#scrap engines

[duskstargazer]

[1966] A low whine filled the air, as a massive green diesel slunk into the yard, a line of trucks clattering along in front. “There you all go,” he harrumphed. “Into the sidings where you belong.” “Can’t believe I’m being asked to do this,” the diesel continued, rolling his eyes. “I mean, really what are those Gronks, Gardners, Pugs, and Rustons even for, if we main line engines still have to do the shunting ourselves?” “Be glad you’ve still got work to do.” A voice growled, its source obstructed by a lone line of vans. The diesel looked around, his eyes settling on a rusty old steam engine. It looked like it’d been built with a tender, though nothing stood behind the engine’s cab. “W-what do you mean?” As the line of trucks rolled further into the sidings, more and more engines could be seen. The old yard was absolutely teeming with machines, coated in rust and decay. Worse still, they all glared at him with murder in their eyes. “Murderer…” they hissed. “Rotten scoundrel…” “Wh… what are you talking about? What did I do??” Slowly, the yard filled with laughter. Hoarse, despairing laughter, laced with cynicism and mockery. “What HAVEN’T you done?!” A smaller engine barked, its voice cracking with age. “Engines like you laugh at us for our age, engines like you bring us here where we’re broken up, it’s all because of ENGINES LIKE YOU.” “I… I didn’t…” “Murderer! Degenerate! Heartless bastard!” The engines hollered, spitting and cursing as they shouted over one another. The big diesel shut his eyes and tried to weather it, but under their berating, he felt comparatively smaller. With a desperate howl, he took off, back the way he came. It was all he could do not to break completely.

[mecachrome]

marlboro livery in monaco queen? 🙏

[edwards-exploit]

The sheds were quiet, with only two of them. The others have given them privacy, when they heard the news about his siblings.

Thomas sent a sidelong glance at Edward- there's an unimaginable grief that is currently permeating from his smokebox, despite his valiant attempt to hide it. His steam practically danced around him, covering his face like a shield.

But it was brief, and Edward smiled at him sadly- he was trying to comfort Thomas, after all- and Thomas felt terrible for asking Edward about his own siblings... despite Edward dancing around the subject most of the time, still treating Thomas like he was fresh out of the works.

"... But Driver likes to say 'it's all in good hands'," Continued Edward delicately, "So perhaps it was the same for your siblings."

Maybe they really were in good hands- for all the rebuilding Thomas got that extended his working life, his siblings still had a long, Useful career without any changes to their shape. And Thomas knew, vaguely, that Southern engines were going to be replaced by electrics sooner or later. Perhaps they faced death with dignity.

So Thomas gave a sad smile back. "... Thanks, Edward."

TRAINTOBER DAY 25: THE LAST ONE

[weirdowithaquill]

ok question how and why was the scrapping of sentence vhecials even allowed in the first place I mean sure irl this isn't that bad but in ttte the mass scrapping of steam engines in the 60s in Britain might as well be considered a genocide did Brittish railways use every loophole and excuse in the book to do this and every other country for that matter

Thank you for your ask! And wow does it open up some cans of worms...

But before we get to in-canon reasons for why BR was able to mass-scrap steam engines, we should probably consider the author's intent behind writing this in - after all, the Reverend W. Awdry was writing a children's book series and went "ah yes, I want this to be a picture children see":

So why does Awdry allow for scrap to happen? Because it happened in real life. Awdry was a massive steam engine fan - he grew up on the Great Western mainline near Box Tunnel listening to engines working up and down the grade, his father was a steam fan, and he himself volunteered on various heritage railways (most notably the Talyllyn in Wales) - this is a man who loves his railways and his steam engines. But in the era he was writing - the 1950s and 1960s - the engines were rapidly withdrawn and scrapped as part of BR's Modernisation Plan. Awdry hated this - Britain was scrapping completely useful engines who had served the country through two global wars for untested, faulty diesels that smelt. If you read through the Forewards from Four Little Engines onwards, you can sometimes find that he is quietly advertising heritage railways by crediting them and telling his audience where the real-live versions of the steam engines in his books are. He does this for the Ravenglass and Eskdale Railway, the Dartmouth Railway, the Ffestiniog Railway and of course: the Talyllyn and Bluebell Railways.

Awdry's books were as much a love letter to steam as they were a series of children's stories, and he wanted to make a real point about how he disagreed with BR and try to promote heritage railways to help keep steam alive.

