#Traintober2023

[klauskrusty]

Day #1: Free Day

Ideally, I would have liked to have inked and coloured this one, but I'm not sure I'm that confident yet...

Prompt list:

[joezworld]

Traintober-lite

Hi guys, just dropping in to say that , no I'm not dead or anything. I've merely caught a major case of capitalism with a side of adult, so I've been working a lot.

With that in mind, let's get into why I am here:

As you might have seen @theflyingkipper has taken on this year's Traintober duties, and I imagine it's going to be a blast. However if you're like me and have (checks watch) negative time to devote to a month of train content, then I have the solution for you! Just one Halloween themed TTTE prompt/challenge, which you can devote as much, or as little, time to as you want.

And that prompt is:

Sodor's Ghostwatch

To explain what this is, we have to go down a bit of a British TV history rabbit hole:

On Halloween night, 1992, the BBC aired Ghostwatch , an hour and a half long programme that purported itself to be a live TV investigation into a haunted house in London. The poltergeist, named "Mr. Pipes", or just "Pipes", is tormenting a family by possessing their daughter on a regular basis. I'll spare the specifics for brevity's sake, but while the broadcast starts off normal, it gradually becomes clear that Pipes is using the broadcast as a way to transmit himself across the TV airwaves, eventually kidnapping the presenter in the house, and jumping into the broadcast studio to possess Michael Parkinson as the broadcast ends.

Now, if that name rung a bell with you, well done. Michael Parkinson was a very famous BBC talk show host... as was every other on-screen personality on the show. That was on purpose, because while the show was actually scripted, it was intended to give the appearance of being a live broadcast, using real TV personalities, real TV facilities, and during a real timeslot on BBC 1, the flagship TV station for the country, at a time when satellite TV and alternative cable channels numbered in the low double digits.

Let me rephrase this: The BBC, an organization that does not joke around, created their own version of the War of the Worlds broadcast, except that instead of aliens invading, they told the entire country that they were doing a live show about a real haunting... and then the ghost escaped and attacked the presenters.

The BBC got over thirty thousand phone calls before the end of the night. Michael Parkinson's mother was one of the callers. Numerous people who believed that the show was legit had actual problems afterwards, ranging from the absurd (a woman called the BBC demanding they pay her husband's laundry bill after he soiled himself while watching) to the more upsetting. (lots of children got nightmares)

To this day the special has never aired again on British TV, regardless of network, and it likely never will again. It predated, and inspired, films like Derren Brown's Séance, The Blair Witch Project, and Host (2020).

It is one of the greatest TV events of its time. It scared the shit out of a lot of people.

So... with that in mind,

What do we think happened on Sodor?

That's what this challenge is:

By 9:00 PM GMT on 31 October, 2023 (5:00 PM US EST), produce some content about Ghostwatch and its effect on Sodor and its residents. It can be art, a story, an audio file, whatever. This is a very freeform challenge. You can make one thing or you can make twenty, just make sure that they're good. Nothing else really matters. Tag it with #Sodor's Ghostwatch and see what everyone else has made!

[lswro2-222]

Summary:

Edward’s in the Works for maintenance, so an engine from the Other Railway arrives to fill in on his branch line. She soon proves herself to be a bully. Bill and Ben aren’t about to let that slide.

I would like to give special thanks to @mean-scarlet-deceiver, @sparkarrestor, and @joezworld for helping me decide which engine this story’s antagonist would be! I’d also like to thank Joezworld a second time for letting me borrow the idea that Bill and Ben learned to speak German for the sole purpose of messing with people, and a third time for coming up with the title. You guys are the best!

[hazel-of-sodor]

Day 22-Succession

Traintober 2023

Other Stories

Day 22-Top Hatt

Succession

Autumn 2016

Edward simmered lazily outside Tidmouth Station, the crisp autumn air swirling around his boiler and down to his wheels pleasantly. He stretched slightly, sighing. His valve gear had to started to have minor aches lately, signaling that he wasn't far from an overhaul.

Finally, the back door to the Controller's Office opened and she stepped out.

