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joezworld · 2 months ago

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Express Engines

This one is very long, and has Formatting.™ Be aware of that.

The next week

“Oh, that reminds me,” Gordon said one night. “Samarkand, I have been meaning to commend you on your performance with the Northern Belle last week. Three minutes ahead of schedule, with a full train of Pullman coaches? Well done.”

Sam blushed, while James’s brows furrowed. “Three minutes? Her? She’s got wheels the size of pie tins!”

“And look at how well she does with them!” Caerphilly exclaimed from the other side of the shed. “If we had ten more of her the rest of us could sleep until noon.”

Sam’s blush deepend. “Guys…”

“James,” Gordon said in a faux-whisper. “You are aware that you and Samarkand have identically-sized wheels, correct?”

Aghast spluttering met this, and was ignored with some bemusement.

“I say,” Caerphilly raised an eyebrow. “How fast did you get, Sam?”

Sam now resembled a tomato, but a pleased expression worked its way across her smokebox. “Faster than I’ve ever been before, is all I’ll say.”

“Oh that’s hardly scientific, don’t you think?” Caerphilly was all smiles, but there was a flicker of something behind her eyes that Gordon and Sam both caught. (James remained clueless) “Don’t you want to know?”

“Know what?” The conversation was interrupted by Delta rumbling into the shed. “And what’s with him?” She asked as the turntable swung past James.

“... My wheels are not small!” James squeaked, red in the face and thoroughly humiliated.

“Well they’re bigger than mine, so you’ve got that going for you. Who said they were small?”

“... I-I did.”

“What? Jamie… how?”

----

The discussion waned for a while, as the other engines returned to the shed, but eventually it started back up again.

For the engines on one side of the shed, it was a perfectly normal conversation about the high-speed capabilities of themselves and the other engines.

For the engines on the other side of the shed, it was a terrifying and mind-bending experience as Gordon and Caerphilly continued to claim that the other was the better express engine.

“And you’re sure?” Delta whispered to Bear as the clock swung past 11.

“I’m not sure of anything. Am I even here? Am I real? Is this actually happening? Maybe I’m dead and this is all a test to decide if I go to heaven or not.”

“Oh don’t be dramatic.” Henry rolled his eyes, having been trying (and failing) to sleep for some time.

“Samarkand, I think you’re underselling yourself.” Gordon lectured across the room, voice echoing through the rafters. “With a minimal amount of instruction, you could substitute for Caerphilly and I with no issues.”

“Oh, without question.” Caerphilly chimed in. “And before you try and downplay that idea - just remember that this is not a two-way system. I doubt that either of us could do your work as well as you can. It’s a rare gift you have, being a jack of all trades.”

“You know Caerphilly,” Gordon pondered. “If you are that dead-set on evidence and data, we may have to take a goods turn or two, in order to see how our performance differs.”

Sam laughed out loud at that, and when the two protested, she started explaining exactly what they’d be in for.

“Maybe we’re all dead.” Henry whispered. “Have we considered that? Maybe we all were killed in a tragic accident, and none of this is actually happening.”

---

The clock ticked past Midnight.

“Didn’t Pendennis melt his firebars once? I seem to recall that anecdote floating around.”

“Oh yes, Scotsman told me all about it, once he returned from Australia. You weren’t there of course, but in those last years everyone’s state of repair was poor at best. I’m sure that with modern metallurgy there would be no issues.”

-------

1 in the morning came and went. Delta stopped being able to understand them, words blurring together into a mush of syllables.

“Well, I had thought that it was King’s Cross, but then they sent me to St. Pancras! And goodness me there’s more of them still! Euston, Waterloo, Marylebone, Fenchurch Street…”

“And here I thought Paddington was enough. How many are there now?”

“Oh my, they’ve added so many commuter lines now - or so Pip and Emma tell me. I think there’s 17 or 20!”

----

At half past one, Henry’s eye started twitching again. Bear was asleep, but muttering something about Cannon Street station in between snores.

“Speaking of Pip and Emma, I feel like they could shave a few minutes off their current timings, but at the cost of running afoul of the Limited, among other trains. Heh. As loath as I am to admit it, the express doesn’t run in a vacuum, and extra space in the pathings can work wonders for unnecessary delays.”

“You don’t think that it would be a better point to simply improve the on-time percentages of the other trains on the network?”

“Hah, wait until you take an all-stops service during the summer bank holidays. I swear the passengers will coordinate ways to delay you.”

“It was never that bad on the Great Western…”

“The Great Western was a service. We are an attraction, and the passengers act accordingly.”

---------

The two distant rings of a church bell bounced around James’s smokebox.

“You don’t think the old loco tests matter?”

“I think it’s a matter of mechanical fitness. I’ve been built and rebuilt by Crewe and Crovan’s Gate so many times that I may as well be an entirely different engine. We all are, except you - the one thing that museum did do is preserve you exactly as you had been after your last rebuild. It wouldn’t be so much a test of North Eastern versus Great Western as it would be of Crovan's Gate versus Swindon.”

“When did Crewe rebuild you?”

“Oh, Samarkand, did we wake you? I’m sorry.”

“Nah, I was only dozing, it’s fine.”

“Ah, well, I was rebuilt just before the second world war - what a boon that was for us. Sir Topham was close friends with Mr. Stanier from the LMS, and after he saw the work they did to Henry, he sent me over as well. Of course, I didn’t enjoy the process, being younger and even more prideful, but in hindsight it has served me well.”

“So hang on, wasn’t Stanier at the Great Western before?”

“He was. He was in charge of Swindon works when they built me. As a matter of fact, he was one of the first faces I ever saw.”

“So, he built you, then he re-built you, and then he taught Mr. Riddles everything he knew, and that led to… me.”

“It seems that greatness has a very distinct path through the railway system.”

“That’s a strong word for it.”

“Well, what would you call it?”

“I couldn’t say. Good engineering? Longevity?”

“Immortality?”

“Now that is a strong word for it indeed…”

----------

Two Thirty. Henry was losing his mind.

“I feel like it may come down to train composition. Any engine can make a speed record attempt with three coaches. It takes a real powerhouse to do so with six.”

“Route knowledge may also be required - after all, going fast on a downhill straight is something that anyone can do.”

“Well isn’t that sort of the-”

“OH FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE!” Henry finally snapped. “You’ve been going on about this for almost five hours! I want to go to sleep! If you don’t know which one of you is faster then organize a time trial or something, but do it in the morning so I can go to bed!”

There was a period of shocked silence that lasted for a few minutes, just long enough for Henry’s eyes to slam shut. The rest of the engines followed suit soon after, and the sound of snoring filled the air.

Gordon looked contemplative. “You know, a time trial might just work.”

“It could, but on what? The express and the limited change in length on a daily basis.”

“Have either of you taken the Boat Train recently..?”

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

Part two: The Boat Train

The Island of Sodor was not only connected to the outside world by rail; befitting its status as an Island, Sodor was served by a plethora of ferry services, with sailings to locales as near as Barrow-In-Furness, and as far as France and Spain. The three largest ferry companies serving the island were P&O Stena Line, Irish Ferries, and the Isle of Man Steam Packet Company. The 1990s had been a very turbulent time for the ferry industry in Britain and Ireland as a whole, and ferry lines of varying sizes had been purchased and incorporated into the bigger companies. Many of these, like Sealink, B&I Line, European Ferries, and several smaller operators, had served Sodor through ferry terminals at Tidmouth, and their new owners soon found themselves having double or triple the amount of facilities they needed - even worse, not any one terminal was big enough to handle all of the consolidated traffic. As the 1990s wore on, and the new millennium dawned, competition from both the North Western Railway and the airport at Dryaw meant that the ferry companies had to move quickly.

For some, this wasn’t an issue. Irish Ferries had bought B&I, and their terminals were next door, meaning that it took very little construction to combine the two facilities. Similarly, the Isle of Man Steam Packet Company hadn’t bought anyone, and their cozy but still usable terminal on Tidmouth’s waterfront remained unchanged.

However, P&O Stena was not as lucky. Created as a joint venture of the two largest ferry companies on the Dover-Calais route, both of whom had fallen on hard times after the opening of the Channel Tunnel, it was a massive tangle of international and domestic ferry services operating under five different brand names. Formed just three years ago in 1998, the union was troubled from the start, and there were already rumblings of yet another name change; supposedly P&O wanted to buy out Stena Lines and then rename everything so as to simplify its corporate structure.

On Sodor, simplifying things was rather complicated. To start, Stena Line had previously bought most of SeaLink - the ferry division of British Rail - and so served four ex-BR routes from Wales and Ireland to the island, none of which terminated in Tidmouth:

Knapford-Dublin (Ireland)

Knapford-Belfast (N. Ireland)

Knapford-Fishguard (Wales)

Kirk Ronan-Holyhead (Wales)

Additionally, Stena Line had its own services from before it bought Sealink, which all left from Tidmouth:

Tidmouth-Cairnryan (Scotland)

Tidmouth-Cherbourg (France)

Tidmouth-Santander (Spain)

Then, on top of all of this, P&O had its own set of pre-merger services, which left mostly from Tidmouth:

Tidmouth-Troon (Scotland)

Tidmouth-Holyhead (Wales)

Tidmouth-Belfast (N. Ireland)

Tidmouth-Dublin (Ireland)

Kirk Ronan-Larne (N. Ireland)

Kirk Ronan-Fishguard (Wales)

As one might be able to tell, this web of ferry services was complex and resource intensive. Unlike Irish Ferries/B&I, the P&O and Stena terminals were nowhere near each other in Tidmouth, and even if they had been, Stena’s ex-Sealink facilities had been built cheaply in the 1970s, and were falling apart at the seams. Furthermore, having half the Stena routes in Knapford was undesirable, as P&O wanted to issue connecting tickets, allowing Scottish and Irish travelers a more direct route to France and Spain. If a new terminal was to be built, it would have to involve either the construction of an entire new ferry port, or the total closure and reconstruction of one of the existing ones. Surprisingly, P&O Stena was more than willing to spend money on an entirely new terminal if it meant everything going smoothly, but with the expansion of Tidmouth Docks well underway, no such space was available. They would have to build a new “super terminal” on the spot of one of the existing terminals, big enough to hold all the passengers for all the Tidmouth/Knapford routes under one roof.

