#mr. fibreglass

[vincentbriggs]

I put some fairy lights on Mr. Fibreglass, so that's all my festive decorating done I think.

[pterribledinosaurdrawings]

Yes, exactly! They're just a dinosaur shaped vessel with which to complain about a thing, or be happy about a thing, or perhaps to make a joke. I keep thinking "oh I should draw more species of dinosaur, there are so many out there", but I simply don't feel like it, so I mostly just keep drawing the same little feathered guy.

Incidentally, this is why I will never ever get a P.O. box, because I know people would send me dinosaur things even if I asked them not to. Even if I only ever posted the address on my sewing pages and begged people in all caps to please never send me dinosaurs, some people probably still would.

I can't fault strangers on the internet for thinking I'm super into dinosaurs, considering how many I've drawn, but it is weird when people who know me in real life give me dinosaur themed things. It doesn't happen very often, but agh, please... dinosaur plush do not belong in this bedroom.

Cartoony dinosaur dishes do not belong in this cupboard.

(Mama if you're reading this I'm sorry but I donated that little dinosaur dish to the thrift store, it was cute but I did not want it! Every time I looked at it I thought "ugh, you don't belong in my cupboard". Every single plate I own is monochromatic transferware with a little scene on it because that's what I like.)

I do not want dinosaur themed stuff in my living space. I am glad that the dinosaurs I draw make other people happy, and it is honestly delightful see people who want to decorate with them doing so, but it's not for me!! A person can make a thing without wanting to decorate with that thing, and I do not know how this fact escapes so many people! I like dark wood and twisty candlesticks and antique prints in big gaudy gold frames. Please, friends and relations, stop giving dinosaur stuff to me. I do! not! want it!!!!!

This may be shocking to hear but I'm actually not particularly interested in dinosaurs.

[seat-safety-switch]

Couple of years ago, I wanted a new job. Well, "wanted" is a very strong word. "Needed," is closer. That makes me sound needy, though, and I'm told that's a big turn-off for interviews. Honesty is the best policy, according to my old Uncle Todd, who wasn't actually related to me in any way but remained a peripheral part of family barbecues until the train accident. "Legally obligated to as part of my parole requirements." There. Anyway, I didn't get the job.

It wasn't because I lacked qualifications. In fact, the local Pep Boys® – remember those guys, with their enormous fibreglass heads, and terrifying dead eyes? – needed a guy like me, who was willing to bend the rules. "Parts compatibility" was holding back their profits, in my mind.

What good was having a Mr. Goodwrench carburetor on the shelf when you mostly had Fordites turning up and asking if they could have Motorcraft and only Motorcraft? I knew those things were the same, and even if they weren't, anyone worth their salt could whip up an adapter plate in an hour or so. Two, max, if they got wounded playing Thumb Rodeo on the bandsaw. Their Mustangs would run just as well on the Traitor Brand's products. Physics didn't change when the dealership down the street gave you 2.89% instead of 3.25% and you abandoned the brand loyalty of your forefathers over a couple bucks a month. I digress. Let's get back to the interview.

If you've ever interviewed at a retail job, you know it's very embarrassing. They make you fill out psych profiles, to make sure you don't shoplift. Like this right off the tip. Bossman's bossman wants you to know your place. Here's the problem with psych profiles: they were made for normal people, and the cheapo consulting firm they hired was simply not capable of understanding the unique mental structure of the Car Person. Another weakness that I planned to attack, knowing full well that the survey would be computer-graded. I simply filled in all the Scantron bubbles with my No. 2 pencil, and waited for the offer letter to arrive at my mailbox.

A few weeks later, I went in there. Not so much because I was grumpy about not getting the job, but because I needed a Weatherpack connector and I knew that they were understaffed and unlikely to do much about a little friendly shoplifting. Unfortunately for me, the entire store had been shoplifted. Right into its constituent molecules. Turns out my score was the lowest in history, and corporate just decided it was best to be done with the entire neighbourhood, by way of an inanimate carbon rod launched from their orbital platform.

It's not all bad. I got a job with the United Nations Corporate Crime department afterward based entirely on my witness statement. Those plush assholes didn't even lock up their pen cabinet: I made like fifty, sixty bucks on eBay before they canned my ass too.

[joezworld]

Hey everyone seems real sad for some reason. Could not imagine why.

Anyways if you squint real hard you may notice a similarity to Thomas and the Jet Engine. That is intentional.

You can also squint and notice some similarity to several Traintober prompts. That is intentional.

Also, if you notice any similarity to any of SiF's character names... that's right! That is intentional. I did that and it's on purpose and I'm making fun of them. If you're from SiF either recognize that it was a dumb name or die mad about it.

Pip and Emma at The Top

2021 - The Summer

It was the longest summer since the last one. There weren’t any tourists - obviously - but even the inter-island traffic had died down considerably. The government on the mainland was skittishly enacting and then subsequently revoking plans to allow gatherings again, and the people of Sodor were prudently trying to keep the Island’s activities out of London’s sphere of notice. 

As events were curtailed and people limited their own travel, the railway cut back on services, as they’d done several times before. Pip and Emma were the first to be relegated to the yards; while they could run a much shorter train - and often did - a shortage-related spike in the price of diesel fuel meant that it was more economical for James or Henry to take the two diesels' trains instead. 

Henry had tried to make sense of how the economics on that worked out, but numbers were not his strong suit, and so he instead passed along his sympathies every time he passed the twins in the yard. 

James (and no-one else) thought that he was being rather magnanimous by not endlessly laughing about how he was cheaper to run than a diesel. Several cutting responses had been prepared if he ever got too full of himself, but shockingly he’d kept the snickering to a bare minimum. 

As the days stretched on into a week, and then two, a bigger problem soon began to present itself:

“I’m bored, Pip!”

“Me too!” 

Pip and Emma were getting restless.

“WILL YOU TWO KEEP IT DOWN?! IT IS THREE IN THE MORNING!”

And they were more than willing to make that everyone else’s problem. 

-

A few days later, and the diesels were overjoyed when an inspector came to them with instructions to report to the works. 

Equally overjoyed were the engines in the big shed. 

-

Pip and Emma arrived at the works in a right state, having been held up by trackwork along the main line. 

“Two hours! Can you believe it Emma?”

“I don’t like running light engine, they can push us around too much.”

“Right? We’re express engines, not a train of old rubbish!” “I think they prioritized the rubbish train over us, if that smell at Kellsthorpe Road was anything to go by.”

“Ugh!”

-

Mr. Tedfield, the Works Manager, eventually arrived, bringing an end to their complaining. “Right you two. Seems like we’ve got some work for you.”

“Here?” They chorused. 

“No,” he said quickly. “But the work is going to be a lot different from your usual job, and we’re gonna have to do some modifications.”

“Oh no,” Pip cried. “It’s going to be buffers, isn’t it?”

“How did you know?” The man was baffled. 

“It’s the only thing it could be, sir.” Emma explained. “That’s what they said on the Eastern Region, back in the 1980’s. ‘Just some little modifications!’ and they came back from Derby with the ugliest buffers ever!” 

“It was a hatchet job!” Pip agreed. “All their lower valances, gone!” 

“Easy, easy!” Mr. Tedfield yelped, not expecting that sort of response. “I’m sure that we can do a better job than that!”

“Promise?” they said in worried unison.

“Promise.”

-

A few days later, and the twins were relieved to discover that the works were as good as their word. Unlike the Eastern Region “hatchet jobs,” they still sported all their bodywork. Holes had been drilled through the lower valances, and buffers, couplings, and air hoses now poked through. The fibreglass was a little rough around the edges, but everyone agreed that it could also look a great deal worse. (Apparently, custom fibreglass was one of the only things the works staff couldn’t do in-house, and there was a concerning amount of murmuring from the staff about how they’d change that.)

Rolling out into the sun for the first time since they were “slightly modified,” they blinked the light from their eyes to find Mr. Tedfield, the Fat Controller, and another man who they didn’t know waiting for them. 

“Well,” Started Mr. Tedfield. “I’m glad to see that our concerns were unfounded.” 

The twins knew he was being diplomatic in front of the Fat Controller. He’d already said “I told you so!” several times earlier in the day. 

He continued. “So now we should probably tell you what we would like you to do!”

“Because somebody forgot to mention it earlier…” The other man muttered under his breath. 

The Fat Controller looked from one man to the other, and shook his head slightly. “Pip, Emma, as I’m sure you’re already aware, we are not going to be running the Express to London anytime soon. So, with that in mind, you two are going to be assigned to mixed traffic work until passenger numbers allow us to put you back into normal service.”

“Mixed traffic work?” They said as one. 

“Oh yes!” The Fat Controller looked quite pleased with himself. “We have quite a lot of cargo traffic coming in through the ports right now, and you two will help take the strain off everyone else.”

The man they didn’t know coughed slightly. 

“Of course, how foolish of me,” The Fat Controller rolled his eyes. “I also recognize that you two have some… special abilities that the other engines lack, namely your high-speed capabilities. With that in mind, Mr. Hargrave, from the coach and wagon department here at the works, has had an idea.”

“Yes, right.” Mr. Hargrave said with pride. “So, back when we first started coming back to work after the lockdowns, the government gave us a whole pile of Levelling-Up money, to “get us back on our feet.”” He paused, bouncing on his heels. “Thing is, we’d already fixed up everything beforehand, because we didn’t want anyone locked away in the works during the end of days with their bits in pieces, so we didn’t have anything to spend it on, but we had to spend it, otherwise they’d take it back!”

“Government logic at its finest…” Mr. Tedfield said under his breath. 

“Ain’t that the truth.” Mr. Hargrave agreed. “So anyways, we decided to just make everything as perfect as we could make it.”

He stopped for a moment, long enough for the Fat Controller to look at him. “Such as…?”

“Hm? Oh! Yes, the container wagons!” He said all at once. “We took all the container wagons that were sitting around idle - and some other stuff besides - and we took them and fitted high speed bogies and bearings to them.”

Pip blinked slowly. “High speed bogies?”

“That’s right! They ride like coaches now.” He said with childlike joy. “And they won’t weigh much more than them either, so it shouldn’t be much trouble for you two. High speed containers, all the way to the mainland!”

Pip looked at him, then at the Fat Controller. “Sir, why are we doing this?”

The Fat Controller looked much more reasoned. “Quite a few companies are willing to pay a premium for their shipments to arrive as quickly as possible. There’s a lot of congestion at the bigger ports in the south, and Liverpool is operating almost at capacity, so we have an opportunity to get some very lucrative traffic.” He smiled knowingly. “And if we play our cards right, some of the companies, like Amazon, might build a few warehouses just across the channel on the mainland, and then we can serve those in perpetuity.” 

The twins slowly digested this. “But sir, will it matter if we can go that fast?” Pip asked. “Once we cross the bridge, we’ve got to deal with Network Rail, and they don’t know anything.”

The Fat Controller looked as pleased as punch. “But you’re not dealing with Network rail.” He said with a satisfied smile. “Our contract for this ‘express freight’ is to get it as far as Barrow-in-Furness. If Freightliner or Colas Rail happen to be tardy after that…” he made a gesture with his hands. “That’s of no importance to us.”