Jane Hatt II, the newest Fat Controller, cut a striking figure in the traditional 3 piece suit and top hat. She had exchanged the black tie for one in North Western Blue with red lining. Rather than black, her pants and overjacket were a very deep blue, her undershirt a light purple in honor of her grandfather.

"You look splendid Ms.Hatt!" Edward said with feeling.

Jane shrugged, "It feels like I'm playing dress up." She said.

Edward chuckled, "Your father said much the same thing, and your grandfather too. I think that's why Charles chose purple instead of yellow, the difference made it feel more real to him."

"Rather than just playing at being his father." Jane guessed. 

"Exactly." 

"What was he like? The first I mean."

Edward blinked, "Topham?"

"Yes, Dad and Grandpa have told me about him but..." She hesitated.

"You wanna know from one of his engines, not his children."

"Yes."

Edward considered the question carefully, I'm honestly not sure there is all that much of a difference in later years honestly."

He looked at Jane seriously, "He was a serious but passionate man. He cared for us deeply, even early on, but...it was a very different time. Men were expected to be stronger, harsher...He had to learn how to be a controller, and he sometimes got it wrong in the early years."

"The tunnel incident."

Edward snorted, "Remind me to tell you what actually happened with all that when we have time. Topham was fair most of the time but had quite the temper when wronged.  He learned to control it in later years, but by then he had his reputation."

Edward paused, "I think the clearest image I can give you of his later years was the last time I saw him. He was taking your namesake for a picnic, and had come to talk to me while waiting for their trains." Edward closed his eyes, remembering, "He'd been having health problems for months but refused to let them slow him down...they finally caught up with him."

Edward took a deep breath, "He asked me to look after Charles, to help him as controller. He wasn't worried about himself, he was worried about his son having someone to turn to as Controller."

He looked at Jane seriously, "I have kept that promise to him ever since, from Charles to Stephen, and now to you."

He smiled suddenly, "He would have loved you, you know. You would have reminded him of Jane, who he always said was his better half. He often looked back at his early years as a controller far too harshly. He got us through the 20s and 30s, with all of us intact. No other controller could say that."

"So he would be okay with me being controller instead of Richard?"

Edward snorted, "He would be relieved. He'd have loved Richard too, but he reminds me of a young Thomas in all the wrong ways." he chuckled. 

"He would have been very proud of you, and proud of your brother for realizing you were the better fit."

Jane snorted, "If only the news agreed.,

"Just ignore them." Edward advised, "It's what he did."

She patted his buffer beam, "I'll keep that in mind. Thank you, Edward."

"Any time Ms. Hatt."

The fourth Fat Controller turned and walked towards the platform and her first day running the North Western Railway, collecting her Top Hatt from her office as she did so.

Edward happily closed his eyes and began to doze before his next train, confident they were in good hands.

[proteusofthehills]

Traintober Day 2: Bridge

I decided to do a render of my Thomas model on Bulgy's bridge with some coaches!

[ttte-paint-shop]

Traintober Day 27: Record-breaker

[philosopherbouquet]

Chapters 1 to 7 of my contribution for Traintober 2023

As I continue to add more chapters, I will make a new post with the link and updated tags. Below the 'Read More' are the current relationships, characters and additional tags.

Relationships: Refreshment Lady & Peter Sam (Thomas the Tank Engine)

Characters: Diesel 10 (Thomas the Tank Engine), Toby (Thomas the Tank Engine), Mavis (Thomas the Tank Engine), "Devious" Diesel (Thomas the Tank Engine), Harvey (Thomas the Tank Engine), Percy (Thomas the Tank Engine), Peter Sam (Thomas the Tank Engine), Refreshment Lady (Thomas the Tank Engine)

Additional Tags: Fandom Month, traintober23, traintober2023, Traintober 2023 (Thomas the Tank Engine), Slice of Life, author has never read the books, Fluff and Humor, Canon Universe, Canon Compliant, Fluff, Friendship

[edwardthomasnw]

Hmm

May have a crack at a couple of these..