More problems followed. The Stena Terminal was huge, but falling to bits, while the P&O terminal was scarcely big enough for the routes it already had, and was hemmed in on all sides by new industrial developments surrounding the harbour. Worse still, the extra space in Stena’s Knapford terminal was being rented by cruise ship companies, and the local council had made it very clear that this lucrative source of local income was not to be meddled with. It was therefore decided that the Stena terminal at Tidmouth would be demolished, and the new Super Terminal built in its place.

The complication then became how they would fit all of the Stena traffic into the waterfront shoebox that was the P&O terminal.

The short answer was that they didn’t.

The long answer was that the North Western Railway made a lot of money off of P&O Stena between 2000 and 2002.

The even longer answer was that while there were significant space constraints at Tidmouth, no such thing existed at the ex-Sealink Terminal in Kirk Ronan. Sealink had purposely overbuilt the place in the late 1970s, assuming that the aborted M590 motorway project would bring a six-lane superhighway right to Sodor’s eastern coast, and allow for a much smoother connection to the Irish ferry services. Of course, that never happened, and the only ferries that serve the massive facility are small ones that primarily benefit Sodor’s eastern communities.

But, in 2000, P&O Stena had an idea. They would re-route most of the Stena sailings to Kirk Ronan, and offer connection tickets to Ireland and Scotland from that point. However, due to ticketing agreements between Stena and The Isle of Man Steam Packet Company, along with some passenger’s rather fervent desire to go to the biggest city on Sodor instead of a sleepy fishing town where seagulls outnumbered people 4 to 1, there would be a connection service between the two ports using the North Western Railway.

Each morning, a seven-car train would leave Tidmouth Docks after the inbound Irish and Scottish ferries had docked, and run as an express to Kirk Ronan station, before continuing to the coach yards in Barrow as an empty stock working. Later in the day a different engine would then collect the empty coaches from Barrow, and return the train under a similar express working, now carrying passengers from the Spanish, French, and Welsh ferries.

Known on timetables as “The Kirk Ronan Boat Train”, and on advertising material as “THE P&O STENA EXPLORER”, it was technically a charter train, and stayed at the same fixed length and timing every day for the duration of the service, as P&O Stena’s internal research showed that this would be well-suited for “all but the worst-case scenarios.”

What this fixed-length, identically timed, charter train was also well suited for… was a time trial.

----

It took surprisingly little effort to convince the Fat Controller to allow this - since nobody was attempting to break a record (or act unsafely while attempting to break a record), he felt it would be little different from the normal runs, except for the inclusion of very precise timing and speed measurement equipment in the baggage compartment of the lead coach. In order for everything to be done exactly the same, the down-bound service from Kirk Ronan to Tidmouth Docks would be the only one used for the trial.

The engines were fairly excited for this - Sam was chomping at the bit for her turn, James was trying very hard (and failing) to pretend like he wasn’t interested, Delta outright said that she wanted a go, and Caerphilly was ecstatic that this was proceeding without any major fuss.

Gordon and Henry were the sole outliers - Henry thought this was idiotic, and wanted no part of it, while Gordon was mercurial about his actual feelings on the subject, saying little but being supportive of everyone.

James attempted to needle Gordon about being “worried that he’d lose his title,” and the subsequent dressing-down could have stripped the paint off a wall. Those with more than a single brain cell bouncing around their smokebox like an errant bumblebee took it to mean that Gordon was, if nothing else, willing to be a gracious loser no matter how unlikely the chances may be.

----

A few days later

The timing equipment was placed inside the baggage coach and calibrated just in time for the Thursday run of the Boat Train.

First to be rostered on the “time trial” trains was Henry, and once he remembered that this was technically his idea, he went from “annoyed” to “incensed.” “I don’t want to do this!” he complained to Caerphilly, as he collected the empty coaches from the yard in Barrow. “This is entirely for your benefit, not mine!”

“Oh, but that’s the thing!” The science museum had really rubbed off on Caerphilly. “You’re the control subject!”

“Control subject? What does that even mean?”

“It means you’re the marker that we measure against. An unmotivated subject, acting without any-”

“UNMOTIVATED?!”

“Not like that!”

But it was too late.

“Unmotivated! Is that what this is about? I’m not some layabout! Is that what you think of me?! Just you wait and see, Castle! I’ll put you and Gordon into the dirt!”

And Henry stormed away, “I’ll show them! I’ll show them!” trailing in his wake.

“... that is not at all what I meant.” Caerphilly said lamely as the coaches vanished over the bridge. “Well, there goes our control sample.”

-------

Maron Station

🎼 Raucous guitar solo 🎼

Gordon was not enjoying the stopping train duties today. The passengers seemed to be conspiring with each other today, and there was a massive group of foolish tourists standing on the platform, attempting to make sure that nobody was left on the train.

🎼 Like the last of the good ol' puffer trains 🎼

“I swear, if they do not know how to disembark from a train at the correct station, they deserve to be sent to Barrow.” The big engine grumbled, but didn’t urge the guard to hurry the process up - he knew from experience this would do the opposite.

🎼I'm the last of the soot and scum brigade🎼

The only positive to this situation was that the station’s tannoy system was playing Radio 2. Fortunately it wasn’t any of that modern nonsense with the young men singing in harmony, and while Gordon wasn’t entirely fond of groups like the Kinks, this song was perhaps best viewed as a guilty pleasure.

🎼And all this peaceful living is drivin' me insane 🎼

As the song entered the last few lines, a whistle sounded in the distance, and Henry came into view. His face was red, his cloud of steam was laid flat against his boiler, and he rocked from side to side under force of his own connecting rods.

With seven coaches behind him, he roared through the station at what seemed to be just under the speed of sound, whistling like a banshee as he went.

🎼 I'm the last of the good old fashioned steam-powered trains 🎼

And then, as quickly as he’d appeared, he’d gone. The song hadn’t even ended, and the marker lamps were already disappearing into the distance. All that was left of its passage was a few windblown newspapers flying off the platform.

“What was that?” Yelped Gordon’s driver.

“That,” Gordon remarked. “Is Caerphilly not getting her control sample for the time trial.”

🎼 I'm the last of the good old fashioned steam-powered trains… 🎼

---

The timetable put the boat train’s run at 1 hour and 2 minutes. Due to traffic on the Kirk Ronan branch line, Kellsthorpe Road station, and the junction leading to the harbour, the time trials only covered the section of the route on the main line - that is, from the junction at Kellsthorpe Road station to the tunnel between Tidmouth and Knapford. This portion of the journey was timetabled at 41 minutes, and Gordon and Caerphilly thought that it would be possible to shave up to five minutes off that time while still obeying the speed limits.

Henry’s run was actually over the timetable, at 1 hour and 5 minutes. However, this was due to meeting another train on the Kirk Ronan branch, and his time between Kellsthorpe and Knapford was a much more impressive 38 minutes. The train recorded an average speed of 83 miles an hour down the main line, and the top speed was recorded near Cronk station - a whopping 101.34 miles per hour.

“And you thought this was idiotic…” Gordon teased that night in the sheds, as the other engines raised a fuss.

“I still think it’s idiotic.” Henry said with a hidden smile. “I just happen to be an idiot.”

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

Henry’s run sent shockwaves up and down the main line. Aside from scientific-minded passengers with stopwatches (and the odd railway inspector who needed a specific result), nobody had ever bothered to collect detailed data on train speeds before. Gordon had always been “the fastest and the best” based purely off of his ability to, well, be faster, even if nobody knew what faster was. Learning that Henry, who was slightly smaller and ever-so less powerful than Gordon, cracked 100 miles an hour in a fit of pique suddenly made everyone else on the Island wonder exactly what they were capable of.

The Barrow stationmaster was the official “keeper” of the sign-up sheet for the time trials, and over the next few days he watched in amazement as the list of engines got longer and longer…

----

The next day

Up next was… well, it was supposed to be Gordon, but James had kicked up such a fuss that the big engine eventually relented - it was far easier to let James have this small victory than deal with a week’s worth of whinging, pleading, and wheedling.

Of course, karma was not willing to let James off easy. Leaving the yard in Barrow with the coaches, he was delayed - ironically enough - by a different ferry boat sailing into Barrow harbour. The bridge had some difficulty locking into place afterwards, and Henry saw (and heard) James impatiently yelling at the fitters as they banged on the locking mechanism with sledgehammers.

“It only took twenty minutes to fix it,” he said to Gordon when they met at Knapford some time later. “But you’d think they’d held him three hours!”

“Yes, well, I suppose better him than me.” Gordon’s amusement was confined to a slight upturn of his lips. “I do hope that his tardiness doesn’t interfere with the results, though. I would hate for him to have to do this again.”

“I didn’t think he’d be that late?” Henry said. “The train sits there for an hour before leaving.”

