#ttte policeman

[sketalya]

The Ffarquhar Constable

Fanart for the policeman ✨

A doddle I made after watching some videos where Thomas and his driver Bob argued with the policeman 😂

Its hilarious wkwk XD...I can imagine Thomas calling him Karen behind him back

[keaalu]

Pendennis Castle (and friends)

I feel like I've been adopted by the spirit of Pendennis Castle. (Perhaps I lived there, in a former life, firing cannons for King Henry?)

Point being, the very first time I caught the Riviera Sleeper to Cornwall in 2017, the diesel loco that pulled the train was Pendennis Castle - and ever since then, the name keeps. Coming. Up. So I think I have slightly adopted it.

This holiday, I went to Falmouth and explored Pendennis Castle itself (“Castle On The Hill Castle”, haha). But more excitingly, look what I encountered in Didcot!

Pendennis Castle! (And holy moly she is a big beastie. And constantly LOUD, her chimney roaring away like a massive kettle you forgot to take off the boil.)

Granted, standing on the station next to her, she's obviously huge - I was STILL not as tall as her. But it’s only when you’re at ground level right alongside, staring up at at this towering piece of noisy engineering and realising that the top of your head doesn’t even come to the top of its wheel, that you realise what absolutely monumental vehicles these actually were. I had to stand on tiptoe to look into her cab.

She's at the coal stage here (above), about to have her tender refilled. The camera was on my eyeline. Even in these photos you can't really grasp how thunderingly enormous this old lady is. 120 tonnes! And even when she was not doing anything at all (her crew weren't even aboard), she was noisy.

Here's an even bigger one! This is King Edward II, who escaped the scrapyard by about 30 minutes and (I think) was in such a state it took longer to restore than it was in service. (I asked the tour guide and it's slightly shorter than the Flying Scotsman but heavier, at 135 tonnes, and more powerful. Apparently there was a bit of a pissing competition between GWR and LNER over who had the better engine, which resulted in these behemoths being designed. They had to do lots of weird things with it because otherwise it wouldn't have fitted through tunnels/alongside platforms/etc.)

Yeah. These are big beasts. (Even the dinky little tank engine they had outside weighed in at almost 23 tonnes.) If I get anywhere with this thing I'm noodling away at, I really want to try and carry that off.

It's quite sad, in a way, seeing them preserved and just sitting there - getting lots of love and polish, granted, but I wanted to see them escape onto the mainline and really run. Watching Pendennis Castle shuffle up and down her 750m of line was a bit like watching a racehorse pace around in a paddock.

Of course I was busy taking notes. (I didn't quite get brave enough to ask the volunteers "so if you were in the middle of nowhere, just an engine and crew, and you'd stopped for some reason, and the driver then had a heart attack, how would you get help?")

(Something something someone runs down the tracks to a lineside phone to call the signalmen to put a stop on the line, and the engine sits whistling the hell out of an SOS because he's not quite got the steam pressure back up to run, until a policeman comes along to help.)

In a final turn for the weird, this holiday, I was just getting ready to leave my hotel on the final day, and heard the toot of a steam train. That can't be a steam train, I said, it's a mainline railway station next door. But I hurried away anyway, and look what was sat in Bristol Temple Meads station! (I left the people in for scale. Even here, the loco is lighter than Pendennis - 72 tons vs 81 tons.)

She left literally not even a minute after I got to the platform, so that was a huge touch of luck. It's a special one-off service running on the mainline up to Shrewsbury. So this is on my list for next year!

(If there isn't already a character in TTTE called Dennis, WELL THERE SHOULD BE. Who used to work the tin mines and speaks Cornish so no-one fucking understands him.)

(The sleeper is my favourite way to travel on holiday. Go to sleep in London, wake up 250 miles away in Penzance!)

[mean-scarlet-deceiver]

3/6: Railway Mismanagement in Stories from the ‘20s

The North Western Railway in the Early-Mid ‘20s was Kind of an Awful Place: An Essay in Parts * Intro * Part I * Part II

Having established the context for the stories, here are some observations on how the post-Gordon expansion seems to have been ill-managed, at least from the engines’ and employees’ point of view.