Pip and Emma blinked slowly. “So, you want us to go as fast as we can?” Pip said with an expression that was rapidly passing “gleeful.”

“I do.” The Fat Controller agreed, before walking away.

---

Across the Island, the trucks and wagons shuddered.

--

A few weeks later

Pip and Emma fit in surprisingly well on goods trains, and could soon be found on everything from trundling pickup goods to the Flying Kipper. The Works really had made every truck as “perfect” as they could make them, and so every train, regardless of what it was or who was pulling it, was rolling on new bearings and freshly-trued wheels. Bear, BoCo, James, and Henry claimed it was some of the easiest work they’d ever had, and even the trucks agreed with them!

Pip and Emma, however, were mostly focused on one thing: speed. They’d been promised the ability to go as fast as they liked, but there was a significant obstacle to it:

“Oh come on! How long can it take to re-lay one set of points!”

The Permanent Way and Signaling departments had also received a great deal of this “use it or lose it” government funding, and were furiously working to replace, re-lay, and re-wire seemingly the entire island. 

Fortunately for the twins, the work was almost at an end, and as the summer began to wane, they soon found that more and more of the line was back up to full capacity. Shortly thereafter, the “Container Express” was a regularly scheduled train on the main line, running twice a day between Tidmouth Harbour and the yard in Barrow. Keen-eyed observers of the timetable would note that it was the exact same pair of slots previously occupied by the Wild Nor’Wester, which had last run in March of 2020. 

The Fat Controller promised anyone who asked him that it was absolutely a temporary measure, and most believed him, save for one group in particular…

“Lads,” A voice murmured in the container yard one morning. “I think this is forever… ‘s our purgatory for whatever it is we’ve done to the engines.”

“Nah, this ain’t purgatory,” whispered another, as a two-toned horn blasted in the distance. 

“Hi everyone!” “Ready for the trip?”

“This is hell. We’re in hell.”

  -

A few days later - Barrow

The lift bridge over the Walney Channel operated very differently than it did pre-COVID. A train would arrive at the Vicarstown side of the bridge, then it would lower. It would stay down while the engines were turned round, or were uncoupled from their train and connected to a new one. Then the train would leave, and the bridge would go back up. 

This happened two to four times a day, now that the lockdowns had lessened, but there was one constant - the same train that left the island would be the one to return to it. 

Then, one evening in the late summer, the bridge rolled down for a train coming from the mainland. 

There was a very familiar two-toned honk-honk as it rolled over the bridge and onto the Island, wheels click-clacking across the bridge joints in great numbers. 

The rear power car vanished with a roar of sound and a whoosh of diesel exhaust, and then the train was gone into the distance. 

The bridge slowly cycled back up. There was a new train on the Island of Sodor. 

-

The next morning 

Pip and Emma woke up much later than usual - the main line was undergoing its final “track geometry inspection”, and freight services had been curtailed for most of the day to allow the inspection to be done as quickly as possible. 

Eventually, they were rolled out of the diesel shed mostly on BoCo’s urging, (“You two are not allowed to get bored in here.”) and made their way to the platforms of the big station. 

“Oh, this is weird!” Pip exclaimed as she backed down onto a set of coaches. She and Emma had been coupled back-to-back for over a month now, and it seemed like nobody was in a hurry to position them “normally” for a short run down to Suddery and back. 

“Not as weird as your- oh my goodness it’s you two.” James started his sentence with a considerable amount of venom, but squeaked halfway through his sentence before stopping altogether. 

“What was that?” They both looked at him funny. 

“Nothing!” He said quickly. “Nothing at all. I, um, I thought that you were somebody else!” 

He vanished as though by magic, and neither Pip, Emma, nor the coaches had any idea of what to say until the guard waved his flag. 

-

Making their way down the line, they encountered several other engines, each of whom gave them some kind of funny look. As they headed down Edward’s branch line, it was all they could talk about.

“Maybe it’s just how strange we look back-to-back?”

“It can’t be, Pip! You saw how Edward looked! I think he was actually upset!”

“Goodness, I hope it wasn’t anything we did.”

“I don’t think so. They all seemed to stop once they saw us.”

“...”

“What?”

“I just had a thought.”

“What?”

“Who looks like us, but can make everyone hate them in no time flat?”

“Oh no!”

-

Later, they arrived back at Wellsworth station with the return service. The train terminated here, instead of returning to the big station, so once the passengers had disembarked, they had to shunt the coaches out of the way. It was somewhat novel for them, and Pip took great joy in being shown how a shunter’s pole worked. Emma, on the other buffer, was busy eavesdropping; Edward was getting ready to bank Bear’s goods train up Gordon’s Hill, and he was fuming about something to the stationmaster. 

“-that damn banana shows its face here again I will show them what for!” he hissed sternly, before puffing away in a huff.

The stationmaster didn’t say anything that Emma could hear, but he seemed to look very intently at the signals outside the station. There was one signal set for an arriving train. 

Emma didn’t like that, it felt very ominous. “Pip, look sharp. I think we’re going to have trouble soon.”

Pip didn’t have time to respond, because at that instant, the two-tone horn of an HST rang out in the near distance. The rails hummed with the noise of an approaching train, and a 5-coach HST set pulled into the station. 

The train was safety-yellow, and bristled with cameras, sensors, lasers, and measurement equipment of all kinds. Large “NETWORK RAIL” logos were plastered on every coach and both power cars, right next to the words “NEW MEASUREMENT TRAIN.”

 It was glossy. It was shiny. It was freshly washed. 

“Oh, must we dawdle around this dump? I know what sort of conditions this lot keeps!”

It was rude. 

“Will you stop already? I would like to not be thrown off this island, thanks.” 

Well, half of it was. 

Pip closed her eyes to steady herself. Emma ground her teeth audibly. Of course it was them. 

Quickly, quietly, they tried to reverse out of sight, but the camera-studded train saw all, and criticised everything. 

“Oh I say!” The lead power car laughed mockingly. “I thought those rumours were wrong but look at that! You two really have been demoted to common shunters!”

“Hi Pip. Hi Emma.” The rear power car said, utterly defeated. 

“Hi John,” They chorused, equally displeased. “Hi, Obs-”

“Do not use that name!” The lead power car snapped brusquely. On his side there was a big brass nameplate that read “The Railway Observer.” “Use my real name.”

“Not this again…” The rear power car moaned. He had “John Armitt” bolted to his side. “I know that you think it sounds better but I promise you it isn’t-”

“I’m sorry,” The lead power car snapped. “But are you undermining me in front of outsiders?”

“They’re our sisters, you numpty.”

“And they shall refer to me by the name of my choice!” 

“It’s a stupid name!” 

“It’s a regal name!” 

Pip and Emma observed the bickering train with muted resignation. “Why couldn’t he have been at Ladbroke Grove?” Pip said to nobody in particular. “Would’ve done the world a favour.”

Emma just wanted to get this over with. The coaches had been safely shunted away, so it was just a matter of getting out of the yard - then they could go down to Tidmouth and get their next train. “And what name would you like us to call you?” She said eventually. 

The lead power car puffed himself up like a self-important cockatoo. “I,” He proclaimed regally. “Am Murgatroyd. It is a noble name, with a rich history, and-” 

Pip almost swallowed her own tongue from the sudden outburst of laughter, while Emma couldn’t even bring herself to look at him. “Oh my god, that is the worst name I have ever heard of,” She said, barely audible over Pip’s gale-force guffaws. “Why would you do that to yourself? Why would you do that to us?” 

Murgatroyd turned red with indignation (which, thanks to his yellow paint, was actually a shade of orange) and started shouting. “How dare you, you- you- you low-class harlot! This is a regal name, chosen to signify-”

“How much of a pretentious twat you are?” John scoffed from the other end of the NMT. “Usually people can tell when you talk.”

The retort that followed was unprintable, and a vicious three-way argument soon struck up, lasting until Pip and Emma left Wellsworth for the harbour at Tidmouth. 

The New Measurement Train left a few minutes after that, an argument trailing in its wake. The yard was silent after that.

BoCo, who had been trying to nap in the shed, looked around the yard. “I don’t think anyone will believe me…” he said to himself. 

-----

At the harbour’s intermodal yard, Pip and Emma found their train already waiting for them… although it was slightly different from usual.

Fifteen container trucks sat mostly empty, with just a few loaded ones up at the front. Ahead of those were two low-loaders, one empty, the other… not. 

“Finally!” Thomas the Tank Engine groused from atop the front low-loader. “It’s been ages!” 

“It’s been two hours.” The low-loader rolled his eyes. “We left at 11:00. It’s barely past one.”

“Well, who asked you?!” 

Pip and Emma were surprised, to say the least. “What’s he doing here?” They asked the yard supervisor. “Can we take him on this train?”

“As a matter of fact,” He consulted his clipboard. “You can. I spoke to the works, and they’ve “improved” some of the flatcars with the high speed bogies they had left over. Should be fine.”

“Should be?” 

“That’s what they said.” He shrugged, flipping through the clipboard to a printout of an email. “They put it in writing.” 

Pip had to squint to see the small text. “I don’t like that they put “It should be fine!” on an official email…”

Behind her, Emma rolled her eyes, in the process noticing something above them. “Wait, what’s that?” 

The supervisor looked up. “Oh, that’s a jet engine for an airplane. Rolls Royce rebuilds them down in Derby.”

“Why is it here? This isn’t the airport.”

“Airport’s closed for a few days because they lost their electric transformer - surprised you didn’t ‘ear about it. Rolls didn’t wanna wait, and we’re quicker than a lorry it seems.” The man smiled at the last part. Everyone in the freight division was very pleased that this “hare-brained, half-baked, absolutely ridiculous” concept (as some “industry observers” had remarked) was proving successful.  

Emma watched as the jet engine was craned onto a flatcar behind Thomas. “Oh great!” He scoffed as it was chained down to the car. “Not only am I getting shuttled around this Island like a piece of lost mail, but now it’s air mail at that?”

“Oh shush!” Pip said, somewhat bemused by the whole situation. “We’ll get you to Barrow double quick!”

“Barrow?! I’m going to the works!” Thomas was irate. 

“If you ever listened,” The low-loader started. “You’d know that they don’t stop there, so we’re going to Barrow, and then back to Crovan’s on the pick-up goods.”

“Oh! Wonderful! I am a lost parcel! This is all Toby’s fault, the square-”

“Thomas,” Emma cut him off kindly. “It’ll be fine. Think about it this way - you can say that you went there on the Express! Won’t that be fun?”

“I’ve been on the express before…” Thomas said darkly.

“See? Then you know how fun it is!” 

Thomas looked like he wanted to say something else, but before he could, the shunters allowed Pip and Emma to back down onto the train, and connected the coupling chains and air hoses. 

Emma winked at him reassuringly, something which he felt was only unintentionally patronizing.

And then the train set off for the mainland. 

-

Leaving the port was a slow affair - the container yard was off to one side, and they had to dodge Marina and Salty as they shunted cars into the bulk terminals by the yard throat. There were a lot of low-speed switches to navigate as well, and the train rocked from side to side as they crossed over. Thomas thought about saying he was getting seasick, but chose not to tempt fate after the seventh such switch made him actually feel a little nauseous. 

After reaching the end of the harbour tracks, they came to a complete stop, and waited for several trains to leave the big station. 

