#Real locomotives

[engineer-gunzelpunk]

Gordon the Big Engine sighting: Royal Melbourne Show

Somehow I am not surprised he’s a C-38.

[sudrian-railways-enthusiast]

Thinking about the factoid that many crews complained about driving at least specifically the Southern Pacific Cab Forwards because the panoramic view afforded to them by driving from the front of the engine made them feel more vulnerable in the case of a head on collision.

“Two cabs, how do diesels know whether they’re coming or going” argument is out. “Your crew is at the front of you, you are an unsafe monstrosity argument” is in. I think James would have a conniption fit. Everyone talks about tar wagons for weeks. James finally gives it up when he almost calls Diesel one of the good exceptions.

[tornadoyoungiron]

Mallard being restored for their 100th? Dear lord please make it so.

Poor Green Arrow, his faulty monobloc keeps him from working.

[engineer-gunzelpunk]

AMEN AMEN AMEN

Friend and I were trying to find cursed images of trains (long story) and instead found THIS

[edwards-exploit]

I think I can, I think I can, I think I can!

[engineer-gunzelpunk]

Traintober Day 16: The Western (cw: animal death)

This story I wrote a while ago. It takes place in the Western region of Victoria, back in the 1940's. It features yet another one of my OCs, Victorian Railways A2 No 986 "Pluto", one of the long-lived A2 express passenger engines that graced the rails of Victoria from 1905 to 1963, to the very end of steam on the main line.

This is based on another true story of enginemen participating in a sheep muster from the books of Nick Anchen, a master of collecting warts-and-all stories from old enginemen that worked the railways. Some of the details are true to life as to what happened on this occasion, only thing that has changed is that the locomotives talk.

For those of a more sensitive disposition, I have put the story behind a cut.

Carnivore

Nearly every locomotive in the VR has performed some kind of country or agricultural work in their career. Heavy Harry pulled trains filled with meat, the Rs pulled the seasonal wheat trains,  the light-footed Js and the Ks pulled trains filled with livestock and fruit up and down the branchlines to and from Cudgewa in the North East, to take to Harry or Greyhound or the other swift-running X-classes waiting in Wodonga to take to Melbourne; it was the rare steam locomotive that stayed in suburban confines or didn’t pull any goods work. Australia was still a strongly rural place in the Steam Age, and Victoria was the agricultural breadbasket along with Tasmania. The fact that it was webbed in iron made distribution relatively easy and fast.

Quite often it involved sheep, pigs or cattle. Not the most pleasant of all jobs but it needed to be done. 

The year was 1943, the war in Europe and in the Pacific was at it’s height, and there was drought blighting the land.

One day, the cantankerous A2 express passenger locomotive No 986 Pluto and another A2, Roy, were being prepared to take a train up to Yelta, near Mildura in the state’s North West. Pluto was especially excited for the tales heard from the other locos promised wonders… but the landscape was anything but. Parched, yellow and unpromising.

Yelta was near the Little Desert, and was dry as dust. On the way to Yalta was the town of Merbin; which was home to a lot of very poor folk, the firemen in their generosity would kick off lumps of coal from their footplates on the way up or down so that the poor could cook and heat their homes with it. But the purpose of this trip to Yalta was to gather sheep from the flocks there and to take down to the opposite end of the state, Korumburra in Gippsland in the East.

Korumburra was sheep grazing country and the absolute opposite of Yelta ; wet, cold and lush, perfect for fattening sheep.

“What are you so happy about, you cranky old bastard? We’re travelling into Hell in a handbasket...”, groused Roy, who seemingly wanted to piss on Pluto’s parade. “You’ll see, idiot boy…”,  chuckled Pluto, who was normally grumpy and argumentative but today,  his gleefulness was unshakeable.

This was country so far away it required two locomotives to go the distance, and the then newly built young H220 Heavy Harry who was formally built for this purpose was being used to cart troops around; so the old-fashioned A2s still performed their work on their old lines like the Western Line to Serviceton and The Overland express.