“Yes, I am aware,” Gordon said. “But I must note that there are more than a few ferries at the harbour waiting somewhat impatiently for their guaranteed connection.”

“So he hasn’t come through then?” Henry was aghast and on the verge of laughter at the same time. “How?”

“I’ll tell you how!” Bear rolled into the station with a container train, a smile stretching across his face. “Simon’s train came off in the Rolf’s Castle passing loop. James was there for an hour! I could hear him yelling from the junction!”

Henry and Gordon were big engines, but not big enough that they were above laughing at James’ misfortune. “Oh heavens,” Gordon chuckled. “Perhaps next time he should take the schedule as intended!”

“Oh, I feel bad for Delta, she’s going to have to calm him down all night!” Henry chortled, sending misshapen smoke rings into the sky.

Just then, the signal for the down fast line dropped to clear. “Oh goodness, I bet this is him. Should we be supportive?”

The three engines looked at each other for a second, and then burst out laughing again. The guffaws continued as James rattled through the station, face as red as his boiler.

That night, James refused to talk about it with anyone, and as predicted, Delta was up half the night soothing his ego. Gordon and Henry (and to a lesser extent, Bear) were predictably unhelpful.

The next morning, Delta was entirely too tired to do anything, and proved this by accidentally backing through a set of buffers and ending up in the station car park. She wasn’t badly damaged, but she still needed to be looked over by the mechanical staff (and spoken to by the Fat Controller), and so didn’t take the Boat Train that day.

Nobody was quite sure who would end up taking the train, and so it was quite a surprise when a triumphant Wendell rolled into the coach yards a few hours later. “I think I’ve done it!” he crowed. “Certainly the fastest I’ve ever gone, but I think I may have beaten the class record!”

And he had.

That night the shed foreman put up a corkboard, and pinned up all the times so far.

ENGINE | TOTAL TIME | TIMED PORTION | AVG. SPEED | MAX SPEED ▼ WENDELL | 1:01 | 36:42 | 86.11 MPH | 102.04 MPH HENRY | 1:05 | 38:00 | 83.01 MPH | 101.34 MPH JAMES | 2:17 | 40:09 | 78.60 MPH | 97.29 MPH

--------

The next day, Delta was up for the train. (The Fat Controller had been surprisingly understanding about the whole situation - after all, her driver could have stopped her well before the buffers.)

“Doesn’t your class have a speed limiter?” the lead coach asked as the train pulled out of the yard.

“I did!” Delta said brightly as the train clattered across the bridge.

“Whatever does that mean?” the coach said quietly, before she was bumped by one of her fellows.

“You nit!” The coach behind her sniffed. “You think the works is going to care about a speed limiter?”

There was a work crew on the lineside by Killdane, clearing weeds and vegetation, and they took a number of steps back to be clear of passing trains.

Even at that distance, the wind from Delta’s passage was so great that two men fell over and tumbled down the embankment. The foreman turned to look, and felt a thock! against his hard hat as a rock kicked up by the train’s passage bounced off his head!

The train flew down the line towards Maron. A swarm of insects was hovering over the warm rails, and the train plowed through them at speed.

“It sounds like we’re being shot at!” the second man yelped, as pings and clacks echoed through the cab.

“It’s only bees!” the driver said, activating the windscreen wipers to clear the gunk.

“If those are bees then I need to tell my exterminator to get an anti-aircraft gun!”

---

At Wellsworth Station, the train was so early that the signalman had assumed he’d have a few minutes to use the loo. He had to run back to his box and set the signals with his trousers undone and his belt flying in the breeze!

----

Marina recoiled as the train pulled into the docks. “Do I even want to know what happened to you?”

Delta, who was covered from buffers to roof with bug splats, dust, and dirt, didn’t say anything. The fact that she was smiling like an idiot was more than enough.

ENGINE | TOTAL TIME | TIMED PORTION | AVG. SPEED | MAX SPEED ▼ DELTA | 1:03 | 34:01 | 90.22 MPH | 107.85 MPH WENDELL | 1:01 | 36:42 | 86.11 MPH | 102.04 MPH HENRY | 1:05 | 38:00 | 83.01 MPH | 101.34 MPH JAMES | 2:17 | 40:09 | 78.60 MPH | 97.29 MPH

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

The next day

“Shall I wish you the best of Western Luck?” Caerphilly ventured hesitantly. She really hadn’t spent any time with Bear alone, and the ramifications of what Truro had done to him loomed large even still.

“I think you’re about sixteen years too late for that,” the Hymek chuckled. “But I’ll take it in spirit.”

“Ah, yes, well… it’s only-”

He continued to laugh, cutting her off. “I understand completely. Heavy is the head that wears the crown, and all. You should talk to Duck about that sometime… he’d understand.”

“Ah, yes, well… he and I have-” Caerphilly continued to trip over her own words.

“Oh please don’t be awkward around me.” Unlike Caerphilly, Bear was relaxing more and more as the conversation went. “You’re a co-worker now, we have to work together, so consider everything that’s done as done.”

His gaze became conspiratorial. “And, any engine that threatens to feed City of Truro his own boiler tubes is a friend of mine.”

“You heard about that?!” Caerphilly let out a shocked bark of laughter.

“I hear many things about him. For example, did you know that he was deported from the Netherlands for being a miserable toerag?”

“No!”

“Oh yes! He’ll never talk about it, but that’s why he came back so quickly from that continental excursion tour…”

They kept talking until it was time for the two engines to collect their coaches. Despite Bear’s… complicated history with the Great Western, the two engines’ shared upbringing soon led to an impenetrable string of “Western-isms” that was capable of repelling even Bloomer, who eyed them with suspicion from the other side of the shed.

“So, any thoughts on this before you head off? Any crucial information I should know about?” Now that she was thinking about the speed trials, Caerphilly really, really, really could not turn off Science Museum Docent Voice even if she wanted to. (She didn’t)

“Yes, actually,” Bear smiled as something occurred to him. “You went into the museum before I was built, didn’t you?”

“Yes?” This was worrying from a data-collection standpoint. Don’t let the books on diesels be wrong again… Just let him be mechanically normal!

“The works tried a lot of things to get my engine to work the way they wanted it to. Eventually they just replaced it with one that was better. One from a Western.” He looked simultaneously smug and predatory at that. It was a good look on him.

“A Western… like Fusilier at the museum?”

The predatory smile was incredibly good-natured, but it was still distressing to watch it grow even larger. “Exactly like Fuse. He’s certainly not using them.”

Whatever Caerphilly was going to say next was stopped in its tracks by Bear’s signal raising to a clear aspect. With a loud mechanical rumble, Bear’s engine revved to the redline, and the empty train powered out of the station and over the bridge faster than Caerphilly ever would have expected.

“I don’t know why I’m even bothering with this anymore,” Caerphilly said to nobody in particular. “The data will be so corrupted that I’m going to be the control sample.”

There was a distant horn blast, as Bear cleared the crossings near Vicarstown station. For him to have gone that far that quickly… I hope Henry knows how lucky he is.

--------

ENGINE | TOTAL TIME | TIMED PORTION | AVG. SPEED | MAX SPEED ▼ DELTA | 1:03 | 34:01 | 90.22 MPH | 107.85 MPH BEAR | 1:01 | 36:12 | 86.74 MPH | 104.36 MPH WENDELL | 1:01 | 36:42 | 86.11 MPH | 102.04 MPH HENRY | 1:05 | 38:00 | 83.01 MPH | 101.34 MPH JAMES | 2:17 | 40:09 | 78.60 MPH | 97.29 MPH

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

The next day was Sunday, and the express didn’t run to the mainland. Usually, Pip and Emma spent the downtime getting essential work done, but a power outage in Crovan’s Gate town meant that the facility was running mostly off of backup generators. This left Pip and Emma at somewhat of a loose end.

About three hours later, the staff in the diesel shed had decided that a pair of diesels looking at them like lost puppies had gone on for long enough, and went to find them something to do.

An hour after that, and they were being coupled up to the coaches for the Boat Train. Caerphilly saw them go by as she stopped at Crovan’s Gate station. “I’m getting so much data that I don’t need,” she said to no-one in particular. “What on earth am I going to do with it?”

---------

ENGINE | TOTAL TIME | TIMED PORTION | AVG. SPEED | MAX SPEED ▼ PIP/EMMA | 0:56 | 29:31 | 107.17 MPH | 127.23 MPH DELTA | 1:03 | 34:01 | 90.22 MPH | 107.85 MPH BEAR | 1:01 | 36:12 | 86.74 MPH | 104.36 MPH WENDELL | 1:01 | 36:42 | 86.11 MPH | 102.04 MPH HENRY | 1:05 | 38:00 | 83.01 MPH | 101.34 MPH JAMES | 2:17 | 40:09 | 78.60 MPH | 97.29 MPH

-------

Monday morning rolled around, and no-one was more surprised than Gordon to find BoCo heading a stopper train into Barrow station around noon. “BoCo? Has someone failed?”

“Not at all,” BoCo replied. “I’m just doing someone a favour.”

“And who might that be?” The only one lazy enough to suggest such a thing was James, and considering that going to Barrow meant an opportunity to wheedle his way onto another Boat Train turn, it seemed highly unlikely that he’d pass on the chance.

“Me,” BoCo said firmly. “I’m doing this for me.” He said it with such firm resolution that Gordon found that he had no response to give.

BoCo spent the next half hour in the shed, deep in thought, or perhaps meditation. Gordon had an inkling of what was going on, and did his best to shoo Bloomer away.

Sure enough, when the time came, BoCo was on the point of the Boat Train, and was staring at the signal with deep intensity.