First came Gordon, who stormed out of the station canopy with the mid-day semi-fast behind him. His expression was thunderous, as were his clouds of smoke and steam. He passed by with a roar and a clatter and vanished into the tunnel towards Knapford. 

Edward was a few minutes behind, with a train of ballast from the Little Western. The expression on his face was neutral, almost intentionally so - a clear sign to anyone that knew him that he was blisteringly furious. 

“Oh no…” Emma sighed. 

“What?” Thomas asked, watching Edward’s brake van disappear into the tunnel. 

“Not what, who.” She said, resigned. “And you’ll find out soon enough.”

Up front, Pip grit her teeth and waited. 

She didn’t have to wait long - another minute, and an unusual signal dropped into place: an up-bound train cleared for the down slow line. A very familiar two-note honk-honk sounded from inside the station, and then Murgatroyd appeared, a self-satisfied sneer on his face. 

He roared out of the station, New Measurement Train shining brightly behind him, John on the tail end calling apologies to someone. It would have been a rather splendid sight, had there not been a massive cloud of sooty clag hovering over the station entrance, and trailing in his wake. 

Pip smirked with a hint of schadenfreude - John wasn’t trailing any sooty exhaust smoke, and five empty coaches were not that heavy, so somebody was ignoring his fitters it seemed…

She would have been content to sit there smugly, her well-tuned engine firing cleanly on all cylinders saying more than she ever could with words, but naturally Murgatroyd had to make things worse. 

“Oh good god!” He bellowed in mean-spirited mirth, his mouth twisting into a cheshire-cat smile. “Look at that! They really are Valenta freighters now! And they’re slumming it with a tea kettle! I thought that I had seen it all!” 

He vanished out of sight before he could say anything else, the coaches streaming by in a yellow blur. 

Pip could just see her reflection in the passing windows - they moved so fast it looked like a solid mirror - and it was not a pretty sight. 

Emma, who’d heard everything, reckoned that if he’d gone on for one more sentence, her sister would be spitting fire and roaring loud enough to be heard in Cornwall. 

Thomas, who had said worse to Toby and Daisy just this morning, suddenly felt a great sense of unease…

-

A few tense minutes later, and the signal finally raised, giving the train access to the main line. Pip set off with a roar, Emma reluctantly following her lead through the multiple unit connection. Thomas choked and spluttered from the wave of hot exhaust gases going right into his face, and barely noticed as the train rocked and rolled onto the Up Fast line. 

Blinking and tearing up, his vision finally cleared just in time to see Pip’s cab roof disappear into the darkness of the tunnel to Knapford. It was much closer than it usually was, and with the train rapidly increasing in speed, Thomas yelped as it cleared his funnel by mere inches. “YIKES!”

Emma laughed, eyes shining in the darkness, and Thomas knew that the sooner he got off this train, the better!

-

After that, for a little while, the trip continued smoothly. Knapford, Crosby, and Wellsworth stations all slid past without issue. Traffic was extremely light, and they didn’t pass any down-bound trains in the entire period. In fact, if it weren’t for the occasional blot of Gordon’s smoke on the horizon, it would have seemed that they had the entire main line to themselves. 

-

It was just past Maron station when the trouble began. 

As they crested Gordon’s hill, the first signal past the summit had fallen to “approach” almost as they passed it, and some quick shouting at “control” on the radio had revealed that the last of the permanent way crews were taking longer than usual to clear the main line near Kellsthorpe Road station. 

This meant that Pip and Emma were practically at a crawl as they reached Maron, and the train eased to a stop at the signal bridge just past the platforms. 

Pip, still hot under the buffers from her encounter with Murgatroyd, was not exactly thrilled at the idea of “dawdling” in stations, and audibly fussed as they came to a halt.

Her poor temper didn’t help her train handling skills any, and the train lurched inelegantly to a halt, causing the slack in the couplings to run in, and the entire train banged against her and Emma. 

There was much shouting and complaining from the trucks and Thomas at this, and Pip growled menacingly.  

“Oh, well.” Emma said quickly, trying to put a positive spin on things. “At least it’s a nice day out-”

CLONK

Before she could even say anything, the signals rose to the “approach slow, expect stop” aspect. This meant that they were getting moved forward exactly one signal block, to the Cronk home signals near the Hawin Ab Viaduct. 

“Oh come on!” Emma cried in frustration. 

It was abundantly clear what was happening now: they were going to be yo-yo-ed up and down the main line. Yo-yo-ing was what happened when a fast train was stuck behind a slow one, and had to constantly stop at each signal and wait for it to clear. It was hard on an engine’s brakes, worse on their buffers and couplings, and worst of all, was annoying as sin. This was exactly the sort of constant, low-grade irritation that she (and Pip) did not need right now.

Pip’s driver was entirely unaware of this, though, and so he increased the throttle and watched with some bemusement as Pip let her engine furiously rev all the way to the top of the tachometer right from the jump. 

She and Emma lurched forwards, and the entire train crashed into motion, each car yanking the one behind it as they all set off. 

Thomas rocked back and forth against his tie-down chains. “Careful!” he shouted. 

“Shut up!” Pip and Emma scowled. 

Thomas frowned, ready to give them a piece of his mind. 

“It’s no use,” tThe low-loader sighed. “They’re in a strop right now - best you can do is make them forget that you’re here, til they calm down.”

“When will that happen?” 

“That, lad, is something that the smartest trucks in all the land have been searching for an answer to for many years.”

-

To add insult to perceived injury, Pip’s driver didn’t bother accelerating to any real speed, since they were only going one signal down the line. Pip and Emma stewed in their own irritation at twenty-five miles an hour as they rolled up the line towards the next signal. There was very little that could be done to make them more upset, but of course when there’s a will, (and a Murgatroyd) there’s a way.

-

“Oh, no…” John murmured to himself. 

The New Measurement Train had been caught at a signal for almost thirty minutes, as the Island’s P-Way team cleared out in front of them. The positioning of this particular signal was not ideal, as it left the tail of the train caught on the exposed tracks of a windy viaduct. Furthermore, the signal, like all signals on Sodor, was a relatively vintage semaphore design that still used colored filters over a white light. He knew this from experience, having been all over this island for the last day, however he was hearing all of it now because his royal Murgitude had been griping and whinging about it literally since the moment they stopped. 

And now, look at who was coming up to the signals on the fast line… 

“Hi Pip, Hi Emma,.” he said weakly. 

He almost wanted to tell them to stop further back, and be near him - away from the irritating mass at the front of the train - but looking at Pip’s enraged visage gave him pause. He stilled his tongue, and let them roll up to the signal mast next to Murg.

Judging from the way that the train screeched and bashed to a halt, Emma wasn’t happy either. A smart engine (or one with a functioning self-preservation instinct) would have kept quiet at that stage, however Murgatroyd was neither self-preserving nor intelligent, and John could hear his mocking tone from five coaches back. 

Pip said nothing, and at first neither did Emma, but as Moron-a-troyd went on and on and on, John could feel a shift in the container wagons next to him. It was almost like they were cringing, trying to keep themselves as far away from whatever was about to happen next. 

Finally, he could take the suspense no more. “Is it bad?” he asked the nearest truck. 

“SHUT UP. I AM TIRED OF HEARING YOU SPEAK,” Emma bellowed, loud enough to be heard clearly at the other end of the train. 

“It’s awful bad,” the truck whispered. “You can tell he’s never dealt with real engines before. One of us acts like that and we’d be the next Scruffey within a month!”

John didn’t know who “Scruffey” was, but he understood the sentiment regardless. 

Silence reigned after that… for all of ten seconds, before Murgatroyd said something about “decorum” that set off a screaming row between all three of them. 

It was bad enough that the Network Rail crew inside the coaches started making a fuss on the radio, and within a minute, the container train roared away, leaving the New Measurement Train in windy silence yet again. 

After a few short seconds, John felt a “poke” over the multiple unit connection. Clearly Murgatroyd wanted to say something. 

“Well,” he said, voice warbling from some damage in the connection that John hadn’t ever told anyone about. “I think they said their piece didn’t they? I tell you what John-old-boy, but this island produces some of the worst examples of engine-kind that I have ever seen. I think that one was breathing fire!”

-

At Cronk station, Pip and Emma were idling so loud and so roughly that the stationmaster radioed the crew to ask if something was wrong. 

“That damned flying banana got them in a state, that’s what’s wrong,” The driver snapped over the radio. That awful measurement train had been nothing but problems since it showed up on the island, and he was willing to do anything to see them gone. Heck, if it wasn’t likely to make his engines even angrier, he’d give that train his path to the mainland, just so it’d be gone faster. 

What they really needed was a good fast run, to get them back into their usual state, but with the P-Way team taking their sweet bloody time of it, it didn’t seem likely. 

“If they keep going like this, they’re going to burst a manifold somewhere,” the guard poked his head into the cab. “We’ve got to calm them down.”

“I would love to see you try!” the driver retorted. “They’re not gonna stop until they’re good and ready.”

“I can hear you, you know!” Pip huffed. 

“And? Are you going to calm down?” 

A slow growl that shook the entire cab was his only answer. 

“Go put the radio on,” he said to the wide-eyed guard. “They need something to keep their minds occupied.”

“Radio? Like, to control?”

“No, you nit! Like the radio radio! With music! There’s a circuit breaker on the electrical panel. Bottom row.”

Confused, the guard retreated from the cab and made his way to Pip’s electrical cabinet. Opening up the “low voltage” door, he traced his finger down the rows of breakers until he found what should have been immediately obvious: a handwritten label on some sellotape next to the last of the breakers. It said “TUNES” in shaky handwriting, and was one of the only ones not turned on. Hesitantly, he reached out and switched it on. 

“-and that was “No Diggity,” by Blackstreet, here on ManxPirate, the eternally annoying voice of the Sudrian Sea. Catch our sound wherever you are, on 107.9 FM, 927 AM, 13.68 Shortwave, DAB, DAB+, and online at ManxPirate.co.im. 

“Oh come on!” Pip groused. “Now they’re gonna do the adverts! This isn’t any better than listening to the moron!”

“And now that brings us up to about five minutes til’ the top of the hour, so we’re gonna run some adverts so we can keep the lights on. We’ll see ya on the flipside with DJ Geordie Poppers, who’s gonna run a very special block of music for us, right here on ManxPirate.”

“How often do they listen to this?” the guard asked with some astonishment. 

“Too much, if I had any say in it…” the driver mumbled.

“Are you tired of your washing up smelling like mildew? Are you sick of having to pull down the drying lines at the first sign of rain? Then the new automatic clothes dryers at B&Q are just for you…”

The radio continued on with an inane advertisement about tumble dryers, and the driver put his head in his hands. “We’ve just got to make it to a song… I hope.”

Pip and Emma continued to stew in their own irritation. 

-----

Far away, at Kellsthorpe Road station, the last of the P-Way Gang hauled their equipment off of the line, sharing a celebratory high-five as they did so. There was due cause for celebration: once the NMT traveled over this section of line, their yearslong work of relaying the entire main line would be finally over. In the station’s car park, a champagne bottle was popped, and the foreman revealed that he’d brought real crystal stemware for the occasion, instead of plastic.    

Presently, a radio handset buzzed. “Is that the lot of you off, then?” 