Rev. W. Awdry was also a notorious perfectionist. Remember, this is a man who said that Dalby's illustrations of Percy looked like "a green caterpillar with red stripes" (ouch!).

This perfectionism carried over to the books: Awdry is very famous for his views on realism in Thomas - he quite famously disliked the Season 3 episode 'Henry's Forest' because it both broke Rule 55 - which states that engineers need to notify the signalman that their trains are at a stand in order to avoid an accident - and the fact that the trees were too close to the line, which could have caused a fire from sparks from the engine in real life. He placed real railway practice and its constraints at the forefront of his stories, and it shows.

Mixed together, these two parts of Awdry created the situation where he wrote about the scrapping of engines and the existential danger that it posed to steam engines and their livelihoods. This is the authorial reasoning behind scrap and the mass-scrapping of steam engines being so prevalent in his works - and it is prevalent, from as early as the first story where Edward is bullied by the bigger engines for being used so little and the implicit likelihood that he could be withdrawn and cut up.

With the authorial reasons for the mass-scrapping of steam engines having been answered, it is now a question of how to drill down into canon and explain what these views and decisions made by Awdry translate into.

Firstly, we need to separate two things: sentience, and human. Vehicles are not people in this series - they are very much the closest thing in terms of intelligence and speech ability, but they are not human. They are built out of minerals pulled from in the ground and powered by more rocks dug up from underground. Whether or not you see this as making this a society that enslaves the engines or not, the reality is that they are machines and the property of their human owners. This is a lot like horses - horses love us, even though we own them, and we often love them back. But not always. Horses were and are, after all, animals used for jobs - in their heyday, they were the car, bus, tram and train of society. We bought and sold them, and when they were no longer useful, people often put them down. Which is extremely morbid, yes - but it's an unfortunately necessary fact of that era and their lives.

Now translate it over to locomotives - the iron horses.

Locomotives are built to serve a purpose, and they must be capable of fulfilling their role. They are taking on the position of the horse from the above analogy - and when they are no longer useful, they can either be sold or scrapped. Worse yet, they are the industrial evolution to the horse - the capitalist's beast of burden.

And now I can finally move to answer the question of why the mass-scrapping of engines was legal: there was never any laws to stop them. From the moment the first engine rolled out of the shop, their owners argued loudly and publicly that they were simply an evolution of the horse. If people didn't give horses rights, why give engines rights? They are not human; they are iron beasts of burden. And in the rigid and very xenophobic society of the Victorian era, this worked incredibly well. Engines were trained using the Railway Rulebook to fulfill their job in much the same way you trained anyone and anything to be good at their job, and their culture was dismissed in the same way that Victorians dismissed any non-European culture.

Now, don't misunderstand me - this is not a good thing. This is a laissez-faire system of caring for vehicle rights developed by capitalism to make it cheaper, easier and less objectionable to discard old stock when needed. The government never intervened because doing so would place all the vehicles under their control under scrutiny. Can't have military lorries and tanks suddenly wondering whether or not their roles in war are legal, after all. And it's that worry that led to no nation really looking into vehicle laws until after World War Two - and even then, it was haphazard at best and downright discriminatory at worst. Even today, there are still no solid laws in place to cover the vast majority of vehicles - only those held in museums owned by the government or 'considered to be of cultural or historic importance' are afforded any rights at all - Thomas, Flying Scotsman, Stephenson's Rocket - those engines.

It's not because the engines themselves don't care, but because they simply have no real option to change this. Engines cannot move themselves - the worst they can do is force themselves to break down, and there will almost always be another engine to take their place.

Sorry for how morbid that got, but I hope it helped explain why I think engines were allowed to be mass-scrapped by BR!

[mavibonghostexpress]

if art request are still open, Oliver and Douglas but holding hands

They're actually pretty adorable ngl

[prac-ticalproblems]

for the asks. for a while i had an idea spinning in my head of spy, engie and scout going on a sort of hitman mission (spy blending into the crowd, others working in the background) and finding out that they have to kill the guy from sex bomb or something idk i wanted it to be silly

SO TRUE, thank you dearly for the ask btw 🧡

I have some very strong feelings abt this prompt, the ideas are firing! Let’s go!

SCOUT

Screams immediately, almost getting them caught, because he thought he felt a bug crawl on his leg in the vents.

It is his untied shoelace brushing against his calf.

Scouts job is to literally ‘scout’ the opposition. See who should be a problem, who won’t. Nullify any threats and keep an eye out for an escape plan.

