//------------------------------//
// Pipp and the Queen of Yorkshire 
// Story: Thomas and Friends: Fun in the Sun 
// by The Blue EM2 
//------------------------------//

One morning, Pipp was hard at work on checking Sophie over. She had washed the engine's paintwork with a hose several times, and the sun gleamed off the bodywork as she checked it again.

"Lookin' good!" she said, as she took a quick snap of the paintwork. "You're the shiniest engine in all of Yorkshire!"

"Can you quantify that statement?" said another engine.

Pipp rolled her eyes. "Don't kill the vibes."

Sophie laughed. "We all do need to look good, after all. The tourists expect everything to be shiny and clean, without a spec of dust to be