It was Control, sounding less than pleased with the delay… 

----

At Cronk, the signals for the down slow line rose into the “all clear” position, while the up fast signals remained red. 

Pip ground her teeth noisily. 

“HI, I’M BARRY SCOTT, AND I’M HERE TO TALK ABOUT THE ALL NEW CILLIT BANG UNIVERSAL DEGREASER! NOW WITH NEW FORMULATION! SAY GOODBYE TO LIMESCALE AND RUST STAINS…” 

The radio continued to play adverts.

Thomas was growing increasingly fearful of the look on Emma’s face. 

--

A few minutes later, as an insufferably bad advertisement about comparing your car insurance provider finally faded out, a two tone honk-honk sounded behind them, and the New Measurement Train roared past in a cloud of exhaust and dust. Pip and Emma didn’t say anything, or even look in the general direction, but the raucous laughter that trailed in its wake said enough. 

Mercifully, the radio had begun playing something else. “All right then, got those ads out of the way. So what’s up listeners? It’s DJ Geordie Poppers in the hooo-use, coming to you LIVE from our studios on the ever so beautiful radio ship Tharos out here in the Sudrian Sea. We’ve got a very special bit of music for you coming up now in the upcoming hour - it’s a rare daylight sighting of our After-Dark Eurobeat Power Hour! I’m gonna be spinning some CDs and MP3s with the most pulse-pounding beats this side of Mount Akina - so if you’re driving right now, sorry about this.”

As John got smaller and smaller in the distance, the music began to fade in, very gradually. 

“And a bit of housekeeping here - we’ve heard from the artist and they’ve had a bit of a name change. Out goes Ken, and in comes Kendra. This is the extended version of “The Top,” by  Ken (short for Kendra) Blast.”

Slowly, a piano track began to fill in. 

Pip raised an eyebrow, irritation momentarily sidetracked. “Is this really the Eurobeat block, Emma?”

“I think it is,” she said, starting to go along with the intro.  

Thomas, who couldn’t hear Pip or the radio, had no idea what she was talking about. He didn’t like the look on her face. 

The trucks didn’t either. 

“Lads,” the lead container wagon said with gravitas. “We may not make it through today unchanged. It has been an honor serving with you.”

“What?” The low loader that carried the jet engine coughed as the container wagons murmured about honor. He was relatively new, and this was not how he expected his day to be going.

“Laddie,” Thomas’ low loader said gravely, understanding at once what was about to happen. “You’re about to experience something that you’ve never been through before. I’d recommend preparing yourself.”

“What?!” Thomas yelped. 

---

Back in Tidmouth, the people in “Control” were staring at the “big board.” For weeks now, the section of line near Kellsthorpe road had been a mess of green, yellow, and red lights, as the P-Way gang slowly finished the banked curve on the station’s east end. Trains, represented by little markers on the computer screen, waited for a free path, oftentimes with large delays, which showed up in flashing red and white boxes. 

Now, though, their frustration was finally at an end. The last of the yellow was disappearing, section by section, as the P-Way gang reported that they were clear. Three of the four lines were bright red - clear but with no train signaled through - while the down slow line was a green and yellow stripe. It was getting shorter and shorter, as the little marker labeled 1Q01 moved steadily eastward. That was the New Measurement Train, finishing its final pass of the system.  

Behind it, with the box flashing red and white from the delay, was 1B07 - the “Container Express,” already twenty minutes late. More trains were lined up behind it and the NMT, and others were queuing in a line that started at Kellsthorpe Road and went all the way to the mainland. 

The yellow segments were almost entirely gone, with just one signal block outside of Kellsthorpe Road left. 

There was a five minute safety delay coded into the signal control computers, specifically for when crews were working on the line. 

It had been four minutes and fifty six seconds since they’d reported that they were clear. 

Four minutes and fifty seven seconds.

Four minutes and fifty eight.

Four minutes and fifty nine. 

---

The signal in front of Pip raised with a clonk. 

There was still a slight haze to the air from Murgatroyd’s exhaust. In the distance, the plume of sooty white smoke he was making stood out against the clear blue sky like a signal fire. 

“Emma?” Anyone with sense would recognize the danger in her tone.

“Yeah?” Unfortunately for everyone else on the train, they couldn’t do anything about it.

“I think we should catch him.”

“I think you’re right.”

--

In the cab, the driver looked nervously at the rev counter, which had started to climb rapidly. 

“Here goes nuthin’,” he said quietly to himself, before advancing the throttle.

--

The music, which had been slowly building over the last twenty seconds or so, abruptly kicked into a high gear, with a frenetic electronic beat that belted along at 160 beats per minute. 

White exhaust belched from the twins’ exhaust, before quickly turning black under the load. Their engines ramped up to an ear-piercing howl, obliterating any sense of quiet at Cronk station.

Thomas once again got a face full of noxious choking clag, and his eyes watered while his hearing was momentarily deafened by the noise of it all. 

The train began to pick up speed, and the container wagons groaned in fatalistic anticipation. “It’s all downhill from here!” one of them shouted. 

“What?” Thomas hacked from inside the cloud. He couldn’t see anything, and his hearing was ringing like a church bell. 

In front, Pip could feel the unrelenting wave of horsepower and diesel surging through her system. She laughed joyously, with Emma soon joining in. 

To everyone else, it seemed somewhat maniacal. 

🎶 Final lap I'm on top of the world

And I will never rest for second again!

One more time I have beaten them out

The scent of gasoline announces the end! 🎶

--

The train vanished from sight, on its way towards Killdane. The stationmaster poked his head out of the station door. 

“There goes trouble…”

--

The New Measurement Train rolled through Killdane with fleetfooted ease. The rails were clear and the light train was aided by the downhill gradient. From his position on the rear, John felt like the entire consist was weightless, with barely any effort required to keep the train at speed. 

“You think we should go any faster?” he called up the multiple unit connection to Murg. They usually ran at well over 120, but today they’d barely crested 90. 

There was a cough over the connection. “Oh, not today. We’re still the fastest train on this backwards island!” 

Ah yes. A sudden excuse. Surely that was completely unrelated to the plume of smoke trailing in their wake. 

“So, how’s cylinder four feeling today?”

“Shut up.”

John smiled pettily to himself. 

In the distance, Killdane got smaller and smaller. A small dot of yellow could just be seen…

---

🎶 They all said I'd best give it up

What a fool to believe their lies!

Now they've fallen and I'm at the top

Are you ready now to die-ie-ie?! 🎶

---

At Killdane, the sounds of the NMT had scarcely faded before the sound of howling diesel engines filled the air. Heads turned to the east just in time to see Pip and Emma hammering around the curve into the station at full throttle. 

The curve was banked, but not nearly as steeply as the ones to the west, and there was a piercing screeeeeech of steel on steel as the train whipped past. 

“Slowdownslowdownslowdownslowdownslowdown!” There was also a piercing screech coming from the train’s cargo, as Thomas the Tank Engine felt himself rock back and forth atop the low loader. It really did feel like he was going to fall off! 

Pip had a very determined look on her face, eyes focused well into the distance, but those who saw Emma in the brief moment she was in view noted an almost demented smile on her face. She was laughing. 

All this happened in just a moment, and then the train was gone, roaring off into the distance at just below the line speed limit. The wind from the train’s passage rattled a lineside sign. It was a white circle with several thin diagonal slashes through it. 

It was an “end of speed limit” sign.

--

🎶 I came up from the bottom

And into the top

For the first time I feel alive

I can fly like an eagle

And strike like a hawk

Do you think you can survive... the top?🎶

--

John noticed that the small yellow dot in the distance was getting bigger. Squinting, he couldn’t quite see what it was. 

Whatever it was, it was slowly gaining on them.

Hang on…He thought. 

The cameras that were blanketing his sides were supposed to be recording the lineside for defects, but nobody ever cared about the “going away” view. Very quietly, he “looked” through the lens mounted just above his eyes. It had a nice zoom, and could see much further than he could. 

What he saw made him blink and look again. Then a third time. Then a fourth. After looking for a fifth and final time. He finally wrapped his mind around what exactly he was seeing. 

“Hey Murg?” he said innocently. 

“Yes? What is it?” Murg sounded far more irritated than he should be. 

“Think you can get us into the triple digits? Some of the boffins are worried about their readings not being calibrated right.”

“Oh damn them all.” Murg cut the connection with a pained cough. John had a distinct feeling that the Infallible and Most Invulnerable King Murgatroyd was hiding exactly how bad cylinder four really was from everyone, lest he be seen as “weak” or “mortal” by his inferiors. 

Well, he thought to himself with a hint of smugness as the train slowly began to increase speed. If he wants to play the perfect king, he’ll have to deal with the locals.  

Behind them, Pip and Emma continued to get closer and closer…

---

James and his coaches had been waiting on the dratted P-Way gangers for over half an hour at Kellsthorpe Road, and set off with a will when the signal changed. 

Of course, the signaling was all out of sorts, and he was running “wrong main” on the Up Slow line, but he didn’t much care. There wasn’t anyone in front of him, and was making “good” time on his way to Killdane. “Maybe we’ll still make it to Tidmouth before tomorrow!” he joked to his driver, who had long since given up on making light of the situation. 

They leaned into the curve heading towards Killdane, and that awful banana of a measurement train streaked by in the other direction. James whistled derisively at it out of reflex more than anything else, and was quietly grateful that the unpleasant train had nothing to say in return. 

In the distance, a giddy-sounding honk-honk drew his attention back to the line ahead, and he had just enough time to make out something streaking on the next line over before something-

Honk-Honk! Honk-Honk!

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA”

-ripped past them with a honk, a roar, and a scream.

“What was that?!” He yelped as the wind buffeted him. 

“I think that was Pip and Emma!” his driver said, looking backward. “With a container train!”

“What?!”

---

🎶 One more turn and I'll settle the score

A rubber fire screams into the night

Crash and burn is what you're gonna do

I am the master of the asphalt fight 🎶

---

John watched as Pip and Emma got closer and closer. In a macabre way, he felt giddy about it. At their current speed, they were going to eat Murgatroyd for lunch and still have room for tea afterwards. 

He had been paying such close attention to the rapidly-closing distance between the two trains that he completely missed the start of the banked curve until he was leaning into it. The rails bent underneath him and the ties whipped past at an odd angle as the whole world tilted a few degrees. They weren’t going slow, by any means, but the sensitive equipment in the coaches (and his years of experience) told him that they could have been going much faster. 

“Oh Murg… you might want to speed up…” he sing-songed. “They’re gaining on us…”

“Who’s gaining on us? What?!” Murgatroyd was oblivious, as was his wont. 

John wanted to say something else, but his voice failed him as he watched the container train, with low-loaders on the front, rocket through the curve at speeds that he didn’t even want to contemplate. 

A train passed on one of the other lines, and he watched the smoke from its stack get whipped and roiled by air currents of the two trains passing each other. 

Seconds later, Pip and Emma passed the train, streaking through the remaining smoke, and the force of their passage tore the cloud to ribbons. 

---

🎶They all said I'd best give it up

What a fool, to believe their lie-ie-ies!

Now they've fallen, I'm at the top

Are you ready now to die-ie-ie?🎶

---

Pip was high on speed, and she was loving every second of it. 