“Are you sure that this is… a favour?” Gordon asked hesitantly, backing down onto the Limited.

“It’s something like that.” BoCo never took his eyes off the signal.

“Do you think that you’re… ready for this?”

“I don’t care if I’m not.”

“BoCo… what is this about?”

The diesel finally looked away from the signal bridge, and Gordon was struck by the expression on his face. It was both one of youthful determination, and aged resignation. Vitality and fragility. Contentment and loss. Fear and calm. It was like looking back into the late 1960s, as the world fell apart.

“I’m the last Condor, and I need to know if I can still fly.”

The signal rose, and BoCo was bathed in the green light as he departed. Gordon sounded his whistle as the coaches rolled out of sight. “Good luck, my friend…”

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

---------

The next morning, Gordon took the up-bound Boat Train to Kirk Ronan. While the passengers boarded at the docks in Tidmouth, he noticed a strange sight and sound - James was cursing and yelling like an engine twice his size as he bashed and bumped lines of container cars and fish vans around. “You don’t get Marina today! You get me! You know what that means? ORDER!”

Gordon wisely decided not to get involved, but wondered where Marina was all the way to Kirk Ronan, and then wondered some more as he took the empty coaches to Barrow.

When he got to the yard, everything became clear. Marina was asleep in the middle of the yard, still connected to the now-empty fish vans from the Flying Kipper. She slowly woke up as he shunted the coaches next to her. “G’morning.”

“Afternoon, more like it.” Gordon raised an eyebrow.

“Has it been that long?” She yawned. “Don’t think I’ve slept in like that in years.”

“James seems set on waging war with the trucks down at the harbor.” Gordon held the eyebrow where it was.

“It’s fine, he and Delta both owe me favors.”

“Whatever for?”

“... I don’t think you want to know. I barely want to know.”

“...” Gordon didn’t know how to respond to that, and elected to change the subject. “I don’t recall you showing any interest in these trials.”

“Well,” she said, engine kicking over as she began to wake up fully. “I remember when BoCo’s class was new, and while I never met any of them at the time, I remember hearing all the reasons why I was better than them, not least of which was that they were type 2s, and I was a type 3.”

She paused for a moment, remembering something. “Then, thirty years later, I came here and I met him, and that odd-looking type 2 proceeded to best me in every conceivable way there was. And I asked him how, and all he did was laugh and say that the works here were just that good. At first I thought that maybe they had fixed him, made him whole, but later, I began to realize that they made him… more.”

Her eyes sparkled in the midday sun. Gordon began to wonder if he needed to have longer and more regular conversations with the diesels.

She continued. “And then, a few years later, the works called for me, and they called for him at the same time. They told me that they were going to “improve me.” And while I was being taken apart, I saw them take him apart.” Her eyes flashed, and Gordon began to wonder if maybe this trial was having effects on engines in ways he didn’t know about.

“He’s not a type 2, not anymore,” She said with reverence. “Just like I’m not a type 3. Now I’m more, and I need to know how much more I am.”

With a fine-tuned roar of exhaust, she powered away to the diesel pumps, leaving Gordon feeling overwhelmed, yet contemplative.

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

ENGINE | TOTAL TIME | TIMED PORTION | AVG. SPEED | MAX SPEED ▼ PIP/EMMA | 0:56 | 29:31 | 107.17 MPH | 127.23 MPH DELTA | 1:03 | 34:01 | 90.22 MPH | 107.85 MPH BEAR | 1:01 | 36:12 | 86.74 MPH | 104.36 MPH WENDELL | 1:01 | 36:42 | 86.11 MPH | 102.04 MPH MARINA | 1:06 | 37:11 | 85.00 MPH | 101.73 MPH HENRY | 1:05 | 38:00 | 83.01 MPH | 101.34 MPH BOCO | 1:02 | 36:22 | 86.64 MPH | 100.81 MPH JAMES | 2:17 | 40:09 | 78.60 MPH | 97.29 MPH

-----------

The next day, everything was quiet. Gordon and Caerphilly had both assumed that Sam would be taking her turn at the boat train today, and had strategically placed themselves on the line to offer encouragement. For Caerphilly, this meant moving a line of empty china clay trucks from the works to the clay pits at Brendam, a job that would involve spending lots of time in sidings letting more important trains go by. For Gordon…

“Have you ever done this before?” In a complete reversal of his demeanour just a few days ago, BoCo was chipper and all smiles, although this may have had something to do with watching Gordon shunt the pick-up goods.

“Yes, rarely, and I would like to keep it that way,” Gordon huffed. The trucks had known exactly how uncommon of an occurrence this was, and were reveling in the opportunity to cause trouble for “the big cheese,” as they’d taken to calling him. Even worse, there had been some sort of dispute between the usual express crews and the crews from Cargo Operations, and the end result meant that he had three men far more used to express passenger trains making an absolute hash of things on his footplate. They were twenty minutes late and they hadn’t even reached the hill yet.

“Well, think of it as a way to broaden your horizons!”

“Yes, Caerphilly said something very similar.”

“Oh good! Great minds think alike!”

“Let me tell you the same thing I told her.” Gordon’s eyes narrowed. “It would be in your best interest to broaden the number of ways you can keep your mouth shut.”

“Uh huh.”

Gordon’s eyes narrowed further, and he grumbled something about bilgewater drinking Westerners and their diesel-swilling compatriots…

Later

Caerphilly was in yet another passing loop near Killdane station, and was waiting patiently for the boat train to come by.

Presently, she heard Sam’s whistle in the distance, and perked up. She looked towards the signals, and found them all at Danger. “What?” she said to no-one. “Where is she?”

A moment later, she found out when Sam came steaming into the station from the other direction with a container train. Confusion writ large across Caerphilly’s face, and it was quickly mirrored by the big decapod. “Why do you and Gordon look so surprised to see me?”

“Weren’t you taking the boat train today?”

“No? I’m taking it over the weekend. I’ve been out on the Little Western, shifting ballast all morning.” She took notice of the line of clay “hoods” behind Caerphilly. “And Gordon had to take the pick-up goods because of that… were you two waiting for me?”

“Merely to offer support-”

“Oh my god!” Sam’s whistle was shrill, and she blushed deeply. “That’s so kind of both of you. You didn’t need to do that!”

“Yes, I did,” Caerphilly started, and then caught herself. “But apparently I didn’t. If you didn’t take the express, then who did?”

As if by divine provenance, a whistle sounded in the distance, just as the signal above - one of the newest color-light models that the P-Way gang were very excited to have - changed to green.

Both engines turned all of their attention to the east. “He can’t be.” Sam said, voice full of disbelief.

“He’s an antique.” Caerphilly wished she was facing the other direction. She needed to see what sort of mania was gripping this fool.

“The works here are good, but they can’t be that good, can they?”

“We’ll see when they have to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.”

The whistle sounded again, and a great cacophony of chuffing and puffing made further conversation impossible. The train appeared over the horizon trailing a huge plume of smoke and steam, engine whistling fit to burst. It stormed over the high-speed turnouts connecting the down slow and the down fast lines, and vanished into the distance as quickly as it had come.

“I stand corrected.” Caerphilly said as the smoke wafted away. “He’s suicidal.”

----------

“Don’t you have to be inside the box?” Gordon sniffed at the Wellsworth signalman.

“Eh, the points are set,” the man said, taking a long slow drag on a cigarette. “Won’t take a second to bell them through once they’ve gone.”

“I hope to one day live my life with the lackadaisical grace that you live yours,” Gordon said pointedly.

The signalman took no notice. “Besides, this train, I have to see up close.”

“It’s only Samarkand,” Gordon harrumphed. “Wait until I go in for overhaul and you’ll be seeing her on the express somewhat frequently.”

The signalman turned and raised an eyebrow in Gordon’s direction. He said nothing, but Gordon felt like he was missing something deeply important. “What? What is it?”

There was a distant whistle, and his confusion turned to annoyance. “That’s not the boat train, you buffoon! That’s Edward! What kind of a signalman are you?”

The signalman didn’t say anything, and pulled a small camera out of his pocket.

Edward’s whistle sounded again less than two minutes later, presumably for the distant signal, and it took Gordon several all-too-short seconds to realize that any train stopping at Wellsworth wouldn’t have been able to go from Maron to the Wellsworth distant in that short of a time.

“No…”

From behind him, deep in the yard, there was a tidal wave of swearing as BoCo did the same math and came to the same conclusion.

Edward’s whistle sounded a third time, for the foot crossing near the station, and then the train was hurtling past. Edward was red in the face and working hard enough to turn his smoke sooty black, but his wheels were turning so fast that his con-rods were a blur. The coaches stretched behind him, seeming impossibly large against his small tender. The train streaked through the station at lightning speed, and roared away towards Crosby with all the noise and circumstance of a proper express.

Dead silence fell over the station as the lamps of the train receded around the corner. Gordon and BoCo were in shock. The passengers waiting for the next train (most of whom knew Edward personally) were clutching their pearls, their chests, their heads, each other, or the nearest lamp post. The stationmaster had been in the middle of a phone call, and the handset fell from his limp grasp, dangling on the cord. In the signal box, the signalman had clearly not been expecting Edward to be going that fast, and was a little rattled by it; he tried to throw open the door to the box, and the handle came off in his hand as he did. In the deafening silence, Gordon had a thought. I think that Caerphilly should really be studying what the time trials are doing to us, rather than what we are actually accomplishing.

