat, black circle. “I’ve found that most of the time, I have solutions.” 

He smacked the circle against his hand, and it popped out into the form of a silk top hat, which he placed upon his head firmly. “Thank you, Evening Star. You have been most helpful.” 

And The Fat Controller walked away with his entourage, leaving an absolutely gobsmacked Evening Star behind. 

“Oh my god,” the big engine said in quiet shock. “I think Sam is going to Sodor.” 

----

About two hours later, when the auction finally reached Lot 347, only a smattering of paddles were raised. One stayed raised longer than all the others, and Evening Star felt downright giddy as the auctioneer called out “Sold! To the man in the Top Hat for thirty thousand.” 

----

Two days later, and Samarkand was parked next to him, raising steam for the journey across the country. “Thirty thousand seems low, doesn’t it? Surely I’m worth more than that? I think the buffet coach went for more,” she whispered to her brother, trying not to disturb the line of Mark 2 coaches behind her. 

Star just smiled. “Sam, I think that you’re worth all the money in the world, but in this case, don’t think of it as being undervalued. Think of it as the world’s greatest bargain.”

“What d’ya mean?” 

“You’re an immortal now, Sammie. You’re going to Sodor, and there, you will drink from their fountain of youth and live forever. All for the low price of thirty thousand of someone else’s pounds.”

There was a long silence, long enough that he wondered if she was crying. Instead, there was a strange mix of giddy thoughtfulness working its way across her face. “No.”

“No what?” “You’re in the National Collection. And I’m going to Sodor.” She looked thrilled. “So that means that we’re going to live forever.”

[joezworld]

Mind Reading, Soul Stealing, Red Eyed, Diesel Electric Monsters!

June, 2000

A new millennium dawned on the Island of Sodor, and with it came many changes that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.

British Rail was no more, and the North Western Region was now the North Western Railway, free to operate as it pleased.

One of the first things that The Fat Controller did was purchase a new express train.

Gordon was apoplectic at this news, but the Fat Controller explained that this new service was to be a through train to London - steam engines hadn’t been allowed on the mainland rails for decades, and under British Rail, a new locomotive would take the coaches to and from London. Now that BR was no more, it was more economical to purchase a dedicated trainset and avoid the locomotive change at Barrow.

Furthermore, Gordon would still be rostered on the midday express and the Limited, both of which only went as far as Barrow.

Pip and Emma had visited Sodor once before, and had been well received by the other engines. However, once it was revealed that Gordon would be displaced from some of his trains, some engines became suspicious...

The engines had speculated that the Fat Controller would purchase a new diesel locomotive to haul the train, and were very surprised to discover that he had instead bought a high speed train!

-

"Ah canno' put ma buffer on it," Douglas admitted. "But they're doing something! Just look at how they act - the lasses must be scheming or something!"

"Ah'm tellin' ye - they are up ta something!" Douglas said to the other engines in the shed.

"And wha' might that be Douggie?" Asked Donald. Unlike his brother, he had no issue with the diesels, and was confused as to why his brother was so vehemently against them.

"Those two have been nothing but polite and cordial this entire time, and- oh bollocks." Duck began, before his eyes widened in realization. "Do not tell me that you have been listening to Oliver again!"

The other engines groaned - Oliver's escape from the mainland had put him in contact with some of the worst diesels that BR had ever fielded, and he still didn’t trust them as a result. Furthermore, his relatively isolated duties on the Little Western meant that his only real contact with diesels was limited to BoCo, Bear, and Delta - three engines who had all 'escaped' from the mainland in one form or another. He held a pessimistic view towards other diesels, and most of the engines had learned to tune him out as a result.

Apparently Douglas had not. "Ah have - and he's right! That's how it starts - they come in all peaceful and nice, and then Boom! All diesels all the time! Ah saw it happen once and ah'm not about to let it happen again!"

"Oh my god" said Donald and Duck in unison. They were going to have words with Oliver the next time they saw him.

-

Across the yard at the newly-built diesel shed, the diesels were listening to Douglas' ranting.