Obviously, overall, Topham Hatt succeeded tremendously, and despite disliking him I can’t understate the brilliance and ballsiness of his leadership (giving up way back in 1922 would have been reasonable). However, let’s examine some objective facts from the stories:

In “Thomas and Gordon,” Thomas wakes up one morning exhausted. (He seems to be the sole station/yard pilot, a job which will later be noted by the second Controller to be too taxing for Thomas’s replacement Percy.)

In “Thomas and Gordon” and “Gordon Takes a Dip,” Gordon is seen to always be sleeping in between trains, complaining of needing rest. In the latter, he jams the turntable in an attempt to get out of an unexpected job that had disrupted his afternoon nap. (One of the expresses is known to be a night train. Anyone who works night shifts will tell you that day-napping ≠ laziness.)

Gordon also tries to avoid being given extra work (goods trains or shunting) in “Edward and Gordon” and “Tenders and Turntables.” The reason given is that he is too proud and possibly lazy, but it should be noted that he is solely responsible during this period for express trains and leading the expansion of the N.W.R.’s passenger services. Which kind of, sort of, does sound like a massive lift.

Bear with me here, but maybe both of them are depicted throughout “Thomas and Gordon” as acting like tired jerks because they… are… overworked.

Per the first four bullets, there seems to be more than enough work to go around, and the railway is trying to expand, yet in “Edward’s Day Out/Edward and Gordon” we see a perfectly serviceable engine has just been sitting idle for some length of time due to lack of a crew. Now, labor isn’t cheap, but the opportunity cost of that idle engine, at this particular time, is also enormous…? Very questionable financial decision. Or maybe they realize it’s a problem, but they simply can’t attract qualified people…? (Could Sir Topham I be far worse at managing human employees than engines? You shock me! He seems like such a reasonable person to work for!)

In “Thomas’ Train,” Henry is too ill to work, and, later, Thomas references in passing that Henry often complains that it’s hard to pull trains. In “The Sad Story of Henry,” this engine, whose strength is so continually overtaxed, takes shelter in a tunnel and refuses to move. I know the supposed reason is vanity, but a much more obvious interpretation is that he needs to quit because he just can’t take it anymore. 

In “Edward, Gordon, and Henry,” Sir Topham says, to Gordon’s and Henry’s faces: “Never liked these big engines, always going wrong!” (Honestly, especially after what I infer about Gordon’s responsibilities, Gordon deserves better.) As a matter of fact, we have other evidence (doting on Thomas, his creation of the tiny ‘Coffee Pots,’ his cluelessness at the beginning of his express engine search, his frustration with Henry) that makes it a certain lock that Sir Topham has a very decided preference for small engines, and he seems to continually struggle with managing the big ones. The narrative implies it’s all the big engines’ fault, but, if you treat someone as a scapegoat, they do tend to act out…

The Fat Controller is twice seen to be ordering other people around without participating in the work himself (which is very supposedly "big-engine-ish” of him, if you think about it). In “Thomas Goes Fishing,” he is at least bossing around his actual employees, but in “The Sad Story of Henry,” he is doing it to the passengers. Y’know. Paying customers.

The passengers are constantly complaining about “what a bad railway this is.” It becomes a standing joke, but, y’know, perhaps…

The railway may well also be annoying the local population due to employment practices. Some of the workers/crew could have well participated in the tender engines’ strike. Earlier, while Sir Topham is leasing/borrowing engines instead of buying them, it seems likely that this also means he is temporarily importing at least some of their crews (as they seem to follow their engines from railway to railway pretty often, in this universe at least), thus displacing the local drivers and firemen. The resulting confusion would handily help explain the lack of available crew at the beginning of “Edward’s Day Out/Edward and Gordon.”

In “Thomas and the Breakdown Train,” Sir Topham has acquired yet another engine who is an experimental prototype. He comes with wooden brakeblocks, and Sir Topham sees fit to just put him straight to work, without bothering to replace the brakes until after they cause a wreck… on the first day… (that wreck was also costly, since they lost the whole train, so they definitely lost money when they delayed that maintenance/improvement. Good call, boss!)  