My traintober list is here! Please feel free to skip days or combine prompts, this is meant to be fun :] Im posting in advance so that people will have time to prepare in advance if they would like! Have fun everyone and don’t stress out.

[sparkarrestor]

Traintober Day 8: Squawk Shock

Written By: SparkArrester

Bill & Ben were feeling put-upon. A large order of china clay had caused them to be put in overtime, and the worst part of it was that they couldn't pull any jokes, japes, or good natured tomfoolery in days! Their manager tried to keep them calm and entertained, but as time went on, the urge for mischief grew in the twins.

“It’s terrible Bill!” Began Ben one night, “It took every pound of metal in my body not to reverse under the hoppers!”

‘I know!” Comforted Bill, “Life’s been so boring these past few weeks! It's a good thing there’s only a week or two of hard work for us! I’ve got a bucket-list of good stress relievers…”

“But Bill! I don’t think I can wait much longer! I have to do something!”

“...yeah, I definitely cannot wait anymore. We’re going down to Brendam tomorrow, but that begs the question: who shall be the victim…?”

The twins smiled deviously as they went over their targets. But as they went down the list, those smiles dissipated faster than a wisp of smoke. Timothy would be too easy, Marion would be oblivious to anything and everything, Cranky was low-hanging fruit, and BoCo would probably murder them. That left only one possible candidate without heading to the main-line.

“Are you sure Bill?

“Positive.”

“But when was the last time we got him?”

“The day we arrived.”

“That was 3 decades ago!”

“All the more reason to get him!”

The twins simply couldn’t fall asleep after that, and they stayed up all night, planning on a way to get Edward the Blue Engine.

The next morning, Edward was sizzling happily at the harbor station. He was just about to come off of his train and get to the sheds when, creaking and groaning, a line of trucks came crawling past him, with no engine to move them! Timothy, who was on the other line, yelped and banged into some wagons, but Edward just laughed.

“It’s been a while, you two! I can see you’re bringing your A-Game into this!”

Bill and Ben came out of their hiding place and snorted.

“Us, play tricks on you? Don’t be silly Edward.”

Of course, the expression on Ben’s face and the deadpan delivery betrayed everything.

“Come on you two, you’ll get a rest in a week or two! Surely you can wait that long!”

“No. No we can’t”

“So all bets are off then?”

“Yes. Yes they are.”

Edward just smiled.

“Ah well. Good luck to you two!”

“Thanks Edward!”

“Ben, shush!” 

The twins tried all sorts of tricks. They tried adding more wagon’s to Edward’s trains. They tried hiding themselves on his trains with their brakes hard on. They even tried making him a middle engine! But nothing seemed to work. Worse still, each of their schemes took a while to prepare with their workload, so half the time, Edward could guess what they were doing anyways. The twins weren’t the only ones on edge however. Edward was beginning to get tired of always being on guard for any of the twin’s tricks. It got to the point of affecting his work.

“You should stand your ground Edward.” said BoCo a few days later, “Or else it will never end!”

“I know BoCo… but”

“But nothing! I get that the twins need to let out some stress, believe me I’ve gone giddy seeing them scurry round, but boundaries must be set!”

As the two engines were discussing, another pair of engines were also scheming in the night.

“Should we do it?”

“Why not Ben?”

“It seems unfair to weaponize his weakness” “And your point is…?

“...Nevermind. But what about the clay pits? We left the work-half finished!”

“Eh, we can do it later! Now let's get some sleep!”

The next day, Edward was once again at the harbor station as he heard the whistles of Bill and Ben. He sighed and prepared for any tricks, but he was surprised to see something else.

“You two, what on earth are you doing?!”

Bill and Ben were not only pushing the train, but the train was unbraked with no brake-van and dangerously out-of-date stock. It seemed like they were desperate enough to just want a reaction. In that department, they certainly succeeded. But they were heading for trouble. With the trucks in front, they couldn’t see BoCo on their line!

“Watch out!” Shrieked Edward in an uncharacteristically shrill voice.

But it was too late, as both trains collided with one another!

