#ttte vehicle autonomy

[mean-scarlet-deceiver]

Something I feel that we (the TTTE community) have not addressed enough is the fact that Vickerstown (the real life neighborhood in Barrow that Vicarstown is based on) was built mainly to support the workers at the Vickers Shipyard across the channel in Barrow, as Barrow proper did not have the room.

One can only presume that the Sodor's Vicarstown served much the same purpose once the strangely coincidentally named shipyard across the harbor was built.

The Vickers Shipyard, it should be noted, was and is the primary Shipyard for the Royal Navy, has produced nearly all of the British nuclear submarine fleet, multiple Royal Navy flagships, and literally hundreds of capital ships for navies around the world, including battleships.

Therefore, it stands to reason that each and every one of them was built, by hand, by People Who Live On The Island Of Sodor.

Yes! Agree 100%. Underrated connection.

The joint between Vickerstown (real life) and Vicarstown (fictional) is remarkably clean, if you ignore the name and the size of the islands they are on.

I think that's one reason I've gotten so stuck on this area of "RWS research" rather than moving onto other topics. Because the longer you look into this particular topic the smarter Wilbert Awdry and all of The Island of Sodor come out looking.

Barrow attracted workers from all over even before the days of Vickers Shipyard, so Sudrians were certainly among them, moving into the town or commuting there by ferry way back into the 19th century. This connection must go way back. (It is starting to make a little more sense for the island to be represented by the Cumbrian MP.)

The Walney/Jubilee Bridge was built in 1908 but it seems to have been strictly for road vehicles. I have not been able to find whether or not the tram system ran across the bridge but I doubt it. Anyway it in no way precludes the introduction of the bridge introducing a rail link in 1915.

That there was a settlement in Vicarstown dating back centuries I don't dispute, but I reckon this etymology is a bit... post-dated. Self-serving. I headcanon they usually knew it by a different name, until Vickers arrived and started buying up and developing land. At which point it became a national point of honour to insist that Vickers hadn't named the place—they had only appropriated Sudrian history!!1!:

(It may be noted that I am deliberately spelling it as Vickerstown right now in A Hole in the Net. Because it's from Nobby's point of view and he's every inch a Barrovian—he probably has no idea there even is a competing spelling/etymology. Certainly the FR would have spelled it that way.)

Anyway. After the arrival of 'Vickerstown' company-owned housing and development dominate the area, of course, and there is no doubt that Vickers was an economic, jobs-giving gold mine for all of east Sodor. But we also know that Sudrians are very touchy about their autonomy and I reckon there was some internal strain, some conflict between economic interest and national pride. There would also have been people residing in "the town" who were not Vickers employees, too, and they might have carried the flag of resistance to the idea of being subsumed into a Greater Barrow area.

Housing in Barrow during WWI was a huge problem. Westminster launched an investigation in 1917 (if I recall the year correctly) on the danger of a workers' revolution in Barrow—they were keeping an eye on several towns regarding this issue, but only for Barrow did they feel the need to take this step. The rent inflation was insane and by the midway point in the war temperatures ran high.

That's in real life. In the RWS timeline, a rail link to the rather commodious island of Sodor would have been a great relief to everyone. Ballahoo in particular is said in IoS to be a bedroom community for Barrow. (It's a bit far away—but presumably it had empty housing already built, which was the big bottleneck. Why would it have empty housing? This implies that the town had seen a decline in population... so there are interesting details that could be filled in there about the economic history around Ballahoo...)

Interestingly, Vickers had to lay off a lot of people in the years after Armistice. This coincides with the period where the FR (and the MR, of course) are basically telling the NWR "pay up or return our stuff please, you're on your own now." The fortunes of east Sodor and Barrow that were so linked in the first quarter of the 20th century would begin to deteriorate. (That wasn't true of Walney Island, but Walney Island is much smaller and doesn't have much going on besides Vickerstown. Sodor has a bigger population and lots of other ways to earn one's daily bread.)

Now, Vickers hung on very well and is still pounding out ships to this day, so I don't doubt your proposed headcanon that the industry (largely under military contract) remains a huge factor in Sodor-Vicarstown economy.