Emma was right behind her, literally and metaphorically; the sensation of pure motion and velocity was coursing through their systems like a drug. 

In front of them, so close one could almost reach out and touch it, was the New Measurement Train. John was watching with restrained giddiness as they started to draw abreast of him. He said something, but the wind whipping by erased all sound. There was just speed, and that was more than enough. 

Slowly, they pulled even with the coaches, and with each window they passed, another Network Rail employee could be seen looking up in astonishment. 

In Pip’s cab, the driver was holding onto the controls with a white knuckle grip. Officially, he was the driver, he was in control of the train. Realistically, he was nothing more than a rider on a bucking bronco. He surveyed the line ahead, and gulped. 

Behind Pip and Emma, Thomas’s eyes were right in the most turbulent part of the wake that followed the diesels. Air, superheated and filled with grit and soot from twin exhausts, poured into his eyes and swirled around his face. He couldn’t hear, he could barely see. 

Behind him, the wind whipped through the turbine blades of the jet engine on the next low-loader. It had been secured for transport, so the blades didn’t move, but the wind rushing through it created a high-pitched howling noise that simply added to the cacophony. 

Lost in the chaos of the wind and the noise and the exhaust, the container wagons and the low-loaders were holding onto each other for dear life. 

“I’m not designed for thiiiiis!” one of them shrieked. 

“None of us are!” the wagon ahead of him bellowed. “Just keep holding on a little longer!” 

--

At the head of the NMT, Murgatroyd was trying very hard to ignore the slight off-beat throbbing coming from cylinder four. Something was amiss with it - what it was, he didn’t know for certain. Driver didn’t know either - blasted man hadn’t turned a wrench a day in his life; wouldn’t know the difference between an allen key and the keys to a house! 

Of course there weren’t any fitters on board - “economic savings” kept them at home base - so he just had to deal with it. 

Just so long as the underlings didn’t notice, everything would be fine-

“Oh Murgatroyd…”

“Yes, John?”

“You might want to look around...”

He looked off towards the Up lines, and was rendered momentarily speechless by the sight of Pip smiling wickedly at him. 

���T-that’s not possible,” he said once he found his tongue. “That isn’t possible!” 

---

🎶 I came up from the bottom

And into the top

For the first time I feel alive!

I can fly like an eagle

And strike like a hawk

Do you think you can survive...

I came up from the bottom

And into the top

For the first time I feel alive!

I can fly like an eagle

And strike like a hawk

Do you think you can survive... the top?🎶

----

Moments earlier

“So how late do you think we’re going to be?” Percy asked as the train rumbled through Kellsthorpe Road station. 

“Oh,” Henry pondered. “We’re only allowed to do 45, and we’ve got to drop off the aluminium at Killdane, so probably two or three hours if we lose our path at all. Which we will.”

“Thomas is going to be absolutely livid when I get back.” Percy said from atop his low loader. “He was supposed to go in for his new cylinder block today, so if I’m not back, they’re going to have him stay in steam all day.”

“Oh, he won’t be thrilled about that.” Henry chortled. “I swear, he’s the only engine who likes going to the works.” 

“They treat him the same way James treats himself. Of course he likes going there!”

“Hah! I hadn't considered that-oh dear…” Henry trailed off mid-sentence. 

“What?”

“It appears that we’re about to go down the middle between Pip and Emma, and their favorite siblings.”

“What? The banana? Oh great.”

“Yes, they- oh goodness they’re quick-”

Anything else Henry said was lost to the deafening thunderclap made as the New Measurement Train and the Container Express roared past on the opposing lines. The wind felt like it was going to knock him clean off the rails, and Percy yelped in surprise as debris and exhaust fumes swirled around him like a hurricane. His boiler, a stout construction that could hold hundreds of pounds of pressure, felt like it was flexing and bowing from the vibrations in the air. He watched in open-mouthed shock as Henry’s cab windows were sucked out of their frames from the differential pressure, and were hurled through the air followed by every loose object in the cab, from hats and coats, to papers and even a coal shovel!

Behind and in front of Percy, open wagons of stone, and the coal from Henry’s tender sent huge plumes of dust and debris into the air, swirling and mixing into a funnel cloud that wrapped around the rear of the train. It danced in the tornadic airflow for a few seconds, before dissipating as the trains parted once more. 

The silence afterwards was deafening. 

“DID I LOSE A WINDOW?” Henry asked, almost unable to hear himself speak, as his driver applied the brakes and stopped the train. 

Percy tried to make the ringing in his smokebox cease. Closing his eyes, he suddenly remembered seeing something in the fraction of a second before the world went topsy-turvy. “Wait a tic. Was that Thomas?”

“WHAT?”

---

🎶 What were you thinking, telling me to change my game?

This style wasn't going anywhere; it was kaput!

You want to see what I've done with this place; this whole thing?

You want to see that I changed the game?

No, I AM the game!

Before I knew where this was going, I would've listened to you

Right now, I distance myself from what you have to say!

I made this something way bigger than you're ever gonna be

I made it this far; and I'm taking it to the top 🎶

----

Pip and Emma laughed gaily as they overtook the NMT, and powered on towards Kellsthorpe Road like they weren’t towing several hundred tonnes of freight train behind them. 

Murgatroyd gaped in shock as he was passed by the steam engine they were carrying as cargo. 

The shock quickly turned into outrage, and he felt the red-hot sting of being one-upped surge through his system. His engine began to rev higher, urging the train to move faster damn it. 

“Whoa there,” his driver exclaimed, laying a firm hand on the controls. “We want to make it to the mainland, right?”

“I don’t care!” Murgatroyd ground his teeth, watching as the container wagons slipped past him. “They can’t win!” 

But no matter how he tried, his driver wouldn’t let him speed up. 

He howled and roared impotently as Pip and Emma got further and further ahead. 

---

On the platforms of Kellsthorpe Road station, several surveyors were getting measurements of the newly-relaid line. 

Looking down the magnified optics of a theodolite, the true character of the railway could be seen. What appeared to be a straight and flat section of line was actually a ribbon of steel that undulated and flowed over the terrain. While certain sections had just been flattened and graded, it was impossible to fully eliminate the contours of the earth without starting from scratch, and so the line rolled with the small hills and invisible valleys instead of cutting right through them.

“Hey, look at that.” One of the other surveyors said from behind an optical level. “You can see the NMT from here.”

“Can you?” asked his coworker, who quickly pointed his theodolite down the line. “I don’t see it.”

“It’s just gone behind the dip. Should be back in a moment.”

He fixed his eyes on the dip in the terrain. It was actually visible to the naked eye, but its height differential - deemed to be “within acceptable limits” - and its presence directly under a road bridge - meant that it had survived the recent track relaying unscathed.  

The surveyors waited for the train to reappear, the optics of their measurement devices making things appear much larger than they really were. 

With that in mind, it was something of a surprise to see an HST appear two tracks over from where the NMT had been. They both looked to that line just in time for the train to crest the hill.

There was a brief moment, no longer than a breath, where both men could see daylight shine underneath the train as all the wheels left the ground.

----

Pip and Emma hooted and hollered with glee as they roared through the approach to Kellsthorpe Road station. High speed crossovers and the new banked curve meant they didn’t have to check their speed in the slightest as they charged onwards. 

The station came and went in a flash, and they leaned into the new corner at unprecedented speeds. Behind them, Thomas wailed loud enough to be heard over their motors, but they paid him little mind; they didn’t realize - or understand - exactly what he was experiencing. 

Behind them, now far into the distance, the New Measurement Train was just rolling into the station. 

They had won. 

---

🎶 I came up from the bottom

And into the top

For the first time I feel alive!

I can fly like an eagle

And strike like a hawk

Do you think you can survive...

I came up from the bottom

And into the top

For the first time I feel alive!

I can fly like an eagle

And strike like a hawk

Do you think you can survive... the top? 🎶

----

Further up the line, Bertie the bus was pulling up to a level crossing, just as the gates went down. 

“That was a great song on the radio, wasn’t it?” he said to his driver, who was thoroughly regretting turning on ManxPirate, thanks very much. “I feel like I should be racing something! Ooh! I know! The next train that comes by, we’ll try and chase it, huh? Just like the old times with Thomas!”

Honk-Honk

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA”

Whooooooooooooooooooooosh

The train passed in just a few seconds. 

“Nevermind.”

-----

The song wound down to a stop, but Pip and Emma continued charging on. 

The guard went so far as to pull the fuse on the radio, hoping that it would calm them down, but they were too far gone to consider dropping their speed until they reached Crovan’s Gate station. There, the speed limit dropped to 90; normally a mild inconvenience, but today it felt like they’d dropped an anchor behind them. 

Still, they continued merrily along through the station as fast as was allowed (much to Thomas’s dismay) and continued east along the line. 

As they cleared the station and began to speed up again, they noticed a cloud of smoke on the horizon. 

There was still one more train they could catch…

-----

Compared to everyone else in this story, Gordon was having a blissfully uneventful day. He’d managed to put that vulgar measurement train almost totally out of his mind, and was making excellent time to the mainland when one considered the workmen-caused delay at Kellsthorpe Road. 

There was a farm lane that crossed the tracks near Henry’s tunnel, and he whistled for it. 

Honk-Honk

He was most surprised to hear a horn respond to him, and was flabbergasted to see Pip, then Emma, and then Thomas pass him like he was standing still!

“HiGordonByeGordon!” “HiGordonByeGordon!” “GORDON HELP ME!”

The train raced into the tunnel and vanished from sight. 

Gordon could not believe what he had seen!

----

Eventually, the speed limits dropped, and the four track main line merged into two just after Vicarstown. Rolling over the lift bridge at a sedate twenty miles an hour Pip and Emma finally began to come down off their “runner’s really high.”

“That was great!” Pip gushed. “Just the sort of run we needed to clear everything out, am I right?”

“Uh, Pip?” Emma began to notice the state of Thomas. “I think we miiiiight have overdone this a little.”

Thomas could only whimper in agreement! 

----

By the time the New Measurement Train rolled into Barrow station some thirty minutes later, Pip, Emma, and Gordon were all trying to console Thomas, to limited success. 

“...Ahem!” Murgatroyd tried to slink into the station totally unnoticed, but John had no compunctions about making sure they were seen. “So, I assume that you two will be conducting all of this railway’s freight services from now on?”

“Oh,” Pip’s smile was very guilty looking as she turned away from the still shell-shocked Thomas. “Yeah. About that…” She swallowed deeply. “I’m… sorry about… y’know. All of that. The overtake.”

“What, me? Overtaken?” Murgatroyd tried and failed to play dumb. Well, a different kind of dumb from usual. “I hadn’t noticed.”

Pip’s smile grew much harder edged, and Gordon took the moment to intercede. “Look, Pip. You don’t owe that any apology of any form.” 

Murgatroyd looked aggrieved. Gordon turned on him next. “And you. You are an uncouth abomination who have done nothing useful at all. Take the apology, cause no more trouble, and find yourself a better attitude elsewhere.”

Murgatroyd puffed himself up with self-righteous fury, and John regretted being an instigator. 

“WELL, I-” He started.

“Oh shut up!” Thomas bellowed. “Stop talking before I come down there and peel you, you great useless banana! Everything that’s happened to me today is all your fault!” 