"Well, I'm glad that we haven't actually done anything to upset him." Pip said after a moment.

"I was worried that we'd said something." Emma chimed in from the back.

Bear rolled his eyes. "Yes, well, let me be the first to say that I am glad that you aren't actually evil monsters out to destroy steam traction."

Everyone laughed at that, and evidently did so just a little bit too loud, because...

"AH KNEW IT! They're conspiring against uz!" Douglas shouted from inside the shed.

The diesels stopped laughing and stared at the shed, while the steam engines began berating Douglas.

That brought a fresh wave of shouting from within the shed, while the diesels looked at each other incredulously.

The other engines weren't audible, but Douglas certainly was. "Well maybe no' on purpose! But ye don' know what these new things ken do! They might 'ave mind control powers or something!"

"Mind control powers?" Bear said with a raised eyebrow. "Where does he even get that from?"

"Is that normal?" Said Pip, suddenly concerned about having to work with these engines on a regular basis.

"Not especially." Said Delta. "But when it does happen, they're like this until they suffer a karmically appropriate pratfall, at which point they realize that they've been stupid and apologize."

The others stared at her.

"What?" She protested. "Why do you think I never get too big for my wheels if I can help it? I've read the books! I know what happens to the rest of you!"

Bear and BoCo exchanged a significant look, while Pip looked thoughtful.

"So, that pratfall," she said slowly, a sly look spreading across her face. "Do you lot feel like speeding up when it happens?"

-------------

And so they did.

Henry and James were soon involved in this scheme by virtue of being 'involved' with Bear and Delta, and spent the next several days figuring out exactly what Oliver and Douglas were saying about Pip and Emma. They eventually compiled a long list of imagined abilities, including mind control, telepathy, soul-stealing, invisibility, and the ability to lie with a straight face.

(The steam engines disputed that last point, but all the diesels agreed that it was the only thing on the list that was true.)

-

A week later, they first sprang their plan. Douglas was idling at the big station as Pip and Emma loaded their passengers. He made a conscious effort to ignore the HST set, which was helped somewhat by Bear backing into the track in between him and them.

Then things began to go strangely.

"Oh, not much. How about you?" Bear said in response to nothing.

Douglas looked around to see who he could be talking to, and found nobody else.

"Very interesting." Continued Bear. "I'd never considered that before. Is that new?"

After a moment of silence: "I see."

A pause.

"I wonder how that would work on this Island?"

Silence.

"Really?"

More silence.

"Well I would have never guessed!"

Douglas began to wonder if he was losing his mind when Pip's guard blew his whistle and the HST rolled away towards Barrow.

After a long moment, Douglas spoke up. "Bear, who were ye talking to?"

"Pip?" Bear said, confused.

"No ye weren’t!" Exclaimed Douglas. "Ye were talkin' to thin air!"

"I was not! We were having a most interesting conversation. I'm surprised you didn't hear it, considering we were right next to you."

"Ye said nuthin!" Douglas protested.

"I think you need to get your hearing checked." Bear said as he pulled away with his goods train. He broke into a wide smile as soon as he was out of sight.

--

Next it was Oliver. He made a rare trip beyond the Little Western to collect a train of China Clay from Wellsworth. BoCo was asleep in the station's bay platform when he arrived, so Oliver quietly collected the clay wagons.

As he waited at the signal to leave, Oliver noticed that BoCo was mumbling in his sleep.

"No... mustn't... listen... to... evil... no one... controls... me..."

"BoCo?!" Oliver yelped, suddenly concerned by the diesel's mumbling.

"Huh?!" BoCo sprang to wakefulness suddenly, and Oliver would have sworn that for a split second, there was a red glint in BoCo's eyes. "Oh, hullo Oliver. Fancy seeing you out on the main line."

"You were talking in your sleep!" Oliver said, forgoing any pleasantries.

"I suppose I might have been." BoCo confessed. "I haven't been sleeping very well recently - none of us diesels have."

