It was another busy morning on the Island of Sodor, and Thomas and Twilight arrived at Knapford station. As usual, Sir Toppham Hatt was waiting for them.
"Good morning you two!" he said. "I trust you had a good night's rest then?"
"We did sir, even if Murdoch was a bit grumpy!" Thomas joked.
"And Shining was playing his music a little too loud. For a BBBFF he can sometimes be a bit loud."
"BBBFF?" asked Sir Toppham Hatt.
"Big Brother Best Friend Forever?"
"Oh." Sir Toppham Hatt glanced down at his clipboard. "Right then, here's your manifest for the day. You two have a pick up goods to take to Maron, but along the way you have a special load to drop off. One of the vans is carrying valuable fashion material to be picked up by a Miss Pommel, and needs to be left in the siding at Wellsworth to be picked up. It is the van with the white stripe on the side. Right then, off you go!"
"No problem sir!" Thomas called, and he set off to the yard. The train was long and heavy, and consisted of tankers and several vans, as well as open flat cars and a few plank wagons scattered in, as well as a brake van. The engine and his driver steamed across the island, taking in the breathtaking sights. Although they had worked on Sodor for a while, and had been through some tough scrapes, the pair felt as though nothing could ever be boring on the island they called home.
As they approached the next station, a red signal up ahead told them they had to stop. With a gentle application of the brakes and control of the regulator, Twilight brought Thomas to a stop for his first drop off.
Moments later, Bear arrived with a passenger train. "Hello Thomas!" he called. "Going shunting? There's a good engine."
"Well, we tank engines are versatile!" Thomas replied, as he uncoupled from part of the train, shunted the vans back into the siding, and was then uncoupled. With that duty done, he ran forward and attached to the rest of the train, and waited for the signal to clear.
Shining stuck his head out of the cab. "How is it Twily? It's been a busy few days with the summer timetable. It's boiling in the cab here, and the engine noise makes it hard to have a conversation!"
"The next thing we know, the passengers will want air conditioning!" Twilight laughed. Just then, the signal dropped. "OK, it's time to go. See you! Maron, here we come!"
Bear looked in confusion. "Maron? That's two stations away. This is Crosby!"
As he pulled away, nobody realised that Thomas and Twilight had made a rather severe error. This wasn't Wellsworth at all, and as a result the van with the white stripe had been dropped off in the wrong place. Thomas and Twilight puffed on, oblivious to their error, and after dropping off some more trucks at Wellsworth, stopped and waited for the yard to clear so they could uncouple and run back.
"Why are you just sitting there?" asked Percy, as he pulled some empty mail trucks past.
"I'm waiting for the Maron signal box to clear me out so I can run back," Thomas replied.
"This is Wellsworth, silly!" Pinkie exclaimed. Maron's the next station up the line!"
As Percy moved off and Edward rolled in off his branch line, Thomas looked back. "We still have one more drop off to do!" he said. "And this means we've dropped everything off in the wrong place!"
"Such as the fashion material!" Twilight exclaimed, suddenly starting to hyperventilate. "This is terrible! What do we do? We'll get into big trouble for sure!"
"Quick!" Thomas said. "We have to go back and get that van and move it to the correct station. There's no time to waste!"
Thomas raced back along the line, regulator full open and wheels spinning at speeds never seen before. At those speeds, it didn't take him very long to return to Crosby. He slowed down and stopped at the station approaches, waiting for the shunt signal to clear and allow him over onto the down line. Once he was over, the signal at the other end of the yard cleared him into the yard. Luckily, the truck with the stripe was still there, so without a second's delay he backed onto it and pulled it away with him. Twilight looked forward and ahead to ensure that there were no odd hallucinations, no Black 5s running backwards wrong line, and no A0 pacifics with faulty whistles or missing domes. Thomas sped up the line as best he could, he puffed and panted as he did so, not hearing the station master call to him as he puffed out of sight.
Later on, Thomas arrived at Wellsworth, where Coco Pommel was waiting.
"Hello," she said gently. "I'm Coco Pommel. I've been asked by Rarity to pick up some supplies for her."
"These are them!" Thomas called. "Sorry for the delay, there was a mix up in the yard!"
"There is still a mix up," the station master grumbled. "These aren't suitable for transporting boxes. Move them to the cattle dock for unloading."
"What do you mean?" Twilight asked. "It has a white stripe on it!"
"But open ventilator hateches. This is a cattle van."
The guard opened the door, only to reveal it packed full of coffee bean holders. "What? These haven't been packed properly!"
Meanwhile, at Vicarstown, Suri Polomare was waiting for a van to be opened. "Finally," she said. "The coffee beans I ordered." The porter opened the door, to reveal boxes marked "fabric."
Suri blinked. "Is this some sort of practical joke? Or is Rarity rubbing it in my face again?"
Moments later, Thomas barelled in and crashed into the wagons. They slammed into a paint tanker. The seals ruptured, and paint was sprayed everywhere.
"What a mess," said the foreman. "I'll need to phone Sir Toppham Hatt to get this lot cleaned up."
After Donald and Douglas had helped to clean the mess, Sir Toppham Hatt came to speak to Thomas and Twilight. "Now then, I want you to tell me what happened, from the beginning."
"Well," Twilight said sadly, "we dropped the van off in the wrong place, and then we tried to fix it and only made an even bigger mess! I know it wasn't rational, but I wasn't thinking straight I was panicking so much!"
Sir Toppham Hatt smiled. "We all make mistakes Twilight," he said, gently. "But why didn't you call the station when you realised your error? We could have cleaned this all up a lot faster!"
"I know, and I'm sorry," Thomas said sadly.
"Apology accepted. Now then, let's get this lot to the correct people."
And so, Suri got the coffee beans she needed to run her coffee shop (which, I must say, serves a seriously good latte), and Coco got the fabric that she was collecting for Rarity. And Thomas learned a very important lesson, I think. Whenever you are having problems, tell someone.