The locomotives pulled up at Yelta and their fires were banked. Pluto relaxed and drank his fill of water, chuckling away at a seemingly hilarious scene.

“Whats so bloody funny?” snapped Roy. “Look at our drivers and firemen…”, snickered Pluto. The drivers and firemen had changed clothes and joined the sheep muster, loading the sheep onto trains. The drought had made them thin, pathetic things but that didn’t seem to deter the drivers and firemen helping the farmers to load the sheep into the vans as they could. 

Pluto enjoyed the sight of the humans running about and gave an occasional little laugh to himself. Pluto being so happy rather than angry was irritating and frightening to Roy, who always knew Pluto as the engine who was seemingly ‘born old”, grousing about everything and anything under the sun. After a while, the drivers and firemen returned … with a plump sheep.

Pluto couldn’t help but give an excited little hiss of steam, and it all got on Roy’s buffers something fierce. “Why are you so excited that we are in this dust hole watching our drivers and firemen chase sheep about?! Really bloody skinny sheep at that! And why are you so bloody happy they took a sheep! It’s going to shit in your cab on the way back! It’s definitely going to shit in my cab! Ew!’

Pluto’s joy was not diminished, “You watch, idiot boy…”. As they watched, Pluto’s driver and fireman slaughtered the sheep with a practiced care like they had done it a hundred times before, quickly and with no fuss. Roy quailed in fright at the sight. They carried the sheep and a trough into Pluto’s cab, and hung it off his tender near the coal chute. 

They cut the wool off the sheep, cleaned it, drained the blood into the trough, skinned it and took the entrails out. Pluto’s excitement became audible, his roiling boiler hissing and bubbling away.

“Tucker time, Pluto!” yelled his Driver, as he threw the entrails into his coal bed, the fire cooking the meat and then adding their charcoal-ed remains to the ash and clinker of the pan after a thorough burning.

Pluto hummed and simmered happily as the smell of cooking meat encompassed his entire being.

Roy was shocked and appalled.

“You got so excited to be a giant barbecue, you crazy old fool!” barked Roy.

“You stupid, silly little kid" grumbled Pluto. "Eating something you are not accustomed to normally is a pleasure!

 ‘Getting to eat human food sometimes really broadens the mind! 

‘Eat the liver, boy! It’ll put the mettle in your metal! Put the iron in your frames! Eh he he he he!”

“You like eating that stuff? After you saw it get slaughtered? You are really are crazy!” 

Pluto’s mouth twisted slighty and he just gave a brief wheesh, the locomotive equivalent of a shrug… and his voice turned cold and strained.

“Roy, I have been very, very exceedingly nice to you through this entire trip, it is literally killing me.’

“Not even my boy Harry gets as much of a banter-free run as you have. Instead of letting me have my joy, which is a rare and delectable treat thank you very much… you complain like a fishwife…”

“You carry on like that, the only thing you’ll be eating is coal and human waste…”

“Human waste?”, squeaked Roy.

Pluto laughed, “Well, they don’t install dunnies in us, do they?’

Roy’s grey face blanched in terror. “They would really put their filth in our fireboxes?!”

He retched at the thought, but Pluto just casually rolled his eyes and wheeshed briefly once more.

“Who knows? Since they know we are alive, they don’t do that, at least its never happened to me, they’ve done it in a bucket and tipped it out the side… but since you’ve been shitting on my joy since we left Melbourne, you foolish boy… it would only be just if it happened your crew’s ‘honey bucket’ got lost…”

Roy said not a word on the way back to Melbourne, the smell of sheep was making him ill. Nothing involving poo in the firebox happened… but the idea was terrible to him.

And Pluto enjoyed the smell of cooked meat in and around him in peace, all the way to Gippsland. He even had a tiny bit of the cut of the mutton the Driver and Fireman had hanging near his coal chute; they cut off a bit, cooked and ate it for lunch and put a little bit for him.

And it was delicious.

***

[engineer-gunzelpunk]

She was loved…. 🚂🖤😭

I just realized that I dont think I've ever told y'all about the most irreplaceable engine in my collection.

