#sodor trading company

[the-time-lord-oracle]

The Sodor Trading Company building and it's real-life basis; the National Waterways Museum in Gloucester.

[mean-scarlet-deceiver]

more thoughts on company pride

Donald and Douglas are proud of their nationality and clearly fond of their shared memories. But they don't necessarily go around bragging on the Caley. (If anything, you might well infer from some of their statements in RWS that they feel comfortably certain that, despite the initial mess and drama, in coming to Sodor they have traded up.)

Gordon seems to be set up as the foil to Duck, in this respect. He's the only other one who has a similar pride—probably. The things he and Duck bicker about in "Gordon Goes Foreign" and "Domeless Engines" are proxy issues for the North Eastern vs. Great Western rivalry, so I assume Gordon has some company pride as well as some personal pride. (Then again, that's arguable. He could just not give a damn about his old railway... but be absolutely unwilling to let Duck or bloody showoff domeless engines have the last word about anything!)

But with Gordon it's not half as intriguing, lol. He has enough oblivious self-importance healthy self-esteem that I don't see him being a bit rattled at the idea that a railway company he took pride in would sell him off for a song. He would have a million ways to rationalize or handwave that! Also, I can 100% believe that Gordon thinks of himself as G.N.R. more than L.N.E.R., and since he was offloaded right during the Grouping period that seems like convenient cover ("Oh well everything was a little nutty then as the big new railway took over—new brooms sweep clean—their loss! But if the G.N.R. hadn't been taken over surely they would have seen my worth and kept me on.")

Duck, though. Duck.

I mean, yes, he was sent to Sodor after nationalisation, so again not technically by The Great Western Railway but merely by 'the Western region.' Maybe that offers a buffer for him, emotionally? But let's be honest—it was still the same management, still the same people. The Western retained a lot of their old maverick tendencies, to wit:

---

rest of the country: so, we're adopting a standard gauge

g.w.r.: haha

g.w.r.: sod off, we will keep our broad gauge until you literally pry it out of our hands

---

all the other railways: here's our latest new common safety standard

g.w.r.: our way is better and we're not changing

---

rest of b.r.: diesel-electrics, baby

g.w.r.: dIeSeL-hYdRaULiCs

---

They even insisted on keeping one steam line open! And the B.R. backed down!

But, well, they agreed to dieselise shunting operations. They even agreed to have those Midland diesel-electric 08s come over.

Surely this would have hit Duck hard.

But never a word from him about it...

What is going on in your smokebox, son?

[joezworld]

So is Sodor independent from the UK? Or is the NWR just it's own separate rail company? Are there plans for Sodor to basically pull an America and declare independence from Great Britain?

Sodor is, was, and will most likely remain a part of the United Kingdom. As far as I have been able to tell, the Island does not have any of the pseudo-independent governance structures that its fellow Isles (Wight, Man, and the Channel Islands) do, but instead remains part of England proper. The Island is almost totally dependent on the UK for trade and movement, so an independence move would be spectacularly ill-advised.

-

The NWR was an independent railway until 1947, when it was grouped into BR, at which point it became the North Western Region. (As a note, this is RWS canon - I have no idea what the TV show is doing.) Following the dissolution of BR in 1993, the North Western Railway was formed. Unlike the other train operating companies in the UK, the new NWR is a full railway, with tracks, trains, and rail operations all under common ownership.

[feigeroman]

Thomas OCs: Siani

Number: 38 (ex-BR #6649) Class: GWR Collett 56XX 0-6-2T Built: 1928 Arrived on Sodor: 1956 (purchased by NWR in 1957) Service (Shed): Ffarquhar Branch (Knapford Harbour) Livery: NWR Goods Black

Of all the branch lines on the NWR network, the Ffarquhar branch is undoubtedly the best-known outside of Sodor - mainly because of the presence of Thomas, one of the railway’s most famous engines. His popularity has ensured that his line receives plenty of attention in popular culture and media - more so, in fact, than most other parts of the network! Every engine, every station and siding, every industry...just about everything to do with the Ffarquhar branch has received attention at some point.