Scout, in fact, does not do this, and instead chats up with the ladies while squinting in the direction of the exit sign and saying it’s “good enough” over his ear piece.

When one of them lets it slip that Tom Jones is playing after the openers at this venue, he is starstruck about meeting his idol on stage! He shows off his massive tattoo in vigor, scaring the women away.

He races up to their safe room, to tell the guys the news, and learns what they’re actually here for.

He is inconsolable for maybe 40 full minutes, while the two men try to awkwardly calm him down.

SPY

Spy is the one who suggested the vent as their entrance point. He partially did so to get away from Engineer. They have been bickering endlessly about anything since entering the car, and he thought it’d be an easy out. Engie was too big to fit in the vents like him and Scout.

He did not take into consideration that the Texan is big, true, and extremely stubborn. They take an extra 5 minutes to get him out and to go another way because Spy said he couldn’t do it.

With that out of the way, Spy takes an overhead view of the back stage, gauging how the security will be, who to worry about, who will be a liability to the target, their main focus.

He almost growls when he hears Scout yells through the very good quality speakers with a mouth full of food to meet at the safe room Engineer has set up in, to hear the urgent news.

He sighs, long and drawn out, before explaining their mission, in full, to the other man.

Scout is devastated, at having to kill his ‘father’. Spy grimaces at the word.

“If you are going to be a liability for this mission, then go sit in the car. A job is a job, and I don’t leave things unfinished.”

He glares, arms crossed as he looks away. Acting like he didn’t feel a little bit guilty.

ENGINEER

He knew damn well he would not fit in that vent, but he came out with a cocky grin because he pissed Spy off.

Engineer is here because it’s an opportunity to try out his new EMP invention on the unsuspecting public!

He really doesn’t care about the mission as much as Spy, but since he’s here, he supposes he could act as the man behind the chair, wiping the footage of their presence across the film.

When Scout interrupts his dissection of the blueprints to the building for the best escape plans, (since Scout didn’t really do it) He nearly jumps out of his skin.

Usually his workshop was locked. Someone storming in was not on his quota.

As Spy and Scout’s altercation goes by, he tried to interrupt the both of them, to no avail.

After finally, finally calming down Scout down, he gets his words in….

“Er…. You both know that it’s a Tom Jones impersonator… right? It’s on the file…”

The room’s silent for a bit.

“Oh.” “Oh, then let’s go get ‘im then!”

The job was done. Maybe it was to subpar standards, but at least, passing

[bsptourist]

gm_tppcastle (a.k.a. Super Mario 64 1995 Inside Castle/Courtyard)

created by M.Antman

[rungian]

Oh boy oh boy they're finally done, and just in time for the 78th anniversary too!

Pride of the Furness Railway, the K2 Larger Seagulls will get you where you need to go come hell or high water. Why not steam down to Barrow, or take a relaxing summer trip up through the hills to Windermere?

Featuring Edward in his original livery alongside the brothers he would leave behind.

[some-pers0n]

Sometimes I'll remember this specific taunt that was found in the recent source leak. Every single time I do, I get so happy.

This is the earliest stage of the 'headbutt' taunt, an all-class taunt where you could headbutt each other. All of the animations would've been mocapped first before then edited to fit the game style.

Here's the other clearly mocapped taunts. The Scout & Heavy one I know isn't a part of the headbutt taunt, but I'm including it regardless.

I bring this up because of the Engie and Medic taunt being here in particular. With the two other taunts we see, we know the two have a connection of sorts. Obviously with Demo and Soldier we know their friendship. They had a whole update, comics and several voice lines to go along with it. Heavy and Scout are connected as well through the Meet the Scout video. Heavy goes in for a noggie, somewhat similar to what he does in the video.

Those two taunts are with characters we know have some sort of connection. But, an outlier: Engie and Medic. If anything, shouldn't the taunt be with Heavy? Out of all of the cast, Medic is closest to Heavy. Same with Engie. He's closest to the Pyro. So, what gives? The only time we see them together is in Expiration Date and in the Gargoyles and Gobblins comic.

Which is exactly my point. There could be some connection between these two that Valve knows about enough to make their taunt one of the first ones here. Yeah, their animations could be random and placed together to fidget around with the Medic and Engineer aspects of the taunt on their own, but...could the same be said for Demo and Soldier? Pairing them together seems deliberate, as we know they're best friends.