...Hazel...the black five is incredibly common. Not this one.

Several years ago I found a listing for a Black Five in Ebay. She was extra detailed and cost more than I wanted to pay, but for some reason...I fell in love. I won, flinching at the price...until I got a message from the seller. She was from Britian, and the seller was a former BR Driver...a former steam driver.

This was his model of his old locomotive. She had been modified to reflect the engine he used to drive. He had got a new tooling to replace the model, so he was selling the old one, but had wanted the person who bought her to know her significance.

5138 (by then 45318) had been scrapped in 1967, but over half a century later her driver still kept a model of her, only replacing it when he got a model more accurate to her. I have the physical representation of a driver's love for their engine, and she is irreplaceable.

[ohjeeztrains]

Here's the SCPC No. 2, also known as the 'Chiggen'

It is gripping a rubber chicken in its coupler

[tornadoyoungiron]

When you're at the NRM trying to film but you keep being interrupted by trains.

[anonymousboxcar]

While traveling during my holiday vacation, I met someone special!

Say hello to 1601 of the late Chesapeake & Ohio Railway! She’s an Allegheny, one of an engine class bested in size only by the Big Boys.

[klein-sodor-bahn]

Heinrich “Jimmo” Henschel

I tried a fully rendered piece again.

And after some struggles I painted my giant puppy train boy. (Some struggles…yeah I had to totally revamp his face)

[locomotive-idiot]

yeah uh

don’t brake your steam locomotive too quickly if you don’t have enough water

[thecastilloking]

These two were just part of the background but had a better love story than twilight! Just look at them!

I absolutely love them! ❤️

[engineer-gunzelpunk]

Good stuff! I'm all for problematizing (in a good way!) the whole diesel vs steamies dynamic. No need to shy away from the fact that the railway powers that be heavily promoted diesel as the way of the future and set up an inter-vehicle conflict that at the moment, didn't seem to matter because the steamies would all be dead and was no longer their problem; the real nettle to grasp is that it didn't go down so neatly for all kinds of reasons, namely that the diesels would soon be disabused of the notion they were tricked into thinking that things were going to be the way they were forever with them in charge... because ultimately, no engine, diesel, steam or electric, is above the human railway powers that ran things.

And its' the railway powers that decide which engines are Really Useful.

So it would really mess with the diesels that only a few short years after intro, many unsuccessful diesels would be withdrawn and replaced...

...and then there's the fact that diesels get scrapped as well, and continue to get scrapped into the present day.

Depending on how you headcanon the personhood, status and preservation of living engines generally in your setting, it may mess with the heads of many diesels that did survive past the withdrawal of certain classes... that they aren't inherently protected from scrapping by virtue of the fact they aren't rare pieces of history or engineering marvels of another time.

It could create resentment, or it could create terrible fear generally, even into preservation; since the steamies may not be willing to forgive the arrogance of an earlier generation of diesels.

Throw in the introduction of electrics into the mix and this turns into an odd sort of deja vu, where diesels feel like they will be eclipsed and replaced en total. Especially if diesels are taken off passenger work in favor of electric trains as lines are electrified.

(Though that can seriously depend on when in your setting they were introduced. Electric engines were introduced onto the VR from 1919 onwards on the surburban rail routes. They did replace steam engines but steam was still used until the introduction of diesels proper. These electrics, the early Tait "dogboxes", were often former wooden rail coaches that were given pantographs and motors. So this can imply a more complicated relationship with steamies than a simple "steam vs spark" conflict suggests.)