As Oliver began even more concerned than he had been mere seconds ago, the home signal on the main line dropped to 'clear', and Pip and Emma roared through the station bound for Tidmouth.

As they passed, Oliver jumped slightly - Pip, who was facing him, glared at him as he passed. It was especially unsettling because modern diesels had their end-of-train lamps built into their eyes, so Pip's pupils were bright red as she glared back at Oliver and BoCo.

"She's up to something..." Oliver said to BoCo.

BoCo said nothing in return, and when Oliver looked over, he almost jumped off the rails - BoCo's eyes were the same red colour as Pip's and he was staring into the middle distance.

"She isn't up to anything Oliver..." BoCo said hollowly. "Why would you say that...?"

Oliver squealed in terror, and fled onto the main line as soon as his signal dropped.

BoCo waited until Oliver's train had vanished from sight before turning his lights off and laughing hysterically.

----------

This continued for some time - Oliver and Douglas would see one of the diesels, and the diesels would act strangely at the mention of Pip and Emma.

By the end of the week, Oliver was jumping at shadows, and Douglas was telling his conspiracy theories to any engine that would listen.

"So then Delta gets this faraway look in ‘er eye an' she clams up!" Douglas crowed one morning at Knapford station. “An’ there was no other engine there! She musta’ been talking to them while they wuz invisible!”

Thomas was spellbound. "And then what happened?"

Henry was not. "And then Douglas discovered that there was a reasonable explanation to whatever just happened and learned not to tell tales to impressionable tank engines."

"Ah am not! They. Are. Up. Ta. Somethin'!" Douglas railed at the green engine. "Look, there's Bear now! Let's just see - he's gonna do somethin' if we watch him close enough."

Bear tooted his horn in greeting as he rolled by with a slow goods train. Seeing Oliver and Henry, he quickly flashed his red lights and dropped his engine down a gear as he rolled between Henry and Douglas.

"Play along!" He whispered to Henry as he went by, the noise of his engine masking the words.

Henry blinked. That was an unexpected move... He watched the goods train roll by - it didn't feel right, pranking Douglas like that.

The goods train hadn’t even gone past yet, and he could already hear Douglas ranting about how Bear was a "red-eyed scheming devil!"

Oh, so that’s how it’s going to be. He thought as he listened to Douglas make blameless accusations about his fiancé. To hell with it then.

"What did he say?!" Douglas bellowed after the train passed. "Ah heard 'im say something to ye Henry! What did the devil say to ye?!"

Henry, trying his best to keep his face neutral, looked at Douglas in shock. "Oh hello Douglas! When did you get here?"

Bear's train cleared the signal block, and Henry steamed out of the station, leaving Douglas raving about "memory alterin' beasties!"

The engines looked up as Donald steamed up to the diesel shed. 

“Ah knoo ye lot are doin’ this - knock it off before ma brother completely loses his marbles.” He said firmly. 

“Is he going to stop saying that we’re mind controlling demons?” Bear retorted. 

The steam engine sighed deeply. “Ah want ye to know that he wasnae sayin that before ye started, but ah’ll talk to ‘im. Mebbe we can work something out.”

He steamed back to the sheds. Within a few minutes the sound of Scottish-accented shouting burst from the sheds. 

This continued for some time, to the point where Henry had his driver pull him out of the shed to escape the noise. 

Eventually, both twins emerged from the shed, Donald looking aggrieved and Douglas much more subdued. 

“Ah’m sorry.” The twin eventually said. “Ah think that ah might have let this whole ‘new diesel’ thing get to me a bit more than ah should’ve.”

There was some muttering from Bear and Pip before BoCo shushed them. “We accept your apology Douglas. Sometimes we can all go a little overboard -”

“I don’t.” Interrupted Delta.

“You hid from the Thin Clergyman.” BoCo glared at her before continuing. “We all can go a little overboard at times, so I’m glad that we can now put this behind us. Friends?”

“Friends.” Douglas said after a moment.

“Good!” Cried a voice from inside Donald’s cab as Siobhan poked her head out. “Now that we’re done torturin’ me Da’ for being thick, I wan’ to know somethin - how did all of you manage to make yer eyes turn red like that?”