So, Engie and Medic's partnership must be apparent enough to Valve in order for them to place them together like this. In this essay I will–

[mean-scarlet-deceiver]

Okay, okay, stop me if you’ve heard this one before. It goes like this: Two engines roll into a scrapyard…

🟩‼️🦆☹️💶🤔🐸🤝🪦⛈️🚦

[dilfslayer1080p]

every time I think 'I'm gonna focus on finishing 1 fucking thing' I get irresistibly dumb ideas like steal mark robers shit to make the nail gun real and throw off my whole day

[crewtawn]

I have work tomorrow, I'm so miserable with life right now. It's hard.

staying strong. Love you all. Crumbs till then <3 <3 <3

[edwards-exploit]

streamlined (technically air-smoothed for tangmere but shhh) 4-6-2s drama must be craaazyyyy- or, spencer visits the west coast railway company and fights the nearest hater there.

bonus: the part where spencer cannot escape those sr light pacifics.

[weirdowithaquill]

Traintober 2024: Day 25 - The Last One

Thomas Never Thought About His Classmates...

Thomas is a tank engine who lives on his own little branchline on the Island of Sodor. He's a cheeky little engine with six small wheels, a short stumpy funnel, a short stumpy boiler and a short stumpy dome. He’s always been that way, no matter how young or old he is – it’s part of his charm!

The little blue tank engine has always lived on Sodor, almost since the day he was built. He doesn’t really remember those early days, down in the South of England. He vaguely remembers meeting a couple shunting engines that taught him the absolute basics, and a couple bigger engines who snorted about the Big Station by the works and ordered him about until he snapped back, but little else. In the back of his smokebox, he knows he has siblings – his first driver called him a ‘modified E2’, and his second driver had once shown him a picture of one of his siblings that he’d taken while down there on holidays.

But Thomas never really thought of them. They existed, sure, but when Thomas thought of siblings or family, he thought of Toby, Gordon, Percy and the other engines on Sodor, especially the early seven.

Then, something odd happened. On a crisp, cold February morning, Thomas was on his first run of the day, making his way up the branchline, when he thought he saw something in the corner of his eye. He was passing by the Toryreck Dairy, and a glint of the most unsettlingly familiar umber livery caught him off-guard. He blinked, and looked again – but there was nothing. The closest thing to the umber paint was the reddish-brown of the squat brick building, and even then it was most entirely the wrong colour.

Thomas thought nothing of it and completed his run. The day progressed as usual, and Thomas forgot about it quickly enough, putting it down to sleep still being in his eyes. Months passed, and Thomas completely forgot about the odd umber colour and how it twinged something in the back of his mind.

And then it happened again.

Thomas had been shunting the harbour, pushing trucks into their proper places for the barges to pick up. He cursed out Percy quietly, peeved at how the little green engine had gotten out of this duty in favour of a delivery to the Big Station. As he moved back, he spotted the shape of an engine, shadowed by the bridge that carried the mainline. Thomas stared, confused. “Who’s there?” he called. The engine didn’t look like Percy or Toby – and it wasn’t Duck either. But he couldn’t tell, the shade was making it near impossible to make out the engine’s shape. Thomas puffed back to investigate, when there was a loud bang! Thomas jolted as he bumped into a line of trucks – and when he looked up again, there was nothing there. The brilliant orange of the October leaves just cut a striking contrast to the dark red of the bridge.

“Maybe it was a shadow of a big engine?” Thomas thought aloud. “It could’ve maybe been Donald or Douglas…” But even that sounded wrong. Still, there was nothing there, and none of the others had heard of a new engine on the island. Thomas decided to do his best to forget about it, and keep going.

But then it happened again the next month – one moment, there was a flash of umber in Percy’s berth at the sheds, the next there was nothing. And then it happened in the hot summer of the next year, when Thomas thought he saw a whole tank engine in a deep umber paint scheme shunting trucks around the harbour when he passed over the bridge with his coaches.

No one else saw the engine though, and Thomas was left to believe it was nothing. It had to be nothing… right?

As the boiling summer passed into a cool September, Thomas did his absolute best to forget about the odd umber brown paint and the weird shadows that seemed to stalk him. He took a trip to the Big Station with one of his usual passenger runs, and fussed away into the carriage sidings to look for a suitable spot to park his beloved Annie and Clarabel. As he puffed along one of the sidings, he thought he saw two whole tank engines behind a long row of express coaches, painted that same rich umber livery. Both seemed to be… watching him, even though he couldn’t be sure.