In “James and the Coaches,” James’s spends an entire day and night (rightly) fearful due to what would seem to be the incredibly minor incident of whooshing steam on Sir Topham’s hat.

In “James and the Trucks,” James also dreads seeing the boss after having literally not done a single thing wrong. Yep, this is a safe, predictable environment for workers to thrive.

In “Thomas Goes Fishing,” a water tower is out of order, with no provisions made for the crews to otherwise get their engine the water it needs to, oh, I don’t know, move a single wheel.

“The yard has never been the same since Thomas left,” Sir Topham says to himself… as if removing a 1/4th of his Tidmouth fleet and not replacing it, while still expanding the line's work, could never have been expected to have negative effects. Astute analysis, sir! The narrative tries to focus on Gordon, Henry, and James thinking they are too good to shunt, but can’t entirely fail to address that they are overworked and that, in the end, Sir Topham acknowledges that a replacement station pilot is needed. Also, heads up: For the crews and workers, it is more awkward and difficult to shunt with a tender engine than a tank engine, and three tender engines weaving in and out of the sidings of a crowded yard to each fetch their own stock would have been a logistical headache. Hey guys. The strike was about real issues. And, despite getting spanked for it, the strike bloody WORKED.

In “Coal,” Sir Topham’s cheapness is again a plot point, and must be very carefully and respectfully addressed by Henry’s fireman. (Obviously, credit must be given because there is also evidence in this story of Sir Topham being willing to invest in Henry. Though, given that he created this whole mess when he struck a shady deal that was literally too good to be true, and continues to mess with Henry’s head by telling him that he’s “too expensive,” I can only be so congratulatory.)

Sir Topham is cited by the police for ignoring safety regulations that require covered wheels on a part of Thomas’s line. The new constable (noted to NOT be a local) isn’t impressed by “this is how we’ve always done it” and can’t be badgered or bribed by Sir Topham. Somehow, it’s the constable who is portrayed as the bad guy here, but…

Now, am I “reading into” these stories? I don’t think so. I think I’m just looking behind everyone’s stated motivations, examining the objective events, and noticing some places where it’s logical to link them up as cause-and-effect.

These stories, as originally told, sound a very different thrust from my summaries, only because their narratives consistently:

#1. ascribe childish or peculiar motives to the engines, causing the reader to assume that engine psychology is notably different from human psychology, and, as a result

#2. generally portray ‘the Fat Controller’ in the best possible light

Hmm.

[mean-scarlet-deceiver]

What's your favourite ttte triva/fun fact? If that makes sense?

I think mine is that Charlie Sand owned 12 pigeons. I don't know where that's from, or if it's true or not (I read it on the Wiki). But I keep it in mind whenever I write him lmao

Ohhh, that's a hard "favorite" to choose. Honestly one of the most endearing to me is that a broke and unemployable Ringo Starr applied to British Railways in his youth, hoping to be issued the nice warm overcoat that went with the uniform! However he couldn't pass the physical (little Richie Starkey was a very sickly child) and was left only with a railwayman's cap... until certain endeavors much later in life, of course. That kinda breaks and warms my heart at the same time.

Within TTTE, rather than adjacent, it's hard to beat the trivia that Toby has a pub named for him in Ffarquhar. The landlord renamed the place due to Toby's local popularity after scoring off Thomas's policeman. Ffarquhar is anti-cop, and Toby is a living legend. 🧡

My favorite truly obscure detail is that at least one of Thomas's drivers was named Joe Bloggs. He was willing and able to correspond with fans in the '80s (one of the newspaper clippings on Awdry mentions this! sorry i can't find the link right now but i'll post it one of these days)

Re: Charlie's pigeons... Sooo I went down this rabbithole once and, I'm really sorry to say, but I think the Wiki is incorrect in relating this as canon. So far as I can tell, it's a piece of whimsical fanon that originated with @SirTophamNWR's NWR Archives (that link is to the Twitter account; look for the link to the "NWR Archives" in the pinned tweet—it's page 21 of that pdf. All the "packets" are worth perusing though!)