“Oh, this?” BoCo said as he turned on his red lamps, making his eyes glow red. “It really is just something we were built with.”

The other diesels blinked theirs as well to show that it was not an unusual thing to be equipped with. 

“Oh that is so creepy.” Siobhan shivered. "I love it!"

--

“Oh no.” Oliver gasped as he watched the diesels flash their mind-control rays at Donald and Douglas. “They got to them.”

“What do we do?” Whispered Thomas from the next platform over. 

“I don’t know!”

-------

After the truce between Douglas and the Diesels, life became much more peaceful on Sodor. 

Unless you were on Thomas’ branch line. 

Because only Thomas and Daisy regularly travelled down to the big station at Tidmouth, the rest of the engines on the line learned most of their news from the main line engines when they met at Knapford station. This meant that information was slow and sometimes unreliable on the best of days. 

Now that Thomas actively believed that Pip and Emma had mind-controlled the rest of the engines, that information stream became warped and distorted very quickly. 

Matters were made worse when Daisy was sent to the works for several weeks to have her engine rebuilt. To keep up with traffic, The Fat Controller sent an engine to assist, and Oliver was the first to volunteer. 

The branch line quickly descended into hysteria.

Looking back on this series of events, it is mind-boggling that none of the big engines noticed, however, they had assumed that Douglas had told Oliver that it was all a prank, and that Oliver was an engine that could be reasoned with. 

Furthermore, Gordon, now displaced from the morning and evening express, was insistent on trying out other passenger runs to see if he enjoyed them. This meant that the engines who normally pulled those trains were also displaced from their duties, meaning that the engines who usually met Percy, Thomas, and Daisy’s trains on a regular basis were instead arriving at Knapford on random days and times. The sudden paranoia of the branch line engines was therefore overlooked or dismissed as ‘tank engines being tank engines’.

Matters were made worse when Daisy returned from the works, allowing Oliver to return to the Little Western. 

Daisy was due to return around lunchtime, and so Oliver took his train to Tidmouth, and then immediately continued on with a train to Arlesburgh, while Daisy took the return service to Ffarquhar. 

The other engines on the branch were busy with trains at the north end of the line, and didn’t know that Daisy was returning that day. From their perspective, Oliver was ‘vanished’ by ‘them’, and replaced with a diesel interloper. 

The fact that Daisy had been on the branch line for almost fifty years at that point was immaterial. 

“How do we know that you’re really Daisy?” Percy asked late that night. “What if you’ve been mind-controlled by them to make us into your thralls?”

“Because if I was,” Daisy hissed, acid practically dripping off of her tongue. “I would have done it already. Go. To. Sleep!”

No more was said that night, but the other engines continued to view Daisy with suspicion. 

Daisy, now thoroughly unamused, began asking the big engines if mind control was something that she could actually do - just so that she could get some peace and quiet! 

This did not ease the branch line engine’s concerns at all. 

Daisy found that sleep was much harder to come by as a result.

-

Things eventually came to a head when an extremely sleep deprived Daisy backed down onto the milk van a little bit too hard. The shunter had failed to set the van’s brakes, and it rolled away down the hill towards the next station. 

Percy and Thomas had, as the result of a lost bet, switched jobs that day, which meant that Percy, Annie, and Clarabel were halfway up the hill behind Daisy when the milk van rattled into view. 

“Horrors!” Percy cried as his crew applied the brakes and jumped clear. 

The damage to Percy’s front wasn’t catastrophic, but it was bad enough for the breakdown train crew to put him on a flatbed so he could be taken to the works to be looked over. Clarabel, who was behind Percy and took a nasty bump in the collision, accompanied him. 

Wendell was sympathetic as he collected them, but Percy was still wary, especially because his flatbed had been coupled up to Wendell facing backwards, meaning that neither he nor Clarabel could see if the diesel had been mind-controlled. 

Wendell’s shocked laughter when Percy told him this was not encouraging. 