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

ENGINE | TOTAL TIME | TIMED PORTION | AVG. SPEED | MAX SPEED ▼ PIP/EMMA | 0:56 | 29:31 | 107.17 MPH | 127.23 MPH DELTA | 1:03 | 34:01 | 90.22 MPH | 107.85 MPH BEAR | 1:01 | 36:12 | 86.74 MPH | 104.36 MPH WENDELL | 1:01 | 36:42 | 86.11 MPH | 102.04 MPH MARINA | 1:06 | 37:11 | 85.00 MPH | 101.73 MPH HENRY | 1:05 | 38:00 | 83.01 MPH | 101.34 MPH BOCO | 1:02 | 36:22 | 86.64 MPH | 100.81 MPH EDWARD | 1:05 | 38:55 | 80.52 MPH | 100.00 MPH JAMES | 2:17 | 40:09 | 78.60 MPH | 97.29 MPH

-----------

The Next Day

The noise that had started when Edward backed into the shed that evening didn’t stop until the morning, and everyone was slightly bleary come sunrise. As such, nobody really paid attention to the engines rostered on Barrow-bound trains until almost noon, when Henry (who had taken the morning boat train to Kirk Ronan) returned with empty fish vans from the Flying Kipper.

“Well if it’s not you,” he said to a perplexed Gordon. “And if Caerphilly just left, who is it?”

----

“Lassie, I don’t know who you are, but I know that you definitely don’t belong here,” Bloomer said slowly, trying and failing to comprehend what was going on.

The crowd of men in “CROVAN’S GATE TMD” jumpsuits on the platform glared at him. “Would you shush?” the foreman asked, before turning back to the thick bundle of cables connecting the engine to the first coach. “This is a perfectly legitimate maintenance procedure! We have to have a shakedown run.”

“On a train with passengers? While she’s hooked up to a load of AA batteries like a child’s toy?”

“It’s not batteries!” The men snapped as one.

“Well then what is it then? Magic? Because that’s an electric locomotive, and you’ve got no wires!” Bloomer scoffed.

“Actually, it’s a diesel generator,” the electric engine said. Her name was Abbey, and she was looking around the mainland terminal like she’d never been there before. It was entirely possible she hadn’t been. “They’re very excited to see if this could work long term.”

“Lassie,” Bloomer said slowly. “No disrespect, but I think an electric motor hooked up to a diesel generator has already been invented. They call it the diesel locomotive.”

Abbey laughed. “I know, but wouldn’t you agree to something daft if it meant getting the chance to do something incredible?”

“To be honest with ya, the last time I agreed to anything daft I got locked in a shed for what felt like a hundred years, so no.”

She laughed again, and kept lightly needling Bloomer over his lack of an “adventurer’s spirit” until the men declared her fit to move. The generator, which had been mounted inside an old baggage car, clattered to life, and Bloomer watched with no small amount of amazement as an electric train moved (not at all) silently out of the yard.

At Kirk Ronan, a few passengers boarding the train seemed to understand what was missing from their train, and the departure was delayed a few minutes as they got photos of Abbey with no wires above her, the diesel engine shoehorned into the baggage coach, or the thick bundles of wires that were attached to Abbey’s pantograph.

Simon, one of the engines who worked the Kirk Ronan branch, looked on with bemusement. “I can’t blame them. That is the strangest looking diesel I have ever seen.”

----

At Killdane, James was stopped at the platforms with a passenger train, and tried to figure out why all the electric engines were lined up on electrified platforms.

“You’ll see,” Dane, one of the electrics, said in a suspiciously calm tone. “Just wait until Abbey gets here.”

That had been several minutes ago, and James was now thoroughly worried about what was going to happen when Abbey got there.

A horn sounded in the distance, and James was promptly deafened by all the engines honking theirs loudly in response. Worse yet, they didn’t stop honking, so he couldn’t ask them what in blazes they were doing.

Then, a train appeared in the distance. It got bigger very quickly, and James suddenly had an out-of-body experience as he watched an electric engine zip past on the wrong side of the station from the electric line!

------

Caerphilly was at Maron when the lights of the boat train appeared over the curve of the next hill. The engine honked gaily at her as it passed with a woosh and a roar, and then the train vanished over the crest of Gordon’s hill.

“... Did I just get passed by an electric train??!”

-------

At Crosby station, Gordon was waiting for parcels to be unloaded from the mail train. He was distracted by the stationmaster asking him a question, and so only paid partial attention to the boat train passing by with a cheerful “Hi Gordon!”

“Yes, hello Ab-bb-ab-Abbey…?” Gordon trailed to a stop mid-word as his mind caught up with what he’d just seen.

-------

Sam and Marina were chatting idly at the docks as the boat train rolled in. Both engines trailed off to a stop and looked at Abbey as she pulled up next to the P&O terminal.

“So, what you were saying about us being made… more?” Sam said slowly. “I get it now.”

“And this island does grant immortality.” Marina blinked quickly. “We’ve all drunk from the fountain of youth…”

--------

Later that evening, Abbey was at the big station being connected to a short goods train bound for the works. The trucks had no idea what was going on, and were too scared to cause trouble. Across the station, the Fat Controller exited his office. He made it about halfway down the platform before doing first a double, then a triple-take at the sight of an electric engine under the station canopy. He turned, as if to walk over and investigate the matter, made it about ten steps in that direction, and then seemingly thought better of it, and turned back the way he’d come.

----------

ENGINE | TOTAL TIME | TIMED PORTION | AVG. SPEED | MAX SPEED ▼ PIP/EMMA | 0:56 | 29:31 | 107.17 MPH | 127.23 MPH ABBEY?? | 0:59 | 30:59 | 102.98 MPH | 111.68 MPH DELTA | 1:03 | 34:01 | 90.22 MPH | 107.85 MPH BEAR | 1:01 | 36:12 | 86.74 MPH | 104.36 MPH WENDELL | 1:01 | 36:42 | 86.11 MPH | 102.04 MPH MARINA | 1:06 | 37:11 | 85.00 MPH | 101.73 MPH HENRY | 1:05 | 38:00 | 83.01 MPH | 101.34 MPH BOCO | 1:02 | 36:22 | 86.64 MPH | 100.81 MPH EDWARD | 1:05 | 38:55 | 80.52 MPH | 100.00 MPH JAMES | 2:17 | 40:09 | 78.60 MPH | 97.29 MPH

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

The next day… again

Finally the weekend came, and it was Sam’s turn on the boat train. Gordon and Caerphilly were optimistic, and spent most of the night before giving her pointers on various parts of the route. Sam started out as somewhat “normal” about the whole affair, but as the time got closer, she started to feel a tickle of anxiety down in the bottom of her boiler.

Henry, of all engines, was the one to offer reassurances, and the two engines spent quite a while in Barrow yard talking amongst themselves. At the end of it, Sam was feeling rather upbeat and optimistic.

On the flip side of this, Siobhan and Wilma were experiencing the dual sensations of “looming dread” and “deep regret.” They had assumed that, as Cargo Ops crew, they wouldn’t be anywhere near the speed trial runs; however, after several main line crew members called in sick (For once it was legitimate - there was a rather virulent strain of Norovirus running through Barrow at the moment) the crew assigned for Sam’s time trial were Rupert and Clancy. Once Sam found that out, she refused to go anywhere, and Will and Siobhan were rousted from the crew rest area with minimal explanation and less preparation.

“How fast does she wanna go?” Will asked hesitantly, as the train rolled out of Barrow.

“Well,” Siobhan muttered, looking down Sam’s long boiler towards the tracks ahead. “Passenger trains are allowed up to 110 on most of the line, sooooo…”

Will took a moment to be absolutely stunned, before she quickly crossed herself and resumed shoveling. “Father, son, holy spirit, what the fuck am I doing?!”

---------

The train got off to a good start out of Kirk Ronan, and made excellent time to the junction at Kellsthorpe Road. A lot of the time trial trains had to wait here for cross traffic to clear, but fortunately for Sam (and unfortunately for Will and Siobhan) there was a green signal all the way to the down fast line, and Sam sprinted up the line with a 50 mile an hour running start.

Will was stoking the fire constantly, pouring every last ounce of skill into feeding Sam’s fiery heart as the floor of the cab rocked underneath her. It was much smoother than she’d expected, the floor acting more like a ship rocking in the swells than the bucking bronco she’d been dreading.

“This is a lot more normal,” she shouted across the cab to Siobhan as she took a break to check the water glasses. The cab may have been steady, but the wind was at near hurricane strength, and both women were wearing protective earplugs. “I was expecting worse. How fast’re we going?”

Siobhan didn’t bother responding, and instead pointed towards something on her side of the cab. Will made her way across, and found Siobhan’s gloved hand pointing at the digital speedometer tucked into a nest of pipes and wiring.

What Will said next was lost in the roar of the wind as the train neared Killdane station, but the speedometer was clear: The train was doing 109 miles an hour on an uphill grade.

-------

Once again, James was at the Killdane platforms as the boat train drew near. This time, he was with the Limited on the up fast line, and the engine on the boat train was mercifully a steam engine, not some bizarre electric.

He blew his whistle in support as Samarkand drew closer, and was rewarded for this with a gale-force wind that buffeted him from seemingly all directions. Rocks and dirt thrown up by the train’s passage bounced off of him, scoring and marking his shiny red paint. On the platform, several passengers dove to the ground as Sam’s passage caused the concrete platforms to vibrate like a distant earthquake. Loose paper and rubbish swirled around the platforms like a tornado.

Then, as suddenly as she’d arrived, Sam was gone, whistling into the distance. James and his passengers tried to adjust to the sudden quiet.

They did not succeed.

-----

Gordon and Caerphilly had felt quite clever in timing their stopping services to meet at Cronk.