Thomas wasn’t sure what was going on, but it left him feeling very uneasy.

October rolled around, and this time it was a duo of funnels peaking out behind Gordon’s express as he rocketed by. For a brief moment, Thomas thought he saw a weird, wrong version of himself staring back – but when the brake coach cleared the platform, there was absolutely nothing there.

Thomas decided to say nothing about it to the other engines. Percy would laugh at him and Toby would probably believe him but also pity him. And Thomas absolutely refused to be pitied. Pity was for pitiful engines, and Thomas had his own branchline! He had books named after him; Thomas was not pitiful. His pride wouldn’t allow for it.

So Thomas said absolutely nothing, even as the sightings suddenly stopped right as winter set in. The new year rolled in once again, and Thomas was distracted from the weird umber engines by other matters. Stepney had been and gone, Thomas being dazzled by his stories of their former railway and its really useful engines. But neither Stepney nor Thomas mentioned Thomas’ siblings, in some weird twist of fate.

Instead, the little blue tank engine was once again distracted by his own branchline.

And then it was April, 1963. The day started normally enough, Thomas setting out with Annie and Clarabel to do his morning run. But something felt… off. Thomas wasn’t sure how to describe it, but the air felt… electric. As if something big had happened, something he should have been aware of but just wasn’t. It left him on edge as he made his way down to the Junction. As he pulled into the platform, he felt eyes on him from the goods shed, piercing glares boring into his bunker.

“Is something the matter?” asked Annie. Thomas considered, not quite sure what to say.

“Is there anyone in the goods shed?” he eventually asked. Clarabel looked over, and frowned.

“There’s some vans – and maybe a pair of dark brown engines shunting them? I can’t quite tell. They’re – oh, maybe I was wrong.” Clarabel fell silent, trying her best to peer into the gloom of the darkened sheds. Annie and Thomas waited for an answer, but none was forthcoming.

“Clarabel?”

“My eyesight must be going,” complained Clarabel suddenly. “There’re no engines I can see.” Thomas raised an eyebrow, and looking forwards again – and his boiler went cold. There, at the very edge of the horizon where the mainline turned away from the coast and behind a cutting, was him. Only, it wasn’t him. It was maybe one of his siblings? It looked like it – but they had shortened side tanks, and a dark scowl on their face. Thomas went to call out to it, but then it vanished.

“Driver…”

“Yes Thomas?”

“Have you got any news on the other engines of my class?” Thomas’ driver pondered the question, amazed at the unusual request from the tank engine who had never mentioned the other E2 engines. He promised to check in with the Fat Controller when they reached the Big Station. Thomas felt a little better after that.

But his driver had bad news for him after speaking to the Fat Controller. “I’m really sorry Thomas,” sighed his driver. “But… they cut up the last of your siblings yesterday. You’re the last one.”

To his surprise, Thomas didn’t feel anything at that. Perhaps a little sadness, but it was mostly just distantly removed, as if he had just found out a tragedy had occurred in some faraway, distant land he’d never heard of before. It felt a bit wrong, but also just natural. Thomas had had classmates, and now he did not. He had always been unique, and now he was just a little more unique. “Thank you, driver,” Thomas said kindly. “That’s… all I really needed to know.” Thomas’ driver raised a worried eyebrow, but said nothing more.

Thomas continued on, this new information being quietly tucked away to the back of his smokebox where it festered for only a few minutes before being washed away by every other thought in Thomas’ mind. Percy was due for an overhaul soon, and Thomas would  need to cover for him; Gordon had been getting uppity again recently, and he would probably need to knock the big blue idiot down a few pegs again. Thoughts of Mrs Kyndley and the farmers and Terence complaining about roots in his field all pushed the news of his classmates’ death down deep to the back of Thomas’ mind and eventually he stopped thinking about it.

“It’s so odd,” his driver muttered to the fireman. “I just told him all his siblings have been cut up, and he’s more interested in what Mrs Kyndley is having for tea!”

In the shadows, eyes glared at the oblivious blue engine; furious eyes, emotions swelling as rage and anger overtook everything.

Thomas finished his last train of the day, parked Annie and Clarabel away, and settled in the sheds beside Percy. The little green engine was already exhausted, having spent all day shifting stone for a major project on the mainland – and he was not interested in conversation. Toby was equally tired, and with no reason to stay awake chatting, all three were quickly closing their eyes, yawns stifling their last few words as they said “good night”.

Thomas fell asleep, and thought nothing more of his day.