Island of Sodor downplays this because Rev. Awdry was a pacifist and has a demonstrated history of ignoring wars as much as possible.

But I'd go further and propose that in the RWS timeline there might have been a real possibility for Vicarstown to eclipse Barrow—there comes a point where Sodor's economy seems more diversified than Cumbria's.

I wonder if the NWR-LMS Agreement was partly predicated on fears of Sodor getting too big for its britches. They didn't care if Sodor had its own railway—the LMS did great business through Sodor, and if they didn't have to bear the costs of the rail system there then all the better—but perhaps it did want to try keep it somewhat irrelevant. The lack of a depot at Vic(k)e/arstown meant fewer non-Vickers jobs based in the town, protecting Vickers' hold on the town and also shifting population and workers back to Barrow (which was otherwise emptying out fast, now that the war was over). And then, of course, the LMS insisted on keeping control of the commute into Barrow via the Norramby trains. Presumably because otherwise the NWR could have held it hostage and fucked around with it to retaliate if relations ever soured with the LMS. Or just that the LMS had an interest in regular services for workers into the mainland, an interest that the NWR might not have been able to meet on its own motive power. Remember that the LMS was not the only one involved in this deal—Westminster required Grouping and they must have also agreed to wind up overlooking the NWR. It only requires one or two Cumbrian MPs who want to protect the interest of its mainland constituents at the expense of its island constituents for the NWR-LMS Agreement to start to make a lot of sense.

(This is in complete contradiction to what was said in the latest Awdry lecture about how Westminster ignored Sodor because it was just too dang poor but that "new canon" doesn't make sense to me. You can still exploit a poor region. That's kind of the whole point of imperialism. I prefer to think that was the official face-saving narrative but the reality was that Anything to Keep Sodor Dependent and Poor While Still Giving Us Our Imports and Workers was the goal. A somewhat missed goal. Because the Sudrians are bloody creative and ungovernable, that's why.)

Anyway despite the attempts to keep Vicarstown a strictly company town and in spite of the 1925 Agreement, I think Vicarstown went on to thrive after WWII. Shipbuilding was at its heart but it did not alone dictate the town's development. That's another story, but I accept wholeheartedly that at some point we can patch in the TVS timeline whereby Vicarstown again opens a depot. The shortest version of this history? Well, part of it had to be by Sodor capitalizing on its knowledge base. The entire eastern half of Sodor is by now dominated by shipbuilders and engineers, trained for generations by Vickers and Crovan's Gate respectively. A technical education in eastern Sodor has to be a hot commodity in itself!

[transsexualunderground]

The Stockbound

Or, because everyone and their mom needs a TTTE Characters but Humanoid AU, and I wanted to do something fun with that!

The Stockbound, short for Rolling Stock-bound, are a people who come to be with the formation of any piece of rolling stock that happens to end up with a face. This means there are subraces of them, such as but not limited to Coachbound, Locomotivebound, and Truckbound. They most often manifest into existence with first use of a piece of rolling stock, such as the first steaming of a locomotive, or a coach's first time with passenger use. This is what I'd call the first phase of the stockbound - the fully bound phase. Essentially, these function exactly as TTTE characters normally do.

The second phase is when a stockbound can utilize a humanoid form, detaching their existence from the locomotive itself and manifesting outside of it. Initially, one of the stockbound will have to be near or touching their starting vessel to continue to manifest their form before without being returned to their home vessel, but eventually they can gain more range from it with time and practice. They will usually have to return to their rolling stock bodies to rest, however, merging with them again or resting within/near them.

The third phase is extremely optional, but it's a choice some of the stockbound make. Some of them will live out the rest of their lives as humanoids, no longer bound to their vessels once trained enough. Others keep some level of attachment to their home vessels in order to maintain a long life that'd be impossible by human standards. Others still try to achieve the best of both worlds with tours or driving their forms when applicable. A first or second phase stockbound will experience pain or harm their home vessel experiences even if they're not within it, but a third phase, fully unbound person, will be able to exist without worrying about their home vessel at all. A third phase stockbound may be able to return to the second phase, but in a way almost adjacent to selkies, if their home vessel is taken or destroyed, they cannot return to it.