“It is her turn today, isn’t it?” Gordon murmured. “And we won’t be witnessing Ivor the engine, or Skarloey, or something else equally improbable?”

“Oh hush!” Caerphilly grinned. “I can hear her coming.”

They could hear her whistle sound, a long, delirious shout of joy as the train cleared Killdane. Gordon raised an eyebrow - he knew what an engine needed to be going through in order to produce that sound.

“You’ll need to be quick if you wish to inspect her technique,” he said sagely. “She’s moving quickly.”

Caerphilly was facing the other direction, towards Killdane, and whistled softly. “You’re right. Bloody Nora, she’s coming on quick!”

Before either of them could say anything else, the helicopter-like sound of a steam engine at full chat drowned out all other sound. Sam and the boat train screamed around the corner from Killdane in a flurry of noise, dust, and steam. Her whistle sounded again, shrill and barely coherent, as she saw the two of them.

As the train passed, Gordon had the experience of being buzzed by a low-flying airliner; Caerphilly felt like she’d been hit by a bomb, complete with the dust and debris.

The train was gone into the distance before either of them could speak again, and they stared slightly agog at the cloud it left in its wake.

“Now,” Caerphilly said slowly, spitting dust and rocks as she spoke. “I know that this isn’t a competition, or at least we didn’t mean it as one, but… we are going to have to step up our game if we want to beat that.”

Gordon had to agree.

-----

This time, the Wellsworth signalman was in his box when the train thundered through, but Will peered out of the cab window just long enough to see the man staring slack-jawed at the train as it whipped through the station at triple-digit speeds, a half-eaten sandwich falling from his mouth.

-----

The train slowed slightly as it passed Crosby station. Knapford wasn’t far off, and after that was the restricting signals to let them into the dock. Its speed was now merely fast instead of the relativistic velocities it had been achieving earlier in the run.

“Oi!” Will called across the cab. Now that the speed was firmly in the high double digits, speech was intelligible again. “We need water! I’m dropping the scoop!”

“Now?” Siobhan called back. “We’re almost there!”

“We won’t get there unless we fill the tender! I don’t wanna get caught short!” Will was insistent, and dropped the scoop regardless of what Siobhan really wanted.

---

On the slow line, Percy was making his way up the line towards Crosby with a short train of vans for the goods platform. He saw Samarkand - that new goods engine, who was absolutely gargantuan - racing towards him. Oh great, just what we need. Another big engine who wants to be some big important passenger engine because of course she fuc- wait what’s that.

That was a plume of water appearing from underneath the big engine’s tender.

Percy had just enough time to realize that he was puffing over the Crosby water troughs before:

SPLASH “Acksbughifhsithtjighngthhtgtbbbthblughsaaachkkk!”

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

ENGINE | TOTAL TIME | TIMED PORTION | AVG. SPEED | MAX SPEED ▼ PIP/EMMA | 0:56 | 29:31 | 107.17 MPH | 127.23 MPH ABBEY?? | 0:59 | 30:59 | 102.98 MPH | 111.68 MPH SAMARKAND | 0:59 | 33:11 | 95.61 MPH | 110.09 MPH DELTA | 1:03 | 34:01 | 90.22 MPH | 107.85 MPH BEAR | 1:01 | 36:12 | 86.74 MPH | 104.36 MPH WENDELL | 1:01 | 36:42 | 86.11 MPH | 102.04 MPH MARINA | 1:06 | 37:11 | 85.00 MPH | 101.73 MPH HENRY | 1:05 | 38:00 | 83.01 MPH | 101.34 MPH BOCO | 1:02 | 36:22 | 86.64 MPH | 100.81 MPH EDWARD | 1:05 | 38:55 | 80.52 MPH | 100.00 MPH JAMES | 2:17 | 40:09 | 78.60 MPH | 97.29 MPH

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

The next day - for the penultimate time.

Considering the lunatic heights this time trial had reached, everyone else was thrilled that Caerphilly was finally on the boat train. Among other things, it meant that the trials were almost at an end, but more importantly, it meant that the “big ones” were finally going up against the clock.

The main line crews, who were scandalized to have been so so thoroughly trounced by Sam, Will, Siobhan, and by extension the rest of Cargo Ops, had fought amongst each other for the “honor” of manning Caerphilly’s footplate. The big engine thought it bemusing that they were so eager, and couldn’t quite keep a straight face when the two men (not Clancy and Rupert) who eventually emerged from the station bore scrapes, cuts, and a very noticeable black eye.

“I didn’t think you actually meant fisticuffs!” she squeaked, trying to keep the cackling at bay.

On the next platform, Siobhan was on James’ footplate with a van train, and didn’t even look up. “Ah tell ya,” she said to James. “Cargo Ops was the smartest fuckin’ decision Ah have made in years. Certainly is smarter than bashing someone’s face in to get a good driving spot on the express.”

“Didn’t you take the express last week? With Caerphilly?” James asked as Caerphilly’s crew scowled at her and then each other before sullenly clambering into the cab.

“Like ah said.” Siobhan oozed smugness at near-Gordon levels. “Smartest thing ah have done in years.”

------

Despite a small, petty voice in the back of her mind suggesting that she should slow down the train to upset her crew, Caerphilly found the prospect of letting herself fly down the line to be exhilarating, and was straining against her own brakes as the passengers boarded in Kirk Ronan.

“Easy there,” the driver said as the guard waved his flag. “We’ve got to wait for the signal!”

“You’ll have to keep an eye on her,” the fireman said, attempting to sound knowledgeable. “She’s liable to run away from you.”

The driver nodded in agreement, and got a firm hold on the controls as the signal - a GNR style model that “somersaulted” to vertical - flipped upwards to a clear aspect. He was ready for whatever this engine could throw at him.

Caerphilly proceeded to rip the throttle and reverser out of his hands anyways, and set off with a flurry of wheelslip and black smoke.

Gwen, the small tank engine who worked in the Kirk Ronan dockyard, watched the train leave. “Those idiots have no idea what they’re up against, do they?” she said to herself as Caerphilly’s driver tried and mostly failed to reign in his engine.

-------

Donald and Douglas were working on a slow goods train to the mainland. It wasn’t the pick up goods, but it still made a few stops between Arlesburgh and Barrow, one of which was Killdane. Douglas was working in the yard, collecting a line of aluminum trucks while Donald worked the motorail terminal. Located a few hundred feet away from the station itself, the motorail terminal served the Sodor Motorail passenger services, as well as goods trains that dropped off shipments of new cars bound for dealers and customers across the island.

The main line was elevated above the electric line and the yard on an embankment, and so Douglas didn’t see the boat train pass so much as he heard it - a shrill whistle sounding, followed by the deafening roar of a steam engine at full throttle, and then the coaches whooshing by. He paid it little mind, and once he’d collected the trucks he needed, he puffed up the embankment to the motorail terminal.

“Ach, for land’s sake! Wha’s happened ‘ere!” he gasped.

Donald’s tender was laying astride the rails, the cartic wagon behind him bent almost completely in half. Scattered around him were a half dozen Ford sedans, upside down or sideways, smashed half flat. As an explanation, Donald yelled something in Scots that was almost untranslatable to English. Roughly paraphrased, he said: “That stupid great cruise missile scared the living bejesus out of me!”

---------

Caerphilly flew down the line, at speeds she was not properly able to comprehend. The experience of it though, that was something she understood just fine. Her motion was fluid, the individual cranks and rods whirring away at speeds faster than they had ever been designed for. The feeling of it was indescribable, and she found herself hoping against hope that every signal would be green from here to eternity - so that she could keep going on like this forever.

Inside the cab, her crew were having a very different experience. The cab was noisy, bouncy, loud, and hotter than some furnaces. The draft from the firebox was so great that opening the firebox door would suck the coal off the shovel, and threatened to take the shovel with it. By the time they cleared Cronk station, the fireman had developed blisters on his hands from holding it tightly. His gloves were already starting to wear thin. At one point the firebox door stuck open, and the driver watched in morbid fascination as a loose lump of coal bounced out of the tender, onto the footplate, and was promptly sucked across the cab and into the inferno. Both men were sweating through their clothes, but they worried that removing them would only end with the garments being unintentionally fed into Caerphilly’s ravenous fire.

Whistling for the Maron signal box was perhaps the greatest indication of the dichotomy between engine and crew. The driver pulled the whistle lever for a short blast - just long enough to acknowledge their presence. Caerphilly held the whistle open until they stormed over the crest of the hill. The sound was jubilant, triumphant, ecstatic - a sign that the engine was experiencing the closest thing to heaven one could on the mortal plane.

To the crew, the sound of the whistle was a demonic howl that clawed away at their waning sanity. As the train crested the hill they went light in their boots, and for a moment both men would have sworn that the sound was not that of an engine, but that of Satan’s chariot.

In a macabre bit of efficiency, her heaven was their hell. Both were ongoing as the train raced towards Wellsworth.

--------

By this stage, BoCo was ready and willing to accept anything occurring when the boat train went through Wellsworth. Even still, it was somewhat embarrassing to see the signalman make a fool of himself yet again. This time, the daft idiot had fallen prey to the smell of freshly baked apple turnovers in the station cafe, and was trying to wave off a curious bee that was trying to inspect the man’s sticky, sugar-coated fingers.

With a cry of frustration (or perhaps fear, maybe the man didn’t like bees), the bee was swatted from the air just as Caerphilly’s whistle shrieked for the crossing outside the station. The signalman hurried into the box, and would have managed to actually be in position for when the train passed by if he hadn’t caught his shirt tail on the edge of the lever frame. With a ripping sound and a thump, the shirt gave way and the man fell to the floor, just in time for the Boat Train to hurtle through at near-relativistic speeds.