OK, time for a Railway Series headcanon

Meme for attention, full headcanon after the break. TL;DR BR diesels and electrics would have been spoonfed anti-steam propaganda and would have very quickly gotten a dose of reality in the 1970s

OK, so, the TTTE/RWS fandom as a whole seems to be ambivelant at best about diesel and electric locomotives, and at worst sees anything that isn't powered by steam as the spawn of satan, and sometimes as someone who's a railfan in general beyond the fandom I feel like I'm talking to a brick wall anytime I wanna info dump about diesel locomotives. personally I find this a huge shame as the history of the modernisation plan and post-68 BR is fascinating in its own right.

the thing that grinds my gears is the perception of the fandom seems to be that all diesels and electrics are evil because reasons, and often completely ignors that the Rev. W. Awdry, god rest his soul, was unashamedly biased against modern traction, which leads to some missed opportunites in further fleshing out the universe whilst also turning modern traction into simply the new generation of engines. It's like this, as soon as 1955 rolled around BR managment was firmly set against steam, just about every bit of media they put out advertising their services used the shiny new diesels and electrics whilst referring to steam negatively, the locomotives own managers saw them as old technology that was dead in the water, and only being kept around until their replacements rolled up.

It's a logical assumption that the diesels would have been spoon fed this anti-steam propaganda before they had even turned a wheel, they would have been elitist and looked down on steam because from the moment of conciousness they would have been told that they were the future. Just think about the sort of superiority complex that would give an engine.

Cue the 1970s.

No sooner had steam been relegated to the history books than BR started the withdrawel of the less succesful pilot scheme locomotives (classes 15, 16, 17, 21, 23, 28), the Western Region diesel hydraulics (classes 14, 22, 35, 42, 52) and the 1500v-DC Woodhead electrics (classes 76 & 77).

just imagine the effect seeing locomotives which ten years earlier been labelled as part of the future being withdrawn en-masswould have on many still relatively young and naive diesel and electric locomotives. I can very easily see the remaining classes shift from an elitist "we are revolutionary" mindset to a jaded "we are just cogs in a machine who will be replaced the moment better comes along", which would be further reenforced not only with the introduction of the class 56 to replace 20s and 37s on the heaviest freight trains, but with the general slipping of standards as trains go for longer between cleaning, and some locomotive even being left out of repaints during the introduction of TOPS.

I see it as a period that has a lot of untapped story pottential for more mature subjects involving regret and greif

A now non-standard diesel being suddenly withdrawn and wondering what they did wrong after being told for so many years that they were the future of the railways

Think about how many surviving 1st gen diesels would back on the late-50s and 1960s with shame at their own arrogance and naivety, and even coming to regret their attitude towards the older steam locomotives and missing out on the chance to be properly shown the ropes as a result.

What about the shiny new class 56s, HSTs, and 58s having any sense of elitism being stomped out by the older first gen diesel locomotives, and being told the story of the beeching cuts and the cull of the 70s to drive some humility into them.

Maybe into the 90s and 2000s the surviving 1st gen diesels would come to view the mainline registered steam locomotives with respect and reverence.

I have a story idea which I may or may not write involving a diesel locomotives which, upon withdrawel and preservation, would by chance be sent to a railway that also had a steam engine that they worked alongside in the 60s. They would seek to make ammends for their attitude when younger, only to find out that the steam engine simple isn't willing to listen to what they would have to say, and the diesel locomotive coming to terms with the fact that an apology given does not mean an apology accepted, and sometimes you simply won't get the closure you were looking for.

[engineer-gunzelpunk]

And last but not least, some H220 arts...

Here he is, chilling with @sodorsteam's Rook in his pjs, while SpookyHenry sits in the crook of his arm.

He argues with his driver over Lithgow coal which is too ashy for his big self and requires cleaning his firebox, sometimes two or three times in a single journey. The special coal he prefers is Maitland coal, the high quality anthracite thats similar to Welsh coal.

""C'mon on Harry, we have to use this coal!",

""NO!"

"Its good coal, Har! Highly calorific!",

"Well then, you eat it then! Go on, take a big fucking bite of it!"

"Harry, stop being such a big baby...". "I'M NOT A BABY!"

And now a couple of pictures other people have done, top fellas both!

A commish of my big lad from @ohjeeztrains, thank you soooo much Moff I love it!

"You'll have to excuse me truculence, I just think you are a wanker..."

From my very good mate, @sodorsteam!

[theflyingkipper]

"Runaway on the LMS", 2022, graphite

Close ups:

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