Regarding appearance when humanoid: It immensely varies. Many take on forms very similar to humans, while some might appear more ethereal or mechanical.

Regarding autonomy: The whole autonomy situation is honestly quite confusing for many parties involved. It's not unheard of for a locomotive to be needed for use while a stockbound would much rather be elsewhere than where the locomotive is. Locomotives would not be able to move without fuel, and trucks, coaches, and the like can barely move at all without something else pulling or pushing them. However, once in steam or otherwise prepared to move, a locobound one has some level of control, often correlating to whistles, horns, brakes, speed, and other such things. Coaches and trucks are capable of bumping. There are rumors of stockbound with full control even without fuel, a crew, or motors, however... it takes a powerful spirit with high attunement to do such things.

Stockbound rights have been strangely handled in the past as well, especially amidst the emergence of railways, nobody was quite sure how to handle people just suddenly forming in their rolling stock. The discovery that they could leave was even more confusing. It did, however, contribute to them being treated like people even when still in the first phase of existence much quicker than one would otherwise assume. This isn't to say there were unfortunate situations in which stockbound were very quickly forced to develop their manifestation skills and leave as soon as possible due to harsh conditions, scrapping killing various stockbound before they could even leave, or in some of the worst scenarios, the fact that second phase stockbound cannot leave a certain range is taken advantage of, or stockbound are forced by others to stay within their home vessel.

Regarding other vehicles: They certainly exist as bound-folk as well, with similar stages. Road vehiclebound, aircraftbound, and many others exist out there. Despite the fact that the steamboat came before the steam locomotive, the -bound phenomena was first witnessed in steam locomotives, and this seemed to spark something that caused it in other modes of transportation as well.

Regarding culture: Stockbound culture is largely influenced by humans, but also has aspects of its own, such as lingo and jargon, a general disregard for gender, vastly different life stages, cuisine mostly amounting to fuels, and other such things.

Regarding transferring to a new home vessel: some stockbound might wish to take on the form of a new body that could not be achieved via rebuilds or modifications, such as going from one home vessel to another. This process is long and difficult but well worth it for those who seek it. More details on this later.

TL;DR: Wacky spirits/entities bound to rolling stock sure are neato, huh?

[whumpster-fire]

More Idle RWS Thoughts

While I’ve been bored at work this week I’ve been thinking about how certain things on IRL railways would work in that setting. I know the Awdrys want it to be “as true to real-life railway operation as possible” but like, having vehicles be sentient changes things.

These days many/most trains have one driver controlling multiple engines linked through wired or wireless electrical controls, and some diesels (especially in North America apparently) don’t have cabs at all. Do these locomotives have, like, a telepathic link with each other, or are they just all able to sense the operator’s control inputs at the same time? Is there a “class divide” among diesels similar to the tank engine / tender engine divide between A and B units? Apparently some B units are converted from A units: is having your cab removed used as a punishment?

What about cow-calf engines - i.e. sets of two technically separate locomotives coupled together where only one has a cab. Are they one entity, or two? I know there was a Fairlie Articulated steam engine on TTTE who was portrayed as having two separate personalities, but the rack railway engines are single individuals even tough they have two faces. I also found out about “slugs,” which are extra sets of traction motors and wheels that can be coupled onto a diesel-electric to give it extra strength at low speed, but don’t have their own powerplant and run off the electrical power of the main locomotive. I’m gonna go with these not being sentient? Kind of like how a tender isn’t portrayed as its own being.

Dumb Engineering Idea: Could a slug on a steam engine be practical? I know Triplex engines had an extra set of drivers under the tender, and that they were insanely strong but couldn’t generate enough steam to supply all those cylinders at more than a crawl, but I’m guessing shutting down the third set for high-speed running wasn’t practical because of the resistance of “backdriving” the cylinders and they couldn’t just be disconnected from the wheels like a booster. But could a higher-speed tank engine produce enough steam that it could be hooked up to a set of wheels and cylinders with no boiler of its own for extra tractive effort in low-speed shunting? Or a tender engine that could swap a tender with cylinders and a small coal/water capacity (due to being less bulky to improve visibility when reversing) with a normal tender?