After the train had passed, BoCo had to bite back a bark of laughter as the now shirtless man peeled himself off the floor and belled the train through to the next signal box.

-------

At Knapford, a very bored Thomas was attempting to needle Gordon in an attempt to amuse himself. “And so Percy smelled like the water trough the rest of the day, which I must say isn’t quite as bad as ditch water, but…”

He trailed off when Gordon failed to respond. The big engine wasn’t even paying attention, instead staring down the line towards the next station, and Thomas scowled at the perceived slight. He began thinking of something that might get under Gordon’s paintwork when a whistle sounded in the distance.

In just a second, Caerphilly Castle thundered out of the tunnel that led to Crosby, wreathed in an angelic cloud of smoke and steam. Smiling broadly, she whistled long and loud as the train raced through the station and disappeared from sight.

Thomas’ eye glinted at the sudden opportunity, and he whistled softly. “Wow, I can see why the Fat Controller chose her to be the new Express.”

Gordon didn’t respond, but in a way that made Thomas hopeful of a reaction.

Finally, after a few seconds: “Indeed. There is only one other engine on this island I would choose to be my successor.” Gordon was calm and collected, and once the guard’s whistle blew, he steamed away in a regal cloud of steam.

A bewildered Thomas watched him go.

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

ENGINE | TOTAL TIME | TIMED PORTION | AVG. SPEED | MAX SPEED ▼ PIP/EMMA | 0:56 | 29:31 | 107.17 MPH | 127.23 MPH CAERPHILLY | 1:00 | 32:71 | 97.22 MPH | 115.16 MPH ABBEY?? | 0:59 | 30:59 | 102.98 MPH | 111.68 MPH SAMARKAND | 0:59 | 33:11 | 95.61 MPH | 110.09 MPH DELTA | 1:03 | 34:01 | 90.22 MPH | 107.85 MPH BEAR | 1:01 | 36:12 | 86.74 MPH | 104.36 MPH WENDELL | 1:01 | 36:42 | 86.11 MPH | 102.04 MPH MARINA | 1:06 | 37:11 | 85.00 MPH | 101.73 MPH HENRY | 1:05 | 38:00 | 83.01 MPH | 101.34 MPH BOCO | 1:02 | 36:22 | 86.64 MPH | 100.81 MPH EDWARD | 1:05 | 38:55 | 80.52 MPH | 100.00 MPH JAMES | 2:17 | 40:09 | 78.60 MPH | 97.29 MPH

----------

The next day - for the last time

The morning brought an overcast gloom that worsened as the day went on. By the time Gordon backed down on the coaches at Barrow yard, stationmaster Burton was carrying around an umbrella. He strode down to the train, skillfully avoiding the damp patches of earth that threatened to soil his wingtip shoes, and handed a document up to Gordon’s driver.

“Heads up, you two,” the driver said after donning his reading glasses. “There’s a change in schedule. We’re leaving 20 minutes early from Kirk Ronan.”

“Twenty minutes early?” Gordon was befuddled. “What on earth could they have done that for?”

“Track work on the main line, it looks like. They want to get us and the Express through before they close off anything.”

Gordon grumbled something about the passengers complaining, but said nothing else. Meanwhile, the driver turned to the fireman. “Any complaints from you, Rupert?”

Rupert, still sporting a bruised cheek from yesterday, tried and failed to look imperious. “Not at all, Daniel.”

Daniel (please, his friends call him Dan) rolled his eyes. “Are we going to have a problem with anything else?”

“I don’t see why we should,” Rupert scoffed. “After all, it wasn’t you who put Clancy in hos-”

“We’re not going to talk about that during work hours, alright?” Dan cut him off. “I believe the Fat Controller said much more to you lot yesterday.”

Gordon heard all of this and rolled his eyes. I wonder if those funny automated trains on the Docklands Light Railway are interested in giving lessons on driving oneself…

----

The rain started about an hour later, as the train stood at Kirk Ronan. Inside the cab, Rupert and Dan looked upwards with dismay. “Just our luck,” Daniel muttered. “Wet rails and slick running in the middle of a damned time trial.”

Rupert snorted dismissively.

“What? What’s that noise supposed to mean?”

“I suppose it means that you should use the skills you supposedly have, then?” Rupert sniffed. “Two children in a freight engine beat three quarters of the damned railway down the Killdane straight on dry rails, so two men of our calibre should be able to achieve the same in these conditions just fine.”

Dan glared. “I feel like discounting Siobhan like that is really a-”

“Children in a freight engine.” Rupert said with a serious look in his eye. “Nothing more. We are gods compared to them.”

“Your speeches leave much to be desired, fireman.” Gordon rumbled. “If any of us is a god, it would be me, so perhaps you should allow someone else to take charge of this endeavour.”

He waited a beat, just long enough for Rupert’s face to twist into an ugly scowl. “Unless you would like to inform both Daniel and myself that you happen to have over one hundred and seven years of experience working on express passenger trains, at which point we will happily cede control to you.”

To his credit, Rupert took the tongue lashing like a man, and didn’t throw a tantrum, but he also didn’t say a word for the rest of the time they spent in the station.

Dan managed to keep his petty smile hidden throughout this time, although he gave Gordon’s throttle lever an affectionate pat when Rupert’s back was turned.

-------

Like Caerphilly and Sam’s runs, the signal at the main line junction was clear, the four-aspect colour-light model going from two yellows to a single green as they approached it. The AWS gave a cheerful all-clear chime and Dan opened the throttle fully. Given free reign, Gordon responded with a will, charging forwards towards the down fast line.

Before they’d even cleared the signal, still moving at a relatively slow pace, there was a shrill whistle from Kellsthorpe Road station, and Caerphilly streaked out of the rain-slicked gloom with the midday express. The train was already at a fast clip, and it roared past, running opposite-main on the up fast line.

Gordon’s wheels spun for a moment as the last coaches of the express streaked by, before digging in. Like a greyhound out of the gate, Gordon powered forward, each turn of his 7-foot drivers adding speed at a fantastic rate.

Despite the reduced visibility from the rain, the tail lamp of the express never faded away. Gordon was quickly catching up to the train, reaching over one hundred miles an hour within minutes of entering the main line.

Caerphilly wasn’t lazing around, and the express coaches passed by slowly as Gordon’s acceleration began to trail off. The speedometer needle was practically dancing around in its housing, but Dan could just make out an indicated one hundred ten on the dial as the two trains leaned into the curve that marked the ⅜ point of the Kellsthorpe-Killdane section of the main line.

Gordon was just about level with Caerphilly’s tender, and sounded a long blast of his whistle. Caerphilly’s drivers spun frantically for a half-second, while her crew almost jumped out of their skin at the noise.

“Funny running into you here!” Gordon shouted. “Lovely weather we’re having!”

“What are you doing?!” Caerphilly yelped. “You’re not due for another 20 minutes!”

“Perhaps I’m just that much faster than everyone else!” Gordon was full of mirth, and was only now starting to show that he was getting winded.

“Including me?” Caerphilly was momentarily the picture of innocence.

“Especially you!” Gordon was still accelerating, and was a few buffer-lengths ahead at this point. The speedometer needle was bouncing so much that Dan couldn’t read it.

“Well then!” The innocence turned into a strange combination of sincerity and deviousness. “Let’s see how fast you can go!”

Caerphilly whistled, long and loud, and began pulling ahead of Gordon, inch by inch.

Gordon responded with a burst of acceleration that would have made Nigel Gresley faint.

“Oh god!” Rupert shouted over the wind and the noise from two sets of valve gear whirring away. “She’s goading him on!”

------

The rain was an intense downpour across most of the island, and many passengers had retreated inside station waiting rooms. The rain had also delayed the planned track work, with many of the P-way gang retreating inside their warm vans and Land Rovers to wait out the storm.

This meant that very few people were on the platforms at Killdane, Cronk, and Maron stations as the two trains roared by with the intensity of a hurricane. Some even mistook the noise as a thunderstorm. At Cronk station, a group of tourists from the American midwest made a spectacle of themselves as they started yelling about there being a tornado.

-----

Possibly the best view of the two trains was the signalman at Maron. Sitting in his small brick signal box near the top of Gordon’s hill, he saw both trains emerge from the rain like spectres. They screamed towards him, trailing clouds of smoke and mist that stretched for hundreds of feet. His box’s territory was small - literally Maron station and nothing else - so by the time he’d sent the bells acknowledging that the trains were in section, he had to bell them out just as quickly.

For once, the layabout running the Wellsworth box was on the ball and in his box, and the bells chimed with his acceptance of two down-bound fast trains into his section.

The lamps of the express rocked and rolled over the hill, and then both trains were gone.

The signalman wanted to ruminate on the sight he’d just witnessed, but the railway waits for no-one, and within seconds of him logging the two trains’ passage, the Cronk signalman was ringing him. Slow goods train, down-bound.

He rang the bell to accept it. The railway kept on running, even as the express and the boat train remained fresh in his memory.

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

Gordon and Caerphilly were having the times of their lives as the two trains screamed down the hill towards Wellsworth.

“Feeling tired yet, old iron?” Caerphilly teased.

“Tired? Never!” Gordon declared with some bombastic flair. “This is the standard pace for all express engines. Or did you not know that?”

Caerphilly’s response was an enthusiastic whistle as the two trains passed the Wellsworth distant signals at speed. “This pace is perfect for me!”