-

The trip went normally until they arrived at Kildane. There, another engine was waiting, and attached itself to the back of the train. Percy and Clarabel eyed it suspiciously. It looked like a diesel, but one they had never met before, and had a strange metal contraption on its roof, which it lowered before they set off again. 

“Hi!” The engine chirped as the train set off. “I’m Abbey! Who are you?”  

“Percy...” He said cautiously. Clarabel stayed silent.

As it turned out, Abbey was an electric locomotive. She wasn’t new to the island by any means, but she had arrived after Percy had begun working on Thomas’ branch full-time, so they’d never met. She was very chatty, very curious, and had no idea what Percy and Clarabel were talking about. 

“Mind-Control Rays?” She laughed as they rolled towards Kellsthorpe Road station. “How would that even work?”

“I don’t know, but what I do know is that if their eyes turn red and then they look at you, you’re done for!”

“Red eyes?” Abbey looked thoughtful. “Do you mean reversing lights? We have them built into our eyes so we don’t need lamps!” 

“What?” Percy was baffled. 

“Yeah! It’s something that all engines have nowadays.” Abbey’s brows scrunched together in thought. “I think that mine has an emergency backup battery... let me try...”

After a moment of squinting, the pupil of Abbey’s left eye flickered into a very familiar red gaze. 

-

Wendell was not paying attention to the conversation behind him at all, and was startled to attention when Percy and Clarabel began screaming. 

“What in the world is going on?!” He shouted, trying to look behind himself and see what was happening. 

“I don’t know!” Cried Abbey. “They just started screaming!”

The commotion drew the attention of Wendell’s driver and second man as well, which meant that nobody on the train noticed as the Kellsthorpe Road home signal suddenly dropped to ‘Danger’ as they drew nearer to it.

The train rumbled past the signal without stopping, and approached the station at speed. Wendell finally looked forward, and saw members of the station staff waving their arms at him as they tried to right a massively overloaded porter’s trolley that had fallen over on the foot crossing. 

“Diesel and Oil! Stop the train! Stop the Train!” He shouted, drawing his driver’s attention, who applied the brakes as they entered the station. 

“I want you to tell me what happened one more time.” The Fat Controller said as seriously as one could while standing ankle deep in tin foil. The station was covered in the stuff, as was Wendell, Percy, Clarabel, and Abbey.

“The porter’s trolley was a consignment of tinfoil going to a restaurant supply store in town.” The stationmaster started. “It came in on the last train, and then it fell. We tried to make them stop-”

“I threw the signal! I did!” The signalman interjected. “They just didn’t see it!”

“No, we didn’t.” Wendell’s driver admitted, shamefaced. “We were trying to see why -”

“Percy was screaming.” Finished the Fat Controller.  

“Yes sir.”

“Why was Percy screaming?” 

“We don’t know sir.”

“Abbey might!” Wendell chipped in while trying to blow flecks of tin foil out of his nose. “She was talking to them when they started screaming.”

-

As it turned out, Abbey knew exactly why Percy (and Clarabel) had been screaming, and was willing to talk about it at length. 

The Fat Controller's eyebrows rose into his hairline and stayed there as Abbey kept talking. Percy and Clarabel remained silent, although it was impossible to determine whether it was out of fear, stubbornness, or embarrassment. 

“Mind Control powers? Really?” The Fat Controller wanted to be upset, but just could not manage it. “Where on earth did that come from?”

“Oliver sir!” Percy finally spoke up. “He said that the diesels were taking over the island with their evil powers!”

A surprised sounding "oh no!” rose from the next platform - Henry was waiting with The Limited, and had heard most of Abbey’s explanation. 

“Do you have something to add to this?” The Fat Controller asked Henry, unsure how this story could get any more ridiculous. 

-

Henry did have something to add. 

-

“Sir, are you all right?” His assistant asked as they returned to the car. 

“I’m fine.” The Fat Controller managed. “I just need a moment.”

He shut the door to the car behind him, and as soon as he was alone, he laughed until he cried.