#Railway Series Fandom

[whumpster-fire]

Dear Railway Series / TTTE Fandom of Tumblr:

I am so, so sorry, but this came to me in a vision and I was left with no choice but to make it.

(not supposed to be any actual RWS character just a random Midland Region steam engine circa like 1960. Traced poorly off some photo of an LMS 8F)

[whumpster-fire]

fuck

@mean-scarlet-deceiver due to your profile picture my mind immediately went to "F.R. crack AU where Coppernob is given control of the Barrow Central PA system (did they have a PA system back then?) and gives color commentary on the daily goings-on of the station"

With at least one "announces the arrival of a seagull and confuses the passengers who think he's still talking about birds" event a day.

shoutout to the guy in charge of the train station at my hometown, who doesn’t limit himself to announcing trains but also:

comments on interesting birds he sees on the platform

gives completely unofficial weather reports on what he thinks the day is going to be like

refers to very crowded trains as ‘friendly trains’

regularly congratulates everyone on having gotten up on time on Monday mornings

basically seems to use the tannoy system to amuse himself and try and brighten up everyone’s morning commute

refers to himself as ‘the fat controller’

[whumpster-fire]

If all the other fandoms have Poor Little Meow Meows, I think we should just start calling James a Poor Little Choo Choo whenever he fucks up.

[whumpster-fire]

TTTE/RWS Fandom, please go watch How Diesel 10 Stole Christmas. Holy shit this is the funniest TTTE fanfilm I've ever seen. My sides hurt.

[theflyingkipper]

can you two back me up here instead of laughing!!

[whumpster-fire]

Prev tags for posterity:

#unfortunately this IS coppernob 😔#… moments like this i regret having made up this guy

[whumpster-fire]

Just discovered this TTTE parody that aired on John Oliver's show making fun of the problems with Precision Scheduled Railroading (animation starts at timestamp 23:00)

Obviously this is a satire and not meant to be perfectly technically accurate to rail operations nor accurate to RWS lore, but one thing I do want to point out is that, while railways cutting corners and endangering the public in the name of profits was certainly a thing, it's kind of amusing that Henry, a steam locomotive, is being used to demonstrate a specific type of corporate fuckery (comically long trains that can't be operated without blocking crossings, excessive workload on crews leading to dangerous conditions being missed) that's only possible to the extent that it's being done today because of diesels.

The thing with the obscenely long trains is that railroads get sufficient power to move them by stacking a whole bunch of locomotives on one train, often with some in the back or even the middle of the train, and while this technically can be done with steam power, one of the major motivators for railroads to run longer and longer trains is to save on labor costs... which doesn't really work with steam because every locomotive you add needs to have its own crew, but with diesel or electric locomotives a single crew can operate an arbitrary number of locomotives, and in theory an arbitrarily long train, because they can be controlled remotely from the cab of the lead locomotive. In theory. In practice this causes problems because if you have only two people responsible for a 2+ mile long train with hundreds of cars, anything that requires them to inspect the whole train or do something like setting handbrakes when the train has to be parked on a hill is way more time consuming and causes more crew fatigue.

(which isn't to say there weren't examples of pretty long trains in the steam era, but the main way of increasing the amount of tonnage per person crewing the train, aside from improvements in brake technology which led to not needing several brakemen, was building bigger and bigger locomotives)

(also for maximum pedantry, is obscenely long freight trains running over infrastructure not designed for them even a thing in the UK?)

[anonymousboxcar]

I noticed something today in “Down the Mine:” after Thomas mocks Gordon, the narrator says, “Annie and Clarabel were deeply shocked. They had a great respect for Gordon the Big Engine.”

Why do Annie and Clarabel respect Gordon so much? That’s a genuine question; I feel like I’m missing something here.

I’m guessing they knew him before Thomas became their primary engine. But at that point, I’m not sure Gordon would give the time of day to small, aging coaches. So how did he gain their respect?

Was it because he was an express engine and there were railway hierarchies associated with that? Was it because he embodied the growing prominence of their railway? Or was it something else?

I’d love to know what you guys think!

[whumpster-fire]

listen it's not my fucking fault ok I grew up watching Thomas the Tank Engine and the eyes on the models do in fact move in a circle like that so I just assumed that's what the phrase meant

[platonic-pals-punchout]

Thomas the Tank Engine (mutlimedia) | My Hero Academia (manga & anime)

Thomas & Percy:

Oh, I don't know if they'll win. But if there's one thing I know for certain... it's that the TTTE fandom goes nuts when our blorbos get into a poll. I think we need to do that again. And who better than Our Boys?