 Murgatroyd quailed under the impressive amount of vitriol Thomas was spewing, and he left in a chastised burst of soot and clag. John followed in his wake, not sure what, if anything to say. “Bye Pip. Bye Emma.”

Once the NMT had vanished from sight, Pip, Emma, and Gordon turned their attention back to Thomas. 

“Great useless banana?” Gordon raised an eyebrow. 

Thomas didn’t have the energy for a proper comeback, and simply stared at him knowingly. 

“Fine, fine,” Gordon acknowledged the unsaid. “For an off-the-buffer moment after the day you’ve had, it was a fine jab. I’m just glad that you’re beginning to feel more like yourself.” He began to steam off towards the shed. “As such, I’ll be off.”

“Wait!” Thomas called. “Where are you going? Who’s taking me on the pick-up goods?”

“Thomas, I don’t take the pick-up goods,” Gordon called regally. “That’s what we have diesels for. I believe there’s two of them right in front of you!”

“ABSOLUTELY NOT!”

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

Post script: Low-loaders were subsequently banned from Pip and Emma's trains

[springledongle]

The floorboards of the dining room creak under the monster's weight, his metal chain rattling behind him. Somehow both bustling with sound and devoid of life, the dining room is prepped and ready for a party.

Multicoloured lights are strung from the ceiling, party tables adorned with platters of snacks and drinks.

Metal footsteps softened by foam, the hulking creature makes his way to the front door. Equally soft footsteps patter behind him, her short legs trying to keep up with his long strides.

"Mr Afton, sir! Is everything ready?" the rabbit asks, her voice muffled beneath two masks. The larger rabbit breathes, his fibreglass frame groaning with the movement.

"Ready as I'll ever be. I haven't seen outsiders in a long time," he muttered, flashing his unmoving sharp grin.

"Oh, neither have I! I'm excited. Are you excited? I want to make friends!" the younger one chirps, following her companion to the front door, dancing to avoid the metal chain whipping across the floor.

"Vanny, you won't make any friends. The people who come here don't like us," Springle growls, grey eyes shifting to look down at her. The bunny looks up, red eyes barely visible behind the holes in her purple mask. Her smile behind it fades, and she huddles closer to his leg.

"You'll protect me, right?" her small voice eventually asks. The monster nods, plush spines on his neck swaying.

"Of course I will. And if anyone gives you trouble, come get me. Okay?" Springle replies, his voice suddenly softer. He reaches down a massive hand, petting her head gently. Vanny looks up at him, a spring bouncing back into her posture.

"Yes sir!"

"Alright then. Let's begin."

//////

The Pizza Ball group roleplay will begin on Friday! Feel free to send asks to the blog in the meantime.

Submissions for attendance are open! If you would like to join the group roleplay this weekend, join the Pizza Ball discord server: https://discord.com/invite/Q3mUHuxp

[navnir]

Formwork Failure in the Projects

Formwork is the significant factor that decides the success or failure of a construction project. It is a temporary or permanent mould made of concrete or similar raw materials. Construction projects use formwork for slabs, columns, shells, beams etc., and it can be made with wood, steel, fibreglass or plastics.

Formwork affects your project time, cost, quality, and safety of the work. The study says formwork constitute around 35 to 40 per cent of the total roller compacted concrete (RCC) project budget and almost eighty per cent of the project time.

Having established the importance of formwork in the construction sector, we should not take it casually. Any lapse in planning can cause severe loss of money, human lives, time, etc. If you follow leading news channels and news portals, you can see numerous accidents happening due to faulty formwork. We will share some recent instances in the blog and the causes of formwork failure.

Formwork failure is a major reason for construction accidents. The viewpoint was underscored by Mr Kumar Neeraj Jha while delivering a lecture on the topic ‘Innovative Formwork for Construction Projects’ at a seminar held in Margao, Goa. He said, ‘formwork failure is the reason behind up to 60 per cent of the building accidents.’

Let us go through reasons and a couple of real-life accidents that happened due to formwork failures.

Causes of Formwork Failure Careless Stripping and Shore Removal

Construction is not a casual business. Improper shore removal and stripping can cause formwork failure. It can lead to deadly accidents, and multi-story buildings are highly prone to such accidents. We have seen several news coverages about a multi-story building collapse in leading newspapers & channels.

For example

The Hindu published about a building collapse in East Bengaluru on 8th October 2021. It was the third accident in a fortnight due to presumably faulty construction.

Improper Bracing

Bracing in formwork protects building or construction projects against strong winds, storms, etc. Improper bracing in formwork cause accidents with extra concrete weight, storms, and other external factors.

Other Reasons for Formwork Failure

Unable to manage the order and rate of concrete placement on the horizontal formwork. It leads to disbalance while loading and subsequent formwork failure.

Excess traffic, high headcounts of labours, hardware, and machines on the project site can cause vibrations and high impact. It also causes formwork failure and can lead to accidents.

Formwork dependability can be compromised due to out of plumb shore and shaky soils. Unstable land leads to weak settlement and is prone to collapse. We can see several bridges and flyovers collapse due to unstable ground.

Examples of Bridge or Flyover Collpase

Concrete beams of an under-construction flyover collapsed in Vizag (Times of India 6th July 2021), under-construction flyover collapses in Bandra, Mumbai (NDTV 17th September 2021), and many more.

Small missing details in formwork can cause fatal accidents. It includes improper or missing nailing, inadequate management to forestall pivot of pillar formations, improper corner tying, unable to arrange the locking gates etc.

Formwork should be planned with minute details and quality raw materials. You require a trustworthy supplier for quality formwork. Contact Nav Nirman to get the best formwork at the most competitive prices and expert help for your construction projects.

[stevebattle]

ComRo Tot TMC3000 by Jerome Hamlin (1982), ComRo Inc., New York, NY. The Comro Tot mobile programmable multilingual personal robot is fully programmable, and can also be operated using radio-control. It has a four-wheeled mobile base, both arms are functional, and its head rotates, enabling it to perform a wide variety of tasks including serving drinks. It’s based on a SYM-1 6502 computer, and like Comro 1, can talk using the Votrax SC-01 speech synthesiser. The body is fibreglass painted white. A TMC3000 was the top prize in a sweepstake run by Warner Communications, called the “GREAT Robot Giveaway” (final image); runners-up won a Comro Tot T-Shirt. Tot also made an appearance at the “Robot Exhibit: History, Fantasy and Reality” at the Avenue of the Americas in 1984. “WORDS failed Tot. It was only days before he was to usher visitors into the new exhibition at American Craft Museum 2, and all he could do was flail his arms or blurt out the wrong time. ''He's not outputting speech properly,'' said his creator, Jerome Hamlin. ''His battery must be low.'' Running out of whatever it is that passes for patience in a robot, Tot advanced - right arm raised - toward the museum's director, Paul J. Smith. ''Is he handing me a glass of water?'' Mr. Smith asked hopefully. ''No,'' Mr. Hamlin answered, ''this is an attack.'' The assault turned into a simple feint, so Mr. Smith walked off, unharmed.” – PAST AND PRESENT ROBOTS GATHER FOR EXHIBITION, by David Dunlap, The New York Times, Jan 12, 1984.

In 1984, "The Tot robot, manufactured by the now-defunct company Comro, puts a California sea lion through a series of tests during a demonstration at the New York Aquarium at Coney Island. The aquarium said at the time that they had plans to study the feasibility of incorporating a robot into its marine mammal shows." – Betamax and Chill But One of You is a Robot and the Other is a Seal, Paleofuture.

The video clip is from 'The Equalizer', Season 1 Episode 20 (1986) via Scott McDonnell's "80's Robot Revival."

[treason-and-plot]

“Boss, I need to talk to you,” says Spencer loudly, interrupting a spirited debate Raj is having with Lincoln about wood versus fibreglass hulls, while Lincoln’s wife Jasmine sways and hums along to the track the DJ is playing on the deck above. Raj turns and frowns, displeased by Spencer’s lack of decorum.

“I’m sorry, Spencer, I’m in the middle of a discussion,” he says. “Is it urgent?”

“Would I have interrupted you if it wasn’t?” Spencer bristles. Raj gives Lincoln a tight smile, and Lincoln laughs dismissively and says no problem, Raj had better take care of the business at hand, and he and Jasmine will head down to the bar and catch up with him later.

“What’s happened?” says Raj to Spencer after Lincoln and Jasmine have wandered away. “Were you able to complete the task I set you?”

“Yeah, it was a piece of piss,” says Spencer with a satisfied smile. “All we have to do is set up the receiver, and we should be able to hear any conversations he has in his car as clear as a bell.”

“Good work,” says Raj, his shoulders relaxing. “So what’s the urgent matter that you need to talk to me about?”

“We’ve got a gatecrasher,” says Spencer. He pauses for dramatic effect while Raj waits. “Warren the Wanker.” 

“Warren Sandler is on my boat?” says Raj. “Right now?”

“Yeah,” says Spencer. “What do you want me to do?”

“Nothing,” says Raj.

“Nothing?” says Spencer, a patch of red skin flaring under his eye. “The fu-“

“Spencer, the place is crawling with journalists and other media types who would love nothing better than to be able to report on an altercation between Warren Sandler and myself,” says Raj. “I’m sure Mr Sandler himself would like nothing better than that. But I’m not going to give them the satisfaction. My revenge will be a particularly enticing dish when it is eventually served, but it will not be served tonight. We will treat Warren exactly the same as all our other guests. Is that understood?”

“Understood, Boss,” mumbles Spencer.

“Now,” says Raj, “Quickly tell me what method you had to employ to break into Lincoln’s SUV. Was it the pick, the wedge, the laser key, or the jiggler?”

“None of ‘em,” says Spence, his voice gruff with amusement. “The fucking idiot had left it unlocked.”

[vincentbriggs]

I'm not sure if sunglasses suit Mr. Fibreglass.

[pterribledinosaurdrawings]

Still no Festive Twig, but I've just put some fairy lights on Mr. Fibreglass

got the perfect christmas tree to fit the apartment! It is a twig I found in a ditch.

Edit: I have added some more ornaments

[seat-safety-switch]

If there's one thing I wish my neighbourhood had, it's an auto parts store. Although the internet is delightful and my avowed preference for getting cheap new parts, your friendly local auto parts store is essential for those 4pm "oh shits" on Sunday afternoon. And without one close by, everything that breaks becomes a car drive away from getting a replacement part. Suddenly, if you've noticed two bad gaskets in one water pump replacement job, you've lost two hours of wrenching time just going back and forth.

Now, the chain that's closest to my place does have delivery, but only during the weekdays. A dude comes in a little Chevy hatchback with a giant fibreglass hat on the top bearing the logo of the store. He's used to delivering to big businesses like Ted's Car-Unfucking Salon, so when he encounters a regular house, he just doesn't know what to do. Most of the time, he leaves several hundred dollars' worth of parts on your porch right before flooring it on his way out of your neighbourhood.

Now, I haven't had any porch pirates in the last few years – Mr. Cho, who lives on my block, was very interested back in May 2016 when I went by his Friday night poker game and told him about the alternator that got stolen. In June of 2016, I was driving to work and I saw the fire department working hard to get down the body of some guy with no skin hanging off the street light. Ever since then, no problems. That might not be the case for your neighbourhood, which is not lucky enough to lay claim to a Mr. Cho or substitute good citizen thereof.