Lucky for them, they didn’t hit BoCo, but rather his train, and being at the back of their train helped them escape any serious damage. But they had something else to deal with. Edward came up to them, but instead of yelling at them, he began belting out unintelligible hoots and squawking! It was a while before he started to speak actual words, and even then, he laid into the twins until they had the paint blistered off of them! BoCo just sat back in awe.

The twins had to stay and clear up the mess. They were looking forward to a nice rest back at the clay pits, but their manager immediately put them to work with the backlog they had left. I think it’ll be another three decades before they even think to play games with Edward again, don’t you?

[greendreamer]

Traintober2023 Day 3 - Twins

Forest panniers 9681 & 9682, Abi and Charlotte. One has just come back to service this year, and the other was only brought by DFR back in 2019.

Random fact; 9682 had £35,000 worth of parts stolen before she got sold to DFR (related article below)

[thesudrianchronicles]

New pin posted. Hopefully for the last time.

Hi! I write things of various quality, when I can think of things to write that is.

General tags that you will find things for are: #TSC Writes, #TSC Headcanon, #TSC Ramblings & #TSC OC's

For the AUs the tags are #The Sudrian Chronicles

And #RWS Continued for multiple part stories

Reading Material:

The Sudrian Chornicles (Short Stories):

Day 23: Big World (Traintober2023)

The Sudrian Chronicles (RWS Books):

TBA

Characters, Backstories & Little Bits:

TBA

New pin post inspired by @sparkarrestor 's current pin post

[spc-rambles]

You k ow what, the first one is kinda dumb, I can’t believe I didn’t take Henry’s series 1 arc into consideration when watching an adaptation of it a while back.

And yeah, always had an issue with Girl Power!, just how not only the engines aren’t truly supposed to give a toss about gender or such problems humans have, but anyone who showed Henry the kindness that Henry respects such as Emily, that’s just ridiculous.

Traintober Day 15: Maintenance/Inspection

There are two Henry-focused magazines that make me infuriatingly mad— Henry’s Hoax and Girl Power!

Henry’s Hoax

This feels picky but whoever drew for this story drew his mouth kinda weirdly? Why are his frowns and eyebrows so… PLAIN (his face masks have way more pout and troubled-ness in them). Henry’s a moody, highly sensitive engine, he should be emoting more (that’s in 4/5 of the illustrations btw)!!!

The premise of Henry’s Hoax is that Henry feigns losing his voice in order to get out of work bc he’s lazy. An inspection by a mechanic ends w/Henry being scared into thinking he could be scrapped, and then TFC, upon hearing that Henry lied, lectures him on laziness.

This sort of plot feels like such a slap in the face to the significance as to why Henry complains abt any mechanical problems he has in the first place. Much of his earlier character, summed up in the episode Coal, was based around how he SUFFERED DREADFULLY AND NO ONE CARED struggled to work due to his poor shape— got shrugged off by other engines— and knew of the looming threat of being sent away. He was able to get Welsh Coal, then a new shape; bc he wanted to show TFC that he was ill and that he was a good worker, respectively. To think that Henry would one day be in a position where he would abuse excuses of illness to get out of work is just… would he do that??

And speaking of mechanical issues…

Girl Power!

EMILY GET BEHIND ME RIGHT NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!

Girl Power! is like the episode What’s the Matter with Henry? but if Henry broke down bc he was being sexist towards Emily.

I used to think the sexism was unrealistic for TTTE given that they’re engines and genders haven’t really played much of a role in engine interactions iirc, until I realized that would imply that there were legitimate reasons for sexism to exist in the real world. There aren’t. I still take issue with Girl Power! with regards to how this is supposed to come abt in Henry though. I think he can be capable of expressing prejudice, but he usually seems to dunk on others for that when his role is to be one of the big engines, which doesn’t seem to be the case here? Idk, I could be wrong on that (and I’m much less tuned in to RWS!Henry), but I have a hard time believing that he would be this outwardly prejudiced post-Series 5… Aw, what the heck, this was made during the Gullane Era. Why do I bother acting surprised at the character regressions/stagnations at this point?