Bakugou Katsuki & Kirishima Eijirou:

Both of the characters’ developments rely a lot on each other. They push each other to be the best version of themselves, with mutual trust and respect - of which one of the characters, Bakugou, has never really been seen to share with any other character. They very clearly care about each other a lot, and have a special bond I feel is inspiring and endearing. If there were such things as soulmates, I feel they’d be platonic soulmates, your honour.

[scattered-sense]

Tidmouth, 1915 (preview)

Freshly renumbered NWR #1 still in patched GNR paint having been rescued from a scrapyard backs onto a train as NWR #5 in the background pulls out with a goods train.

[engineer-gunzelpunk]

Happy 79th Anniversary !

Ohhhh boy, this book is 79 years old? Blimey! The book that started in all, The Three Railway Engines. Cheers, Wilbert… however imperfect your stories were, it did have a positive impact in that it inspired the love of steam locomotives in younger generations for years to come.

Cheers to the first three… Edward, Gordon and Henry!

Salut!

I know it’s a bit late, but here’s my tribute inspired by the poster for Trainspotting.

[whumpster-fire]

Lost Custody of My OCs In Internet Court Club meets M-W-F 3AM at AO3. Complimentary cinnamon rolls provided.

#lost a few braincells reading some of these#fandom problems#tags that passed peer review#(look 'lost custody of my ocs in court' is pretty funny)#(i'm glad that's not a thing or some of y'all would have wrangled poppet from me already)

ok though this made me giggle at the mental image of a big sign outside Barrow Central Station saying: "EXPECT SIGNIFICANT DELAYS OF ALL TRAINS TODAY. LOST CUSTODY OF OUR STATION PILOT IN COURT. WE APOLOGIZE FOR ANY INCONVENIENCE."

not submission. I really hate the "My OC, my rules" thing. Cause like, no? Just because they are your oc doesn't mean you can do whatever you want with them. If you want to make your oc suffer and not like them get help, you deserve to lose rights over them. Especially if you only do that stuff to purposely trigger people. Once you do that, your oc no longer belongs to you. they belong to the public who will take better care of them instead

Making a comment to get this to post.

[weirdowithaquill]

If you had to add one fan OC to the NWR, who would it be? (Only caveat is that it cannot be a copy of a pre-existing RWS character. This includes Scott.)

This is a tough question! I'm going to guess that I can't include Andrew in this answer (cause that's way too biased), so I'll run on with that in mind. Cause if he was included, it'd be him. He's my OC, and therefore would be my instant pick - and that kind of negates the entire question. Sorry Andrew, maybe next time!

I'm also going to avoid picking Alfred the B12, mostly cause he's one of those characters who has practically melded his way into the series already as 98462.

Ok, so I think a preface to my answer is to note that I grew up on the very early years of the Thomas fandom on YouTube - we're talking 2011 and 2012 (to give you an idea of what was going on around this time, it's only about 2 years after Alfred the B12 was introduced). This era was very much coloured by a hatred of the HiT era, SiF was still the dominant place to find Thomas content, and many of the cornerstones of the Thomas fandom on YouTube were just starting out. And I was not on SiF much at this point (I was a kid back then, and YouTube was easy to find and use) - so I grew up on EE93, WildNorWester and DieselD199.

With this in mind, I would have to pick Alice.

Alice is a WildNorWester OC from their series 'Sodor the Early Years' (link to her debut episode here) and perhaps one of my favourite early era OCs. Then again, it's hard to decide when it comes to WildNorWester simply because they created several of the most notable and well-remembered fan engines - Peter, Eric, Iris, Lily, Adam, Colin and Patrick all originated with WildNorWester, not to mention Andreas and Atlas. And most of them have had up to 10 years to bed into the fandom. EE93's Young Tucker is another good contender, though they're a bit more obscure.

I recommend all three YouTubers and their series'. The quality may not be exactly the greatest anymore, but wow are they incredible to watch!

[whumpster-fire]

Today In "Railway Series Continues to Be A Documentary": Union Pacfic 4014 got to rescue a stalled freight train that was blocking the line ahead of it, which IIRC is the second time one of their heritage steam engines has done this.

[thomastanker02]

A Gallant Old Engine redraw. Hope you enjoy