Modern trains require a lot of safety automation technology like train stops, positive train control, dead man’s switches, etc. In a world of sentient vehicles how much of this would just be engines having the ability to stop a train on their own or even override their drivers’ control, and how much of it would interfere with an engine’s autonomy? I know in Mountain Engines Culdee’s automated brakes are described as being under his control and that he could put them on by himself.

So... about smoke deflectors. I know they’re needed to keep smoke from being caught in the turbulent wake behind the front of a non-streamlined engine’s smokebox, but the way they protrude in front of the smokebox is... well, the British call them “blinkers,” and it doesn’t seem like engines would like having their peripheral vision blocked by a metal plate, especially since a flesh and blood horse can still turn its head, the iron kind not so much. Is there some kind of duct or other system that could deflect enough air upward to lift the smoke at high speeds without protruding in front of the smokebox, or would the flat-ish face disturb the airflow too much for it to be pushed into any deflector that didn’t block lateral flow?

Alternately, what about deflectors that can slide or rotate forward only when they’re needed - at high speeds and in tunnels, kind of like an airplane’s flaps? It seems like a compressed air cylinder could probably actuate them, or an electric or reversible pneumatic motor running off steam from the turret manifold turning a jackscrew. Or if nothing else, plexiglass deflectors might be feasible by the 1940s although they’d probably not be cheap and need frequent replacement.

[mean-scarlet-deceiver]

tramway coaches i guess

i meant to reply to @sudrian-railways-enthusiast about these tags in the comments but somehow my response spiralled into a full-blown post on HCs for minor coach characters

"the old ones with nothing to lose... and Henrietta"

So, I hesitated on how to word that section! Because my first thought had been that the coaches that were more reckless and "awkward" were very likely to be elderly coaches relegated to workmen's services, as that seems to basically be the last leg of the life journey for them... assuming they get that far. In other words, IRL some of those coaches are janky but since they're usually quite old that's not much surprise. In sentient vehicle world, I like to think they're cranky, they've come down a long way in the world (unwashed laborers! eurgh!!), they probably have some Emotions, and what they don't have left are any fucks to give.

But I also knew Henrietta had definitely done some Unauthorized Creeping About, so I had been planning to make a special mention of her all along. But when it came down to writing that sentence, it was awkward. She's a special case! Because she does seem to literally fit the profile I wrote above... but she's not that type. For one thing, she has far from "nothing" to lose! She may primarily transport workers to and from the quarry but for her it's not a last lonely stopgap before the scrapyard; she has a home, friends; she's loved; she does all sorts of special jobs; she and Toby are multi-generational local celebs and they are in no disgrace or danger.

Hannah... hahaha(nnah)... I admit, I wrote that post not wanting to touch her. She gives me a fair bit of trouble in headcanons because you would think that if Henrietta still had a sister after all this time there would be a lot of explanation and backstory and probably angst to unpack? Like what?? Where did she come from??? I agree, just looking at TVS the best explanation is that Hannah was scrounged up and refurbished largely as a backup for Henrietta (and omg, the ISSUES with that dynamic???? this hasty hot-blooded creature as the frustrated understudy? but they both survived the scrapper's torch, so that makes it... okay? but also, not? hmmm...)

If we try to combine TVS and RWS, though (as I do!), I feel we need to do something else with Hannah. Because there is no way to reconcile Victoria's existence if Sodor owns Hannah? Like I'm not one to think that everything on this disaster-gay-energy of a railway has to be matchy-matchy but it's almost cruel for them to have been like, "Ahhhh, yes. Henrietta needs some help. Where shall we get it? ... *crickets* ... Well, we'll kick that can down the road and see what comes up." Completely ignoring Henrietta's underused and clearly bored SISTER just chilling on a seldom-used siding.

Even as I type this, I realize we could just say that Hannah's disposition is Too Much to handle that gig full-time—Toby seems stressed out whenever he has to go near her for even a day or two. But for my money, I like to ID Hannah as the Upwell and Wisbech coach No. 8, the one who appeared in Titfield Thunderbolt! It definitely seems consistent with her "hasty" and adrenaline-seeking character! Also, remember that canonically Toby and Henrietta (and Elsie! I am categorically against Elsie Erasure 😤) are from an Upwell-and-Wisbech-esque line but explicitly NOT from that one. In other words, it facilitates the two sisters having always worked separately back on the mainland, which seems to fit the rather distant relationship they have in the show.