Anyways, the moral of the story itself isn’t bad (there’s probably way better ways to incorporate & tackle this issue), but if you swapped out ageism for sexism and replaced how the karma hits the aggressor, it feels kinda like a rehashed Edward and Gordon. It’s old at this point; we don’t need another one of those…

…Aw, what the HECK—

[hazel-of-sodor]

Alright, whos making the traintober list this year? I've asked around and it seems everyones response is "I don't know lol?" I have trauma that needs to be given to locomotives and their favorite humans.

[ttte-paint-shop]

Traintober Day 13: Something New

[philosopherbouquet]

Chapters: 31/31

And here it is! My completed Traintober 2023 contribution! This was my first year doing something like this and I had fun writing 31 different little one-shots for some of the characters from my childhood.

Many thanks to @theflyingkipper for creating the prompts list!

Below the read more are the tags attached: relationships, characters, and additional tags.

Relationships: Refreshment Lady & Peter Sam (Thomas the Tank Engine), Donald & Douglas (Thomas the Tank Engine), Donald & Dilly (Thomas the Tank Engine)

Characters: Diesel 10 (Thomas the Tank Engine), Toby (Thomas the Tank Engine), Mavis (Thomas the Tank Engine), "Devious" Diesel (Thomas the Tank Engine), Harvey (Thomas the Tank Engine), Percy (Thomas the Tank Engine), Peter Sam (Thomas the Tank Engine), Refreshment Lady (Thomas the Tank Engine), Duck (Thomas the Tank Engine), Dilly (Thomas the Tank Engine), Thomas (Thomas the Tank Engine), Gordon (Thomas the Tank Engine), Spencer (Thomas the Tank Engine), Skarloey (Thomas the Tank Engine), Rheneas (Thomas the Tank Engine), Nancy Rushen, Neil (Thomas the Tank Engine), Edward (Thomas the Tank Engine), Rusty (Thomas the Tank Engine), Lady (Thomas the Tank Engine), Cranky (Thomas the Tank Engine), Neville (Thomas the Tank Engine), BoCo (Thomas the Tank Engine), James (Thomas the Tank Engine), Henry (Thomas the Tank Engine), Sir Stephen Topham Hatt III, Flying Scotsman (Thomas the Tank Engine), Salty (Thomas the Tank Engine), Harold (Thomas the Tank Engine), Luke (Thomas the Tank Engine), Donald (Thomas the Tank Engine), Douglas (Thomas the Tank Engine), Bertie (Thomas the Tank Engine), Bulgy (Thomas the Tank Engine), George (Thomas the Tank Engine), Sir Charles Topham Hatt II, Lady Hatt (Thomas the Tank Engine)

Additional Tags: Fandom Month, traintober23, traintober2023, Traintober 2023 (Thomas the Tank Engine), Slice of Life, author has never read the books, Fluff and Humor, Canon Universe, Canon Compliant, Fluff, Friendship, Engine to engine friendship, Engine to human friendship, Some chapters refer to specific episodes, Minor Angst, Non-Canonical accidents and injuries, Some chapters refer to specific ttte movies (that I haven't watched in fullness), Complete, My wifi tried to stop me but I prevailed :)

[hazel-of-sodor]

Traintober is almost here!

Tomorrow Morning Traintober kicks off! I really enjoyed last years, so we're gonna try to do all 31 again! Its going well so far. This years prompts have proven more challenging for me, but I'm kinda enjoying that.So far its been lighter than alot of my entries for last year, but theres still plenty to do so that may change.

What can you expect form this year? Returning original characters, not only form last years traintober but my other fics. More of the famous eight, I specifically set a goal this year for each of the famous 8 to either be the focus character or pov character of at least one fic. We'll also see a return to the narrow gauge lines of Sodor and their engines. As anyone who has read my fics expects, Gordon and Thomas are already hijacking fics (even working together to steal one from poor James). Several fics unexpectedly turned to trauma, others turned gay...Its a Hazel Traintober. I can't wait to share all of these with you!