Well, almost. There’s one engine working on the branch line who, for one reason or another, has always managed to slip under the radar, and remain hidden from the public consciousness. And that engine’s name is Siani. Based at Knapford Harbour, she’s usually to be found running heavier goods trains along the branch line, although she sometimes helps out on passenger trains during peak hours.

Like all Great Western engines, Siani believes in working without a fuss. She’s proud of her roots, and keen to ensure that other engines live up to those same standards. However, she equally understands that some engines have different ways of working, and so she's careful not to shove the Great Western Way down everyone’s throats at the least excuse. Needless to say, this sometimes puts Siani into conflict with Duck, on the rare occasions they see each other.

Siani was built in 1928, and like the rest of the 56XXs was intended for mixed-traffic work in the South Wales valleys. The main traffic in these areas was coal, and the various Welsh companies had found the 0-6-2T type ideally suited for hauling heavy coal trains for a relatively short distance. The 56XXs, specially designed for this area, continued that preference in the best GWR tradition. Siani herself was based at Aberdare, regularly hauling trainloads of coal from the pits here, down the Cynon Valley, to the docks at Cardiff.

In the 1930s, however, there was a downturn in the South Wales coal trade, which meant a lot of the 56XXs were surplus to requirements, and had to seek alternative employment. Siani in particular ended up being transferred to both passenger and general goods services on the Aberdare line. She only went back to block coal trains when demand skyrocketed following the outbreak of the Second World War.

After the War, the coal industry in the Valleys went back into a dip, from which it never quite recovered. For a period, Siani was transferred down to Cardiff, so that she could work heavy freight trains out of the docks there. Her continued devotion to her duties impressed everyone, and it was perhaps this strong work ethic that contributed to her eventual transfer to the NWR.

In 1955, Sir Topham Hatt had launched his scheme to expand and improve Knapford Harbour, in order to relieve congestion at Tidmouth Docks. Percy was transferred from Tidmouth in order to help with the construction work, helped occasionally by Toby or Thomas. Over time, however, Percy’s duties on the Ffarquhar branch itself increased, and it soon became clear that these were leaving him with less time to work at the Harbour. There was nothing else for it but to bring in another engine.

Sir Topham Hatt had already been in close contact with the Western Region, following the successful transfer of Duck, and so they were only too happy to send him another engine. Various types of engine were offered, but Sir Topham Hatt decided on a 56XX, because he felt its capabilities would lend itself well to working on the Ffarquhar branch once the Harbour work was completed. Siani ended up being the engine selected, due to favourable reports from Cardiff Docks.

Siani arrived on the NWR in 1956, and promptly took over Percy’s work on the Harbour expansion. This in turn left Percy free to concentrate on his work on the rest of the Ffarquhar branch. Ironically, however, Siani ended up briefly taking over this work as well, after Percy infamously took the plunge off the end of the quay. Siani actually helped to fish him out afterwards, but was neither seen nor mentioned in the story - this is simply because like so many other NWR engines, Siani told the Thin Clergyman, “No publicity, thanks!” and he respected her wishes accordingly.

The improvement of Knapford Harbour - along with the subsequent realignment of the Ffarquhar branch itself - was completed in 1957, and as a reward for her hard work, Siani was offered the chance to permanently join the NWR. Obviously she accepted this offer, and so officially entered NWR service later that year. She was given the number 38, and had her BR emblem replaced with the NWR insignia. Siani was offered a repaint into GWR green, but she insisted on remaining in her black livery.

For the most part, Siani has worked on the Ffarquhar branch ever since, although she is sometimes to be found further afield. In the early 1980s, for instance, she was one of a number of engines trialled on the Bencray branch, to assess the sort of engine needed to work the line and colliery on a full-time basis. While Siani would have happily accepted the job if asked, her wheelbase was sadly just that bit too long for her to comfortably traverse the line more often. Another little-known fact about Siani is that as often as not, it’s her who looks after Annie & Clarabel whenever Thomas has to be absent for whatever reason. The Ffarquhar engines do have a system whereby they take turns to cover for Thomas, usually on a per absence basis (that is, a different engine takes over every time he goes away), but due to Siani’s publicity-shyness, we only ever see Percy or Toby’s turns.