That's why I've adopted a sort of "middle-ground" policy to the entire auto parts store problem. They've got a pretty big parking lot over at the store, so why not just do the entire job out there? It's not like they can really do much to me once I've taken the front subframe out, and if I miss their closing time, I'm basically first in line for when they open.

The real genius of all this is that if I don't get my car running in time to go to work the next morning, I can just use my phone to order some parts to the office and hop into the hat-car as it leaves. Sure, a citizen riding shotgun on a parts delivery is not "allowed" by corporate, but he knows who I live near.

[nobodyenjoysanything]

New writing

Lord Archibald was a duck, a statuesque one with white plumage and a golden beak. His webbed feet were yellow-orange like the trumpet part of a daffodil and his eyes were perfect black circles in tufted depressions on either side of his soft face. He beheld himself in the mirror – a draftsman’s rhapsody of lines and textures, from the elegant French Curve of his back to the rough hatching of his under-feathers, to the jagged planes of his folded flight-feathers – he was the archetype, the prototype, the very planotype, of a duck. This was the thought he burnished in his mind, as he always did when adjusting his large, bicorne hat, decorated as it was with the flags of Italy and Eritrea, from his time in the old Italian quarter of Asmara, where he had served as a diplomat, heading the Italian Consulate there for a while.

Now he was surrounded by luxury and privilege, quite separated from the concerns of International diplomacy, on a large, partly artificial island off the coast of Yemen, just North of Djibouti, overseeing International trade relations and dividing his hobbies between inserting himself (largely unnecessarily and to the great annoyance of captains and port officials) in the various businesses of the shipping lanes, and the induction of his daughters into society.

Lord Archibald had two lovely, well-mannered children – the comely Isabella, who had debuted in Paris last fall and was educated in deportment with the Versaille school, having majored in ladies’ piano and polite conversation in their Montmartre department – and the heavier-set, but duskier and bigger-eyed Penelope, who studied Samoyedic agriculture, before switching to Cordon Bleu, majoring in marine gustation.

It was Penelope’s debutante ball this Spring, and the house was a-buzz with the particularities of preparations, for an army of servants would see to it that everything was arranged and polished and there was a different outfit from the finest silks and muslins and jacquard-ed cheesecloth for every hot hour of the brazen day and every cool minute of the turquoise night. Nor would any dainty go undiscovered in researching the menu for a fortnight of gentile festivities, for a swarm of chefs and wine-tasters and edible-perfumiers bustled in a spaghetti of tunnels under the family residence, and heads could be seen surfacing from cellar trapdoors and poking from outbuildings and smokehouses at all stations of the clock. Much industrious grumbling was done with hushed immediacy under sun-grizzled parasols and a keen naturalist could have spotted an entire menagerie of moustaches, twitching with muffled importance.

In these efforts, Lord Archibald was aided considerably by his giant, robot wife, who glided along, underground, on a network of subterranean monorails repurposed from the internal mechanisms of a missile silo. The bunker, concrete for the most part with fibreglass domes and glass chutes near the water’s surface, was built as late as the 1960s by a reclusive and vengeful oil tycoon. Modelled to resemble a crab, complete with claws, carapace and eye-stalks, it had been extended in the early 90’s into the body of the island, where the living, fossil-rich rock sang cavernously as Mrs Archibald hurtled through the darkness, delivering bouquets, wax-sealed invitations and cake samples, with the cataclysmic force of hundreds of tonnes of coach-built steel.

[howwelldoyouknowyourmoon]

Moon founded “The World’s Greediest Church”

The cash that built the Moon organization’s “foundation.”

▲ Sun Myung Moon and Hak Ja Han of the Unification Church, now called the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, with one of the marble pagodas that were sold to the Japanese for eye-watering sums. Moon and Han reportedly denied knowledge of the scam.

_________________________________________

by Ben Hills Sydney Morning Herald  May 7, 1993

The Unification Church of Japan stated: “We do not participate in profit-making activities.”

“I don’t feel embarrassment … deep remorse is a better word,” confesses Kiyoharu Takahashi, blinking furiously behind his black-rimmed eyeglasses.

For 400 years, a small plot of land on the urban fringe of Tokyo had been in the family, once retainers of the local daimyo (lord of the manor). Five years ago, Mr Takahashi, then a university student, aged 26, persuaded his family to take out mortgages over the property. Although there is less than a hectare of land, it contains the family home, a turf farm, a rented house and two blocks of flats.

Even so, it still amazes Kiyoharu how much the banks were prepared to lend on it. By the time the credit dried up, he had received $67.5 million, repayments had fallen behind and the banks were threatening to foreclose. Four centuries of family history were about to go down the drain.

What caused this calamity ?

Every cent of the money – plus another $500,000 or so in savings that the Takahashis had put aside over the years – was handed over to an organisation Japanese are starting to call the greediest church in the world, the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity, known to the less devout as the Moonie church – the Unification Church (and now The Family Federation for World Peace and Unification).

Its founder and Pope is the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, a 73-year-old, thrice-married father of [more than] 13 who now lives in the United States, where he has done time in prison for [document fraud and] tax evasion.

Although he is better known for his mass marriage spectaculars – last year he hired the Olympic stadium in Seoul to celebrate the wedding of 30,000 followers, most of whom had never met each other before – Moon has spent the last 40 years building up a formidable religious multinational.

And Japan is the place where Moon Industries Inc, a conglomerate that trades under more than 100 corporate identities, has made its most spectacular, and some would say ungodly, gains.

Young Mr Takahashi is only one of 8,350 people who have come forward, claiming they have been ripped off by the Moonies, since a national legal network was set up to help them get their money back six years ago. The total amount they claim to have been cheated out of is a staggering $568 million. Cases are listed in more than a dozen courts.

Many of them, like Mr Takahashi, say they have been blackmailed into borrowing beyond their means, then handing the money over. In his case, barely credibly, he was told that his father’s Parkinson’s Disease was due to an ancient curse which could only be lifted from the family by prayer … and enormous amounts of money.

Another reformed Moonie – “Tomiko” is a 34-year-old English teacher from Tokyo – was told her lack of luck in love was because of the “dirty” money which she had saved. She took her life savings, $5,000, to a flat where the Moonies sprinkled salt in the four corners of the room, said prayers, and made it all disappear.

“Unfortunately, Japanese seem more susceptible to this sort of thing than people in other countries,” says Hiroshi Yamaguchi, a member of the lawyers’ network, who is handling cases for 25 former Moonies, including Takahashi, Tomiko, and a woman in Australia who was swindled out of $12,000.

People are being enticed into a range of activities which have no overt connection with the Moonies.

There are about 100 Moonie-owned “video centres” around Tokyo where people are invited in and then recruited.

Another favourite ploy is to organise conferences by front organisations, such as the World Peace Professors’ Academy, the Society of Field Flowers, the Japan-Korea Tunnel Task Force and even the Women’s Federation for World Peace, which last year held a meeting at Sydney’s Ritz Carlton Hotel.

No-one knows how many followers the Reverend Moon has attracted since he went international in the mid-1960s. He claims five million followers in 160 countries (including Australia) but a more realistic assessment by former members of the cult is around one-tenth that number [possibly at the zenith – now many fewer].

Even so, Japan – where there are thought to be around 20,000 hard-core Moonies – is beyond doubt one of the most profitable parts of his empire. Or was, until the recent deluge of bad publicity.

Tokyo’s tabloids have been agog for a month over the disappearance of Hiroko Yamasaki, a 33-year-old former Olympic gymnast, who has provided the church with acres of publicity since her marriage at the mass-wedding in Korea last year to a groom selected for her by the Rev Moon. 

She reappeared, renouncing the church and claiming it had all been a terrible mistake.

▲ Hiroko Yamasaki facing nearly 200 journalists in April 1993.

After being indoctrinated the converts are put out on the streets of Tokyo to bring in other recruits, and to make money selling products door-to-door.

Mr Takahashi displays some of the products he was obliged to sell. There is a 300-gram jar of extract from Korean ginseng (a parsnip-like root which tastes a bit like tobacco and is reputed to be medicinal) – this sold for $1,000, when the over-the-counter price in Korea is about $150. The Reverend Moon’s Il Hwa factory near Seoul is South Korea’s largest ginseng processor.

A set of three name-seals, worth about $125, is sold for up to $15,000. All Moonies dream of selling the jewelled pagoda – a model studded with what look like bits of glass that goes for $67,500.

After her conversion, Tomiko became a real cash cow. Even though she had no property to put up as collateral, she borrowed more than $50,000 from eight different banks and handed it over. She sold her family a garage full of Moonie products – her mother paid $20,000 for a kimono, her father $8,000 for a sauna, among other things. “I became a saleswoman … they said it was the way to achieve heaven on earth.“

Gullible? Perhaps. But 8,349 more like her? Sadao Asami, professor of theology at Tohoku University, believes that there is something about the Japanese that makes them more susceptible to Moon’s brand of religion.

Professor Asami has earned a nickname, “the Devil’s priest”, from the Moonies because of the help he has given hundreds of families, “rescuing” their children from the Moonies. He has worked with 500 to 600 former followers. He says that Japanese remain dependent on their parents much longer than people in the West, and that they are thus more immature. As well, the Japanese culture entertains a variety of religious and superstitious beliefs.

They also, says Mr Yamaguchi, have a lot of money.

Until recently, the Tokyo Moonies have been trying to quietly settle most of the claims out of court. However, in January, Michio Fujii, the head of the church in Japan, wrote to Mr Yamaguchi apologising for the “mismanagement of subordinates of the Unification Church” – but saying that repayment of money would be “temporarily stopped.”

This means that Mr Takahashi is in trouble. The church had repaid most of the money and had taken over repayments on the loans. But $3 million is outstanding. The Moonies’ headquarters is in the fashionable suburb of Shibuya, a three-storey building that occupies most of a city block.

Unfortunately, neither Mr Fujii, nor anyone else, was willing to put the church’s point of view on these serious allegations. They later sent an anonymous fax, denying everything and claiming bare-facedly: “We do not participate in profit-making activities.”

The Unification Church’s own publications boast of a global business empire valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

The core is the Sae-il engineering company, which began making air-rifles, and now manufactures machine-tools in Korea, Germany and Africa. Then there is the Il Hwa company which produces more than 40 different pharmaceutical products, ginseng and soft-drinks; in Alabama, there is International Oceanic Enterprises which catches and packs seafood; in Alaska, the Master Marine company makes fibreglass fishing trawlers; the Moonies own the Paragon House publishing firm, the Washington Times newspaper and a four-storey complex in Barrytown, New York, where they run a theological seminary.

Although his worries are not over, Mr Takahashi – along with several thousand other former converts – is thankful to be out of it. And not to have to go through with the “marriage” he had in 1988 … along with 6,499 other couples. In a hall at a Seoul soft-drink factory, he saw his bride for the first time. “I had built up expectations of how beautiful she was going to be,” he says “When I saw her I got vertigo.”

Two of his fellow Moonies committed suicide. One, a middle-aged woman who was being pressured into handing over some land, jumped off a building. Another, a man who was married at a mass wedding, jumped in front of a car.