This also facilitates, in this timeline, Hannah being preserved but not owned by the North Western. That helps me a lot so far as her coexistence with Victoria. In this headcanon I'd say that the North Western put off the issue of Toby's overloaded train for as long as possible because they were trying to buy Hannah. Finally they could put it off no longer and, anyway, it was clear that Hannah's railway (I haven't decided which heritage line she works, but it's one of them) wasn't going to part with her. This makes more sense to me than the explanation in the book that? the North Western? couldn't afford a single new coach no matter how pressing the need?? but they could afford to restore a converted garden house into running condition (not really any cheaper I reckon)??? And then at the end FC3 is showing off the train like it's an attraction??? I dunno, I don't buy any of it, the NWR is doing plenty well enough to get any coach they want. That they put it off because they wanted Hannah works for me. And Victoria wasn't some convenient random find; she was probably on FC3's radar for a while and was the Next Best Option for some local vintage flavor.

That said, you can still rescue the Hannah episodes, too, by saying sometimes she is loaned to the NWR. And since she only works about 25 days a year and never breaks 10 mph otherwise, you'd better believe she makes the most of her spells on Sodor! Yee-haw! C'mon, Jim-boy, is this really as fast as you can go?????????

Bonus: If Hannah had been preserved after Titfield Thunderbolt as planned... perhaps she's appeared in some movies since?... she's a career actress. Throw in a little diva-with-a-heart-of-gold energy and just, honestly, I'm loving this.

As for Victoria... okay, so it seems to me that, immediately prior to being withdrawn from service on the Ffarquhar, she DOES fit my profile for "unhappy, ornery coach, disgusted at how far she's fallen in the world, who might act out." Think about it—she had been sent away from Albert and Helena (that had already been her first "demotion," mind you—but she seems to have been very happy with her little found family in that era), sent over to the No-Where Railway, is in exile now on the most godforsaken western line on this barbarous island? She doesn't know how Albert and Helena are, the early N.W.R. is a mess, there's no tourism, she's reduced to having 'Coffee Pots' play pass-the-parcel with her as smelly miners and masons and construction workers grind dirt and ash into her upholstery and make a ruin of her floors, and with each new bit of grime it seems any hope she has of ever being wanted back home grows dimmer—

So, maybe she acted out? I mean yes, she seems very sweet, and I'm sure by nature she is, but these are also the exact sort of circumstances I'd predict "truck-like behavior."

She had to have been withdrawn before 1925, or else Thomas should have recognized her, so that was relatively early, and maybe she was one of the first picks to be replaced once the railway started getting their grubby paws on a few better coaches—because she had gotten into the habit of being a bit of a pill.

I know, I know that when Chris Awdry had Edward say "Don't I know you from somewhere?" that he meant to imply the answer was "yes, from their mutual Furness days." But the F.R. timeline actually works out such that these two probably never worked the same line. So I, guilt-free, prefer to interpret it as Edward vaguely recognizes her, and it takes him another minute or two for him to realize that it's from their early Sodor days.

So then he keeps his mouth shut and never brings it up again. Because it would be a very Edward thing, to a) remember that she had gotten a bad reputation on the island, and to b) realize that he's probably the only other living thing that would know this, and c) to reckon that after 75 years off the rails, she has more than paid the price for any difficulty she once gave, and that she deserves the chance to make a fresh start.

Which, obviously, Victoria grabbed onto it with all six wheels and never let go. She is clearly a homebody by nature so, now that she knows that this is the only home she has, it makes sense to me that any brief "I'm going to make my problems everyone's problem" phase is long over.

Still... imagine how pleased Henrietta and Elsie were, after containing their Creeping About tendencies for a while, feeling that this pleasant newcomer would crimp their style, to discover... haha no worries. She is perfectly prepared to keep their secrets. She may even chip in a trick or two of her own...