Trivia

Siani actually has her roots in my initial OC to carry the number 56 - this being a pannier tank named Jackie. She arrived on Sodor in virtually the same way, but her backstory is that she was #5742, and therefore Duck’s twin sister. While it definitely seemed plausible that a second pannier would turn up on Sodor, I eventually decided it was less than imaginative, and went for a different class of engine.

This early version of the character does survive, in a sense, as I mentioned her in my write-up on Duck - where her unofficial official name was given as Capulet!

The name Jackie, by the way, was Duck’s name in the Greek dub of the show - and yes, the character was female in that version!

Originally, she was only going to work between the Harbour and the Main Line, and I decided on a 56XX because that seemed well-suited to that sort of operation. This then influenced her name, which I’d previously used for a Welsh character in one of my past pet projects - now lost to the sands of time.

It was pretty much on a whim that I reallocated Siani to work on the Ffarquhar branch in general. I figured they could do with a slightly larger engine, and I’d already placed OCs on all the other branch lines!

[mean-scarlet-deceiver]

Yeah, I used to spend a good deal of time trying to include the complication that there must be more than a 1-to-1 engine-crew correspondence.

But after a while I simply grew weary of fighting against the tide, lol. Especially as the tide includes TTTE magazines/supplementals (there's a letter where "Sir Topham Hatt" specifically talks about each engine having one driver) and I think even somewhere in Reading Between the Lines C. Awdry himself seemed to handwave that away? So yeah. I'm tired. I gave up.

Genuinely, I do think it's likely that it is largely 1-to-1. Pre-Grouping companies often did have "rostered" engines in the care of a particular crew (according to Ajax, the L.B. & S.C.R. would even have the driver's name painted on the engine). While there must sometimes be substitutions and swaps, I can believe that this is kept relatively minimal. The old TTTE conceit of the "steam team" all returning to the sheds each night might not be that far off (with a nocturnal team of engines to trade off with).

If we are getting into it, it's worth really getting into the weeds as far as how there must be restrictions on who can "swap in" on which engines. On larger railways at least if you had a different engine than usual it was likely the same class or at least same works/similar design principles. The sheer mishmash on Sodor must make being "the relief" quite a challenge! And considering the dramatic example of Blue Peter showing how important it is that a crew knows the ins and outs of a particular engine's design, I'm sure the Sodor railways are keen to make sure that anyone who drives an engine, even occasionally, has been well-trained on that particular engine!

I can imagine, like, Duck and Oliver's crews are preferred to fill in on the other engine. Maybe the whole Little Western is very familiar with the engines over there, but there could be massive trouble if any of them tried to drive an LNER beast like Gordon or Ryan. Henry's Stanier controls put him in an ex-LMS pool with James and the Caledonians. Etc. Thomas and Percy are both just enigmas in how whimsical and quirky their workings are and only the Ffarquhar crews can safely step in there.

How many different crews do you think the engines have gone through over the years?

Sodor seems to follow the pre-Grouping model of a driver having their "own" engine. So, based on what I know from pre-Grouping drivers' careers... maybe the driver average for charge of an engine is 25-30 years?

It well could be longer on Sodor/in this universe, given that the engines are sentient and therefore the bond would be even stronger. Nevertheless, people do move away, become disabled, shift into other railway careers, etc., so that pushes the average down.

So, I dunno, if we take Gordon who now on 100 years on Sodor... I'd estimate 5 drivers? Maybe less. Probably no more (especially in Gordon's case, as driving him is surely the premiere post and once you get it you are unlikely to give the honor up lightly).

I say "drivers" not "crews" because the firemen would shuffle around even a bit more. In real life a fireman who had a chance to promote to driver is going to take it and join with a different engine, no matter how happy they've been with their old crew. I suppose it's possible that the Sodor railways incentivize firemen staying with their engines until the driver retires and they can take over, if they have a good bond with their engine. But in that case I'd hope very much that the "incentive" is giving them the pay raise they would otherwise get. If not, then openings are dispensed by seniority and I'm sure the firemen will move up when it's their time.

Which brings me to the question of: What engine would it be funniest for Sidney Heaver to join up with as a driver?