“At the time I believed in it,” says Mr Takahashi, “Now I know it was only blackmail and lies aimed at getting their money.”

▲ In 2006, the Moons were brought 240 gold crowns (120 for each ot them) in a procession at their $1billion palace in the mountains near Cheongpyeong.

___________________________________________

Hiroko Yamasaki (former Olympic athlete in rhythmic gymnastics) joined and left UC

“Moon betrayed his followers and distorted the church’s lofty goals by turning his movement into a huge money-making machine.”

“Japan. Wow! My eyes were opened.” A huge UC scam in Japan is revealed.

Video of Unification Church ABUSE in Japan shown in court

Moon personally extracted $500 MILLION from Japanese sisters in the fall of 1993. He demanded that 50,000 sisters attend HIS workshops on Cheju Island and each had to pay a fee of $10,000.

Japan High Court judge upholds “UC used members for profit, not religious purposes”. This has serious ramifications.

Religious Freedom for Japanese Members! (The FFWPU established a slave caste.)

Sun Myung Moon – Emperor of the Universe

[vincentbriggs]

I started this petticoat sometime in 2013 and it's been on The Pile ever since. I had thought I might cut it up to use the fabric for something else, even though I was unlikely to have a use for washed dupioni, but then I realized I could put it on Mr. Fibreglass! So I dug it out and took it to my alterations job to work on during slow days, and yesterday I finally finished it!

I had barely started sewing it up back in 2013, and the thread didn't match and the seam allowances weren't finished, so I picked apart what I'd done and serged the edges on the industrial at work. I vaguely remember getting the silk dupioni on clearance sale, and it must have been pretty darn cheap because there's about 4 metres of fabric in this thing. I forgot to measure it and count the scallops, but however many scallops there are it's a few too many and they took quite a long time to sew. I don't know why I thought that many opposing curves was a good idea, but they do look nice!

It's mostly machine sewn, aside from the waistband finishing and the ends of the ties. He could definitely use another petticoat or two under there to give it more floof and show off the scallops better, but that's not a priority at all, especially since he lives in a somewhat cluttered corner. (Clutter removed for these photos but it's back there now.)

Now that there's a bit of colour in Mr. Fibreglass's outfit, he reminds me of @breebird33's work.

[seat-safety-switch]

Back in high school, I was sort of a lost cause. I really didn’t know what I was going to do with my life besides turn wrenches and spit in the face of God. As any self-respecting teenager would do at the time, I went to go see the guidance counsellor, Mr. Searle. He had his finger on the pulse of the world economy. He’d tell me what I should turn my considerable talents toward.

“We’ve never had anyone score a zero on employability before,” he told me, talking into the paper. His eyes seemed to bore through the print-out as he scanned it for any mark that would indicate the computer had simply goofed up and that his world was still fundamentally knowable. The sheet provided no succor, and soon he had to look me right in the eyes. I could tell immediately he was a broken man.

I was sent downtown, to the big computer, that wouldn’t fuck up like the little one at our podunk high school in the ‘burbs. Once there, I was assured, my destiny would be revealed. After taking the test again, I sat in a small white room in an uncomfortable chair, waiting for Mr. Searle’s superior to enter and tell me what I really should be doing with my life. The longer I waited, the more impatient I became. After waiting what felt like hours, I got up from my laminated-fibreglass chair to stretch my legs. That’s when I noticed the plume of capacitor smoke rolling in through the gap under the door.

So no computers, then. And no guidance counsellors, either - a very nice lady, Ms. Winterbottom, had some kind of stroke while manually grading my aptitude test. That really shook them, even though the coroner figured it was probably just some kind of coincidence.

Everyone decided it would be in my best interest if I simply did not have a career at all. I got a welfare application form from Mr. Searle, and he stamped it with a special rubber stamp marked “Don’t Even Try.”

Sure, every so often I feel that old Protestant work-ethic guilt and try to fill out a form at the local Dairy Queen or video rental store, but when those places burn down I feel even more guilt. Hey, I just thought of something. Do you think “professional arsonist” needs an interview?

[pabrikbioseptictank]

0812-7336-1787 Pabrik Produsen Bio Septic Tank – IPAL Medis & Industri

 Klik https://wa.me/6281273361787 Produsen Septic Tank Bio, Pabrik Bio Septic Tank, Distributor Septic Tank Fiberglass, Pembuat Septictank Fiberglass, Agen Septic Tank Bio, Supplier Septic Tank Biotech, Merek Bio Septic Tank Terbaik, SepticTank BioFilter, Septik Tank Bio Modern Anti Penuh, Jual Bio Septic Tank, Jual Septic Tank Biotech, Harga Septic Tank Biotech, Harga Septic Tank Murah, Harga Septic Tank Biofil, Original, Tahan lama dan Bergaransi Panjang, cocok untuk perumahan, IPAL Komunal, IPAL Medis, IPAL Industri, Rumah Sakit atau HOTEL

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 Perusahaan IPAL, WTP, STP, WWTP, Sewage, Waste & Water Treatment Terbaik untuk Instalasi Pengelolaan Air Limbah & Pengolahan Air Bersih Industri, pembangunan pembuatan IPAL, STP, WWTP, untuk Rumah Sakit, Puskesmas, Klinik, Rumah Potong Hewan, Pabrik/Industri, Hotel, Mall, Perumahan, dan Komunal,

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Solusi terbaik sistem pengolahan limbah domestik yang praktis, cepat, hemat dan sesuai baku mutu hasil pengolahan limbah cair.

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Hasil Buangan Memenuhi Standar KEMENLH, Lulus AMDAL, Hemat Biaya Perawatan, Harga Murah. Pabrik Segala Jenis IPAL, BERSERTIFIKAT LENGKAP, Kualitas Tinggi, Teruji Ramah Lingkungan. Ready Stok, Bisa Custom. Bergaransi Lolos Uji Lab.

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MELAYANI PEMESANAN DAN PEMASANGAN DI SELURUH WILAYAH INDONESIA

(Langsung OWNER)

https://wa.me/6281273361787

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Pertimbangkan hal penting ini, sebelum membeli Produk Pengolah Limbah :

1. SERTIFIKASI Perusahaan IPAL kami sudah mendapatkan sertifikasi

ISO 9001 Quality Management System,

ISO 14001 Manajemen Lingkungan dan

OHSAS 18001 Quality Management System

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2. GARANSI Sebagai Perusahaan IPAL, kami memberikan garansi terhadap hasil baku mutu pengolahan limbah bukan sekedar garansi kerusakan alat.

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3. BERPENGALAMAN Perusahaan IPAL, STP, WWTP berpengalaman dan fokus di bidang Instalasi Pengolahan Air Limbah dan teknologi air.

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4. PRODUK DALAM NEGERI Alat pengolah limbah di produksi di dalam negeri dan Perusahaan dapat memberikan perbaikan terhadap peralatan dan mesin yang digunakan selama pemakaian.

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5. REPUTASI BAIK Sebagai Konsultan IPAL, STP, WWTP, kami memiliki reputasi baik dan berpengalaman di bidang teknologi pengolahan air limbah.

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Kami  memproduksi SEWAGE TREATMENT PLANT ( STP) atau INSTALASI PENGOLAHAN AIR LIMBAH ( IPAL) untuk mengolah limbah domestik menjadi ramah lingkungan dan layak buang dengan sistem yang sederhana, tidak membutuhkan lahan yang luas dan sudah sesuai dengan standart lingkungan hidup. Visi kami adalah menjaga kebersihan lingkungan untuk menjaga & meningkatkan kesehatan masyarakat.

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Selain ahlinya di Bidang IPAL (Instalasi Pengolahan Air Limbah) / STP (Sewage Treatment Plant / WWTP (Waste Water Treatment Plant),

Sebagai Kontraktor dan Fiberglass Manufacture Terbesar di Indonesia,

kami juga MELAYANI PEMESANAN ANEKA KEBUTUHAN / PRODUK FIBERGLASS, diantaranya:

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1. STP-IPAL MEDIS

2. STP-IPAL INDUSTRI

3. STP-IPAL Limbah B3

4. STP - DOMESTIK

5. SEPTICTANK BIO

6. BIO SEPTICTANK Series Anaerob - Aerob

7. PANELTANK

8. WATER TANK

9. GREASE TRAP

10. TOILET PORTABEL

11. TEMPAT SAMPAH

12. KOLAM IKAN

13. MESIN RO

14. WATERPARK

15. PLAYGROUND

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Pemesanan dan Konsultasi via WA – WhatsApp

https://wa.me/6281273361787

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Mr Momon (Langsung OWNER)

Hp/WA 0812-7336-1787

Hp/WA 0856-6559-633

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https://www.facebook.com/pabrikbioseptictankindonesia/

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CvBSA

 Singhasari Park

Petung Wulung Toyomarto Singosari-Malang - Jatim

Jawa Timur

Indonesia

 Email : orderbioseptictank@gmail.com

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MELAYANI PEMESANAN DAN PEMASANGAN DI SELURUH PROVINSI DI INDONESIA

Direct Order (Langsung OWNER)

https://wa.me/6281273361787

Saat ini, provinsi di Indonesia terdiri dari 34 provinsi. Berikut adalah daftar dan sedikit rincian dari provinsi-provinsi di Indonesia.

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DAFTAR 34 PROVINSI BESERTA IBUKOTA DI INDONESIA

A. Provinsi di Pulau Sumatra

1. Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam : Banda Aceh 2. Sumatera Utara : Medan 3. Sumatera Selatan : Palembang 4. Sumatera Barat : Padang 5. Bengkulu : Bengkulu 6. Riau : Pekanbaru 7. Kepulauan Riau : Tanjung Pinang 8. Jambi : Jambi 9. Lampung : Bandar Lampung 10.Bangka Belitung : Pangkal Pinang

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B. Provinsi di Pulau Kalimantan

1. Kalimantan Barat : Pontianak 2. Kalimantan Timur : Samarinda 3. Kalimantan Selatan : Banjarmasin 4. Kalimantan Tengah : Palangkaraya 5. Kalimantan Utara : Tanjung Selor (Belum pernah melaksankan MoU)

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C. Provinsi di Pulau Jawa

1. Banten : Serang 2. DKI Jakarta : Jakarta 3. Jawa Barat : Bandung 4. Jawa Tengah : Semarang 5. DI Yogyakarta : Yogyakarta 6. Jawa timur : Surabaya

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D. Provinsi di Pulau Nusa Tenggara & Bali

1. Bali : Denpasar 2. Nusa Tenggara Timur : Kupang 3. Nusa Tenggara Barat : Mataram

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E. Provinsi di Pulau Sulawesi

1. Gorontalo : Gorontalo 2. Sulawesi Barat : Mamuju 3. Sulawesi Tengah : Palu 4. Sulawesi Utara : Manado 5. Sulawesi Tenggara : Kendari 6. Sulawesi Selatan : Makassar

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F. Provinsi di Pulau Maluku dan Papua

1. Maluku Utara : Ternate 2. Maluku : Ambon 3. Papua Barat : Manokwari 4. Papua ( Daerah Khusus ) : Jayapura *) Provinsi Terbaru Prov. Teluk Cendrawasih (Seruai) *) Provinsi Papua Barat (Sorong)

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