The Dark Discovery, Part 2
The scene before them was grim, to say the least. Lines of scrapped engines, or broken wrecks of engines, stretched out for seemingly miles away. Engines that had once had years of life in them were stuck here, rotting away, and covered in rust and moss. All of them lacked faces, and most looked to have been here for decades. It was a depressing sight for anybody to see, but especially for any lover of transportation or wheeled object. Now Duck knew why this place had been abandoned, and cut off from the rail line. No engine, in their right mind, would want to come here. Sir Toppham Hatt had made it very clear that no engine or machine of his was to be scrapped, which was why the smelter's yard had been closed down and most of its staff arrested for the attempted scrapping of Stepney several months earlier. Arry and Bert had also been reassigned to different duties (it had been ruled that as their drivers had been the ones controlling them, and thus the engines were not responsible for their actions).
But none of that seemed to apply here. Duck could see engines of many different eras, ranging from several Victorian designs (such as a few spinners), and other engines. A North Staffordshire Railway battery electric sat amongst the ruined units, but there was also, sitting amongst the wrecks, a Pannier Tank. This one was the closest to them. The right hand tank had long since fallen off, and the other hung off at a strange angle. The smokebox door hung open in a disturbing manner. It was obvious to all there that this engine was dead.
"Wha- what happened here?" Apple Bloom asked quietly. "Ah think we should le-"
Suddenly, there was a bang and a pop, and something on the scrapped pannier tank gave way. It began to roll towards them, the wheels creaking and groaning, sounding almost like a person howling in pain.
Duck gasped. "Back, Apple Bloom, back! We have to get out of here!"
Apple Bloom had already set his cutoff lever to reverse, and the engine soon moved off, his wheels slipping in desperation as he moved back through the trees. Apple Bloom kept checking behind her as the rolling corpse followed them along the line. She had no idea if her mind was playing tricks on her, but the engine seemed to be speaking to them.
It sounded like one sentence, repeated over and over again. "You left us here to die."
As Duck continued to gain speed, now doing well over 40 miles an hour, he suddenly felt the track lurch underneath him. "We're going the wrong way!" he shouted.
Apple Bloom glanced behind them, and saw they were. Instead of returning to the main line, they were suddenly climbing up the hillside at a sharp angle. "Where are we goin'?" she asked.
She couldn't have known that the bolts holding the point in place had weakened with age, and their passing over it earlier had caused them to fail completely, causing the points to swing open. She shrieked as suddenly a tree branch caught her arm. "Get offa me!"
As both of them continued to gain height, in a state of fully blown panic, they suddenly cleared the treeline, and continued to reverse along the track. Up ahead, they heard a loud cracking noise. It was then an earlier notice made sense.
Up at the very top of the valley they were now in, there was a large dam, holding back a resevoir of water. It seemed as though this dam hadn't been maintained in years, for as they watched, water began to trickle through. With a roar and a crash, the dam gave way, unleashing thousands of gallons of water on the valley.
"Keep moving!" Duck shouted, bouncing up and down on the poorly maintained track.
"What do ya think we're doin'?" Apple Bloom shouted back. "But Ah have no idea where we are!"
Behind them was a bridge that ran over a river. This river, already looking pretty full thanks to recent rain, was about to turn into a raging torrent. Before them was an old bridge. In order to get to safety, they had to chance it.
But it would prove to be folly to do so. As Duck reversed onto the bridge, his wheels came off the track and he derailed on the bridge. Seconds later, a torrent hit the bridge and disconnected it from its posts and the track, causing it to meander down stream in a dangerous manner.
"Let's hope this river ends soon!" Duck said. "This is like something out of a disaster movie!"
Apple Bloom hopped out of the cab to try and see what was going on. The river had become a raging torrent, with water spilling over the sides of the river's banks and flooding the floodplain. Rain poured from on high in big, fat droplets that exploded as they hit the ground, and thunder boomed loudly. Bricks and rocks floated past from the destroyed dam.
Apple Bloom then spotted something that caused her jaw to drop in shock. "Beware of the waterfall?" she squeaked. "We're doomed!"
They had no way of stopping the floating bridge, which was continuing to bob dangerously downstream. Up ahead, the waterfall loomed. It was a sheer drop all the way down. If they went over the waterfall, they would fall to their certain deaths.
Duck began to speak. "Apple Bloom, if this is it, I wan't you to know that I don't regret a thing."
"Me too."
The bridge continued floating along, until a buzzing was audible overhead. Duck looked up. "It's Harold!" he shouted. "HAROLD! DOWN HERE!"
"I can see you, old chap!" Harold called. "I'm going to drop a line to the bridge. Apple Bloom, tie it on. Soarin', hold me steady!"
Harold dropped the rope, and Apple Bloom frantically tied a knot to a damaged beam support. "Tied!"
Harold gunned his engine into reverse, and tried to pull the bridge section back. "Blast it! I haven't got enough strength to counteract the water!"
Just then, Donald and Douglas arrived, running along a line that ran next to the river. Donald had an idea. "Drop the rope to us!" he shouted. "Then attach one to Douggie! We will pull the bridge to safety, where a crane can recover them!"
"Roger that!" Harold called, and dropped the line next to Donald. Lyra tied the rope onto Donald's bufferbeam, and Harold then dropped a second rope to Bon-Bon. She secured it to Douglas, and Harold dropped the other end to Apple Bloom, who tied it onto another section of the bridge.
"Pull, Douggie!" Donald shouted.
"What do you think I'm doing?" Douglas shouted back. Both engines puffed and snorted furiously, with the current working against them. Their wheels slipped and skidded violently on the wet rails, but they never gave up.
"I'm going to have to stop soon!" Bon-Bon shouted to Lyra. "Douglas' boiler pressure is getting dangerously high!"
"Keep working!" Lyra called back. "We can't let them go in the drink!"
At long last, they pulled the bridge in and secured it in place so that a crane could recover them. As Duck was lowered onto the rails on the other side, Sir Toppham Hatt arrived. He was very shocked.
"Goodness gracious me!" he said. "Apple Bloom, Duck, are you alright?"
"Apart from nearly goin' over a waterfall and escapin' a creepy scrapyard full of rottin' engines, yeah, Ah'm OK. Ah'm just glad ta be alive."
"Sir," Duck asked. "Do you know what was in those yards?"
Sir Toppham Hatt sighed. "That short section of line you went down passed through an abandoned town. In the 1870s a stub was built off the old Arlesburgh branch to serve the small town of Great Waterton, which was home to a water mill. That was what the dam was for, to help regulate water flow to the mill, which powered machinery. The branch remained open until the 1940s, when declining traffic and cheaper overseas exports led to it being mothballed. Great Waterton was then evacuated by the army, who used it for urban warfare training. That is why the town looks such a mess."
"But why all the engines there?" Duck asked.
"That's a rather dark tale, and a leftover of one of my predecessors," Sir Toppham Hatt admitted. "When the withdrawal of steam engines from service began on masse in the 1960s, they needed space. So they converted the old Great Waterton site into a scrapyard, to put it bluntly. The engines you saw there were in the process of being broken up, but for some reason they abandoned the site before they could finish. The dam was also unstable, and I believe you two know the rest."
Apple Bloom wiped her brow in confusion and a bit of fear. "No wonder Ah felt like Ah'd seen a ghost," she said. "Because we technically did!"
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I feel like this is going to come up again at some point; especially since you’ve made it clear ghost engines are a thing
Also, do ghost engines need drivers, or can they move without one? I mean, we’ve seen that the engines have an extremely limited degree of autonomy, but are ghost engines bound to the same rules?
-whistle- Very spooky indeed. O.O
Oh... man.... That, was the most scariest stories I ever read!
10792723
That wasn't a ghost engine, it was a partially scrapped wreck.
10792946
lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/-i5LkssLgWFmoeb4y0Hmw3wJO57GSa1VwKfd6ikXhiaGerRdSCzgv_L02XTWkg-7_pP513CxgAWuSfnsyFD4UenMQdWbb468yAkr6ReLTxjq
10792959
My intention precisely.
10793159
A true success if I do say so. Even with the callback to Stepney gets Lost.
10793161
As well as TTTE's most atmospheric episode.
10793162
Indeed. And that Toby and the Flood ending was a nice touch. (I too enjoy the music score of it)
Plus, I can totally understand why those scrap yard men were arrested in this universe as they almost murdered poor Sweetie Belle.
10793167
Safe to say, the scrap facilities on the island are are shut now now.
10793179
Thank the maker for that, who knows how many more steamers and poor people those blokes could've almost murdered next?
10793182
I suspect the numbers are already in the hundreds.
10793186
God! You'd think they'd be in league with a crime organization with those numbers!
10793156
Ohhh... so zombie engine?
10793158
This fills me with sorrow
10793187
Yes.
10793251
Nope. The brakes holding it still failed, so it rolled down the hill.
10793253
Welcome to 1960s Britain.
10793275
Fair enough
10793276
Such a sad sight
Though I do want to know why steam engines fascinate people so much (myself included)
10793280
10793281
Or transportation in general.
10793187
Metal theft is in fact a major problem in Britain, although the thieves normally go for copper wire and road signs (leading to "No scrap value" stickers to be put on the back of them)
10793355
My local town hall once had its copper pipes nicked. That was a pain...
10793355
10793362
Man, it really does sound like a huge pain
10793735
It is.
10793158
Getting the upstream error apparently.
10793866
How odd.
10793924
Ah well....
What were you trying to show me with that image anyways? ^^'
10793965
Barry Scrapyard.
10793974
Ah.
10794011
Indeed. Sad pla e.
Runnnn!!!! 😫
Oh no! 😰
Oh shit! 😨