At the speeds they were going, a mile was flying by every 35-40 seconds, and a single casual tease could fill a signal block. Gordon opened his mouth to retort, but the words caught in his throat as the sudden feeling of something being very wrong filled him.

“What? What’s the matter?” Caerphilly saw his face fall, and the teasing stopped in its tracks.

“Something’s wrong-” Gordon started, before all the breath left him.

The two trains were rounding the corner separating the hill and Wellsworth station. Time seemed to slow down, and Gordon could see multiple things happening in slow motion.

First, he saw Edward at the platforms, colour draining from the old engine’s face.

Next, he saw the Wellsworth home signal, located in the center of the platforms, dropping to red.

Then, he heard the AWS alarm start to scream a signal warning.

In the corner of his vision, he saw the Wellsworth signalman staring out of the windows of the signal box in abject horror.

And finally, he saw BoCo, slowly pulling onto the down fast line with the midday Suddery-Tidmouth service.

Time stopped, and became meaningless as Gordon, Dan, and the AWS all acted on their base instincts at the same time. The train brakes came on hard, and Gordon threw every ounce of steam he had into his pistons. The reverser - a massive steel screw that had to be turned a dozen times to change from forward to reverse - spun wildly in the opposite direction before Dan could even reach for it. It slammed into the stops in full reverse, and Gordon’s wheels began to spin wildly in the other direction, even as momentum and the wet rails continued to push him forwards, towards the rear coach of the train. The train screeched through the station, past the signals, and Dan heaved on the whistle, letting Gordon’s yell of terror be broadcast for thousands of feet.

BoCo had no idea that anything was wrong until shouting and yelling broke out behind him. His driver began to advance the throttle slowly. Then, in a matter of seconds, Edward bellowed “RUN BOCO!” at the top of his voice, the coaches started screaming, and Caerphilly rocketed by with a shriek of “What are you doing!?!.

The throttle was ripped from his driver’s hand and slammed into the forward stop, exhaust poured from his vents, and the train lurched forwards just as Gordon’s whistle began blowing behind them with all the urgency of the horns that heralded the apocalypse.

Inside Gordon’s cab, there was a sudden shout of “save yourself!” as the speed dropped below forty miles an hour, and Dan turned to see Rupert fling himself out of the cab like a professional gymnast. He managed to clear the rails of the slow line, but landed hard and tumbled to a stop in a puddle, at least one arm pointing the wrong way. Dan didn’t have time to be shocked, and instead braced himself as best he could, holding on for dear life.

Gordon shut his eyes.

BoCo willed himself to go faster.

The sounds of screeching metal got louder and louder.

And then everything stopped.

---

Gordon couldn’t hear anything but his own heaving breaths, and he opened one eye to see that he’d come to a stop on top of a level crossing some three thousand feet beyond the platforms at Wellsworth. BoCo’s train was racing away into the distance, and further beyond was the glinting lamps of Caerphilly’s express.

Behind him, the coaches were babbling incoherently to each other, which presumably meant they were okay.

“Daniel, Rupert? Are you all right?”

“I’m fine, but Rupert jumped!” Dan was already clambering down the ladder. “He’s… oooh that’s not good. Stay right here!” he sprinted off down the line to check on the fallen fireman.

“Are you alright?” a small, shaking voice said next to him. “What happened? That was so close…”

Gordon looked, and there at the gates was Bertie the bus, shaking on his suspension like a leaf.

“I…” Gordon had to stop and think about the questions. “I don’t know.”

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

Later

Gordon was shunted into the engine shed at Wellsworth for examination. A few hours later, a very pale BoCo joined him.

“I’m telling you,” the diesel said in shaky tones. “The signal was green. It wasn’t even a semaphore - they replaced it last month. It was a colour light and it was green.”

“I believe you,” Gordon said quietly. “But the distant was up, and the AWS did not sound a warning.”

BoCo looked at him. “Then how did this happen?”

“I don’t know…” Gordon didn’t like how haunted he sounded.

-----

A few hours after that, the Fat Controller came to see them, followed by a number of men in windbreakers and polo shirts marked with “HMRI” and “HSE”. They examined Gordon and BoCo closely, took a great many notes, asked a few questions, and took the AWS boxes from both engines. Occasionally a man from the railway would come in, escorted by one of the HMRI men, and examine something, or offer an opinion. It took several hours for them to be satisfied, and it was nearly midnight by the time the last of them left.

The Fat Controller had stayed during the entire time, sitting quietly on a chair in the corner. Once the last polo-shirted man had departed, the Fat Controller stood up and faced the two engines.

“Sir,” Gordon said immediately, all thoughts of propriety forgotten. “What happened?”

The Fat Controller looked exhausted. “We don’t have the specifics yet, but it appears that at some point after your train cleared the AWS magnet for the distant signal, the signalman was somehow able to change the points and signals, and allow BoCo access to the main line.” He took a deep breath, and ran a hand through his thinning hair. “Whether this was due to incompetence, malfunction, mistake, or… malice, we don’t know. We likely won’t know for some time, maybe months, or even a year.”

BoCo made a noise. “I can’t… I mean, this is - I should have-”

“Absolutely not.” The Fat Controller thundered. “We may not know what did occur, but we certainly do know what did not, and that was any rule-breaking on either of your parts. The blame is entirely on the signaling system, and by extension, the railway.”

“Sir-” BoCo and Gordon both tried to say something, but the Fat Controller held up his hand.

“No. Even if this was an act of pure malice on the part of the signalman, it should have been impossible for him to do so. Something failed today, whether it was our training regimen, a safety interlock, or some other thing, and we will find out what it was so it can never happen again.”

BoCo was cowed into silence, but Gordon still had one question. “Was… was anyone hurt, sir?”

The Fat Controller exhaled deeply, and relaxed his posture slightly. “Only a few passengers who happened to be standing up at the time. They mostly had cuts and bruises. One man has a concussion from falling down. The only substantial injuries were to your crew, Gordon; Rupert, your fireman, took quite a nasty fall when he jumped from the footplate. He’s in hospital in serious condition, but the doctors say he should make a full recovery by winter.”

“Very good, sir,” Gordon couldn’t help but feel guilty.

“However, Gordon,” The Fat Controller kept going. “The most injured party in this whole affair… is you.”

“Me?” Gordon was shocked. He did hurt all over, but he had assumed it was normal wear and stress, not an actual injury…

“Oh yes,” The Fat Controller was serious. “I might not be the mechanical engineer my grandfather was, but even a lay person would agree that your connecting rods are not supposed to look like that.”

“My connecting rods..?” Gordon was suddenly very aware that maybe he wasn’t supposed to feel the way he was.

“Oh yes,” The Fat Controller continued. “Not to mention the flat spots on every wheel you have, the damage to both your cylinders, and your motion - on both sides, may I add. I could go on, but I will summarize: You are going to the works in the morning, and your overhaul is starting early.”

“S-sir?”

“It makes no sense to fix all this for a few months of service before your boiler ticket expires.” The Fat Controller was becoming slightly more animated, walking back and forth, trying to stretch out his legs after the long sit in the chair.

“O-of course, sir.” Gordon felt slightly overwhelmed. Not only did all of… this happen, but he was supposedly free of blame, and getting overhauled immediately?

“I know that this may be a lot to deal with all at once, Gordon, but you prevented a ghastly accident from occurring.” The Fat Controller at once became still, and looked the big engine in the eyes. “People likely would have died if not for your quick action. This is the least that we can do for you.”

“Yes sir,” Gordon said quietly, a lump forming in his throat. “Of course sir. Thank you, sir.”

The Fat Controller made his way to the door. “I have to leave you both now. Have a pleasant night.”

“You as well, sir.” BoCo and Gordon chorused out of habit as the door shut behind him.

The Fat Controller’s footsteps made it a few feet away, before stopping and returning to the building. “Ah yes, one other thing.” He said through the re-opened door. “I must congratulate you, Gordon.”

“Sir? On what?”

There was the barest hint of a smile on the Fat Controller’s lips. “Well, you obviously did not complete your time trial, but we were able to analyze the raw speed data.” A pause followed, with a small amount of glee coloring his face. “Aside from Pip and Emma, you remain the fastest engine on this Island. Well done.”

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

ENGINE | TOTAL TIME | TIMED PORTION | AVG. SPEED | MAX SPEED ▼ PIP/EMMA | 0:56 | 29:31 | 107.17 MPH | 127.23 MPH GORDON | DNF | DNF | DNF | 121.63 MPH CAERPHILLY | 1:00 | 32:71 | 97.22 MPH | 115.16 MPH ABBEY?? | 0:59 | 30:59 | 102.98 MPH | 111.68 MPH SAMARKAND | 0:59 | 33:11 | 95.61 MPH | 110.09 MPH DELTA | 1:03 | 34:01 | 90.22 MPH | 107.85 MPH BEAR | 1:01 | 36:12 | 86.74 MPH | 104.36 MPH WENDELL | 1:01 | 36:42 | 86.11 MPH | 102.04 MPH MARINA | 1:06 | 37:11 | 85.00 MPH | 101.73 MPH HENRY | 1:05 | 38:00 | 83.01 MPH | 101.34 MPH BOCO | 1:02 | 36:22 | 86.64 MPH | 100.81 MPH EDWARD | 1:05 | 38:55 | 80.52 MPH | 100.00 MPH JAMES | 2:17 | 40:09 | 78.60 MPH | 97.29 MPH

#ttte #sodor #sodor shenangians #fic #sentient vehicle headcanon #if you made it this far #congrats #you deserve a t shirt or something #I survived the NWR time trials and all I got was this lousy shirt

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