He awoke to the hiss of steam, of metal scraping against metal. It seemed to come from everywhere at once, as if Thomas had been dragged into the deepest pits of a scrapyard while he slept.

Thomas opened a sleepy eye, and screamed in terror.

“You!” snarled the engine standing buffer-to-buffer with Thomas. “You forgot about us!” Thomas looked around – there were ten engines surrounding him on all sides; Percy was gone.

“Where—where’s Percy?” demanded Thomas, his fear replaced instantly by worry. The engines all hissed at him, their blood-red eyes boring into him.

“We’re your classmates, and you’re more worried about someone else? We DIED!”  Thomas felt a bump from behind, and suddenly he was moving forwards.

“Hey! Stop that! Let me go!” he snarled, trying in vain to struggle against the force propelling him slowly forwards.

“You got all the glory, all the love!” they accused, all rushing forwards to bash into him and leave him lurching violently. Thomas winced and gasped in pain, feeling his buffers bend under the strain. “You never thought of us! You never loved us! Where were you, when we were being scrapped?”

They began to pick up speed, Thomas yelping in terror as he was forcibly shoved out of the yard, his wheels screaming on the points. He felt yet another slam against his bunker, his entire frame shuddering violently as it was assaulted from all sides.

“Failure! Traitor! You took all the glory and never looked back!” Thomas’ siderods were a blur as he was forced down the branchline as frightening speeds, his frame groaning as he felt the curves send jolts of searing pain along his axles.

“No! Stop! Please!” begged Thomas, as his entire frame shuddered again. It felt like it was going to snap. Thomas could feel the cracks beginning to tear their way along the metal, putting even more stress on every inch of his body. His wheels screeched in agony as he rounded another bend. The tunnel loomed ahead. Thomas screamed as his sidetanks scraped along the sides, scratches and deep cuts left behind by the brick.

“We’ll show you the pain we suffered,” snarled the engines. “We’ll make you feel it! Make you feel worse! You will regret forgetting us, Thomas!” Thomas couldn’t take it – his axles were overheating rapidly, the burn already beginning to settle in and leaving him gasping for air as the pain overtook him—

“Thomas?”

Everything stopped.

Terence stared at the little blue tank engine from in his field, standing in wait while his owner went to drag out seeds for planting. Thomas was in tears – everything hurt, and he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to move. “Oh Terence!” blubbered the little blue tank engine. Something clanged deep inside him, and then there was silence.

“Are you alright?” asked Terence slowly. He looked around, trying to see where Thomas’ crew had gotten to.

“No,” admitted Thomas quietly. “Everything hurts. I… I don’t know how I made it this far. Please call a breakdown train.” Terence was stunned silent, immediately agreeing. Thomas never spoke like that. He never sounded so… hurt. Small. Scared. It was wrong, and Terence feared whatever had left Thomas in such a state.

The breakdown train came up from the Junction, headed by a quiet Edward. The kindly old engine stopped short of the tank engine, and looked around. He thought for a moment that he could see red eyes glaring from within the tunnel, and scowled at it.

“It’s alright Thomas, we’re here now,” Edward said kindly. “Let’s get you checked over.” The men looked all over the blue tank engine – but there was no signs of anything being wrong. The brakes were on, his motion was perfectly fine – there wasn’t even a hint as to what had sent Thomas flying down his branchline. His frames were fine too, when Thomas finally worked up the courage to ask. There weren’t even any signs that he’d left his berth at all.

But here Thomas was.

Edward moved to buffer up to the blue tank engine, when Thomas flinched. Edward’s eyes widened, and he paused short. “Ok Thomas, I’m going to buffer up now. Nice and slowly, keep your eyes on me.” Edward very carefully helped his old friend back to his shed, finding both Percy and Toby deep asleep. Edward parked Thomas in his berth, then shunted away the works coach and took up guard on the line in front of the little blue tank engine. Thomas shot him a grateful look, but still neither got any sleep.

The next day, Thomas quietly asked his crew to erect a memorial to his classmates at the back of the sheds. Confused, but happy that their engine was finally showing an emotion about his siblings that was more than vague sadness, his crew obliged. Edward watched them put it together, then looked over to Thomas.

“Hopefully, it will be enough,” he murmured. Thomas didn’t reply, but Edward already knew enough.

Back to the Master Post

[jasminesanriofan]

Thicc red momma iron. Slaying, and being splendid.

[guard-en]

"...This fucking thing better not choke up on me again."