//------------------------------//
// Mountain Engine 
// Story: Thomas and Friends: The Retold Adventures 
// by The Blue EM2 
//------------------------------//

Sir Handel and Gallus had both had a bad day. The old carriages, Agnes, Ruth, Jemima, Lucy, and Beatrice, had never really liked either of them, and had never forgiven them for shunting them roughly all those months ago. As a result, they had been very awkward with them, and had made them slip to a standstill twice on the grades. Not surprisingly, they were cross.

"Seriously, do those coaches never stop holding grudges?" Gallus complained, taking out his cleaning kit and removing some grime from Sir Handel's piston valves.

"I agree! Those foolish cattle trucks should be scrapped!" Sir Handel added.

"Take that back, now," Skarloey fumed. Truth be told, he never liked hearing engines bad mouthing the old coaches, and as such he was quite upset to hear this. "Those old coaches need care and respect, not bad names."

"I agree entirely," Rheneas added. "Now take my advice, Sir Handel, and be thankful we're not a mountain railway."

"My old line was pretty mountainous," Sir Handel replied. "We had these engines which had faces on either end, and two power bogies on either end. Come to think of it, they looked a bit like diesels. There's one at that Ffestiniog place, called Merddin Emrys. Anyways, what the Stephenson is a mountain railway?"

"Mountain railway be railway that climbs mountains!" Yona told him.

"How steep are these lines?" Sir Handel asked. "Anything beyond 1 in 14 is more or less impossible for an engine."

"It varies from railway to railway," Ocellus said. "There's one in Switzerland that does 1 in 9."

"Don't pull my leg!" Gallus snorted. "That's impossible."

"It is possible," Rheneas smiled. "There's one not far from here."

A fierce argument started, until Donald came to a stop outside the shed with a flatbed. Tied down to it was an odd looking engine, painted purple. He had inside double frames, six small wheels, and a stovepipe chimney with a flap mounted to it. His boiler tiled downward toward the rails, and his cylinders looked as if they were fitted back to front.

"Could you please be quiet?" asked a voice. A girl stepped off the footplate of the engine. She had lavender skin and purple, pink, and blue hair, done up in a bun. She also wore a pair of black, square framed glasses, and had purple eyes. She wore a pair of black shoes, purple socks, a tartan skirt, a turquoise, long sleeved shirt, a purple waistcoat, and a black tie around her neck.

Ocellus looked in confusion. "Twilight?" she asked.

"How do you know me?" she asked, confused.

"We all know you!" said Skarloey. "You're Thomas' driver!"

"I don't know a Thomas," the girl replied. "I'm new here. But yes, my name's Twilight Sparkle. I was asked to come down here to help Culdee after his refit at Winterthur."

"Where?" asked Sir Handel.

"Winterthur," the odd engine replied. "My name is Culdee, and I work on a mountain railway near here. It's called Culdee Fell, and I've worked there a long time. Twilight here is American, but her father is employed by SLM, the company that overhauled me, and so they invited her to operate me here."

"Told you," Skarloey said to Sir Handel, who simply looked cross.

"Where am I, exactly?" Culdee asked. "Am I nearly home?"

"You're at Crovan's Gate," Gallus said, as he walked around the other side of Sir Handel to get a better view.

"Ah!" Culdee smiled. "I'm almost home. Just a straight shot down the line, up the branch to Peel Godred, and I'm back on my own track."

"How do you climb mountains?" asked Skarloey. "You must be clever to do so; our wheels would slip!"

"I'm not clever really," Culdee smiled. "I'll let Twilight explain, she can do it far better than I can."

"You're too kind," Twilight answered. "Basically, Culdee is fitted with a pair of gear wheels. These wheels have a special cog mounted to them, which slot into a pair of rails with notches fitted to them, or teeth. These teeth roll forward up the mountain, and if Culdee should slip, he won't roll back, but be held in place."

"Why does he need two?" Rheneas enquired.

"In the old days," Culdee answered, "they used a system invented by a Swiss person called Riggenbach. That had one cog wheel, but that was prone to slipping. So, another Swiss person, called Abt, added a second wheel as a backup should the first fail. Rather 'abt', don't you think?"

Everybody groaned at the dreadful pun. "If you can go up, how about going down?" asked Sir Handel. "Wouldn't you get stuck, or roll back?"

"We have good brakes," Culdee replied. "And we rely on the coaches too."

"Our coaches," Rheneas said, "are sometimes silly and play tricks on us."

Culdee sighed. "Our coaches would never behave in such a way," he said. "Twilight did driver training on one of my cousins at the Brienz Rothorn Railway, and one of the coaches there was bad. So they took his wheels off and turned him into a restaurant! Anyway, there was one time I was frightened I would derail. Very frightened indeed."

"What happened?" asked Yona. "Why big strong mountain engine scared?"

And so, Culdee began to tell the tale...





Kirk Machan station, 1899

Culdee looked about nervously. The line was yet to open, and there were some critical checks that still needed to be made to the engines before the line could open. The last thing they needed was something going wrong; he was aware of a gruesome accident that had occured on Snowdon three years earlier, and was keen to ensure such a thing did not repeat itself.

The two coaches coupled in front didn't ease his nerves. He'd heard from a Swiss engine at Winterthur that taking more than one coach was dangerous. The five of them had been woken up that morning, and he had been picked for a special train up the mountain. His driver jumped onboard his cab. "Come on, Culdee!" he said. "The inspector wants us to go to the top of the mountain and back again, to do some final checks!"

"OK driver," Culdee replied, and whistled nervously. His regulator was opened, and he steamed away into the distance. The run up to the summit went as normal, nothing to worry about. He was soon backed up to a very steep section of track, which led right down to a steep, tight curve over a sharp drop.

The Inspector looked at Culdee's driver. "Brakes off!" he demanded. "Let him roll!"

"What?" Culdee asked in shock. But it was too late, as the driver had done as instructed. The train gathered pace down the very steep gradient. Culdee slammed his eyes shut in horror. If he came off at that curve, it was certain death for him and all onboard the train.

The driver was getting similarly jumpy, and reached for the brake handle. The inspector slapped it away. "Hands off!" he said.

"Are you crazy?" the driver shouted. "You're going to get us killed! There's no way we'll hold that bend at this speed!"

Culdee then remembered something that had been said to him back at the works. He was fitted with a safety feature called automatic brakes, which he could apply without the driver's intervention in case the driver was incapacitated for whatever reason. "Here goes nothing!" he said, and brought them on to full force. There was a jolt in the rest of the train, and a loud bang as the couplings slammed together. But within a few seconds, and moments before they hit the curve, the train stopped.

The inspector smiled. "Good work Culdee!" he said. "You're fit to run here!"

Culdee's face was white, and he didn't reply, still shaking out of fright.





"I'm generally not frightened now," Culdee said calmly. "I know I can stop safely on any grade, and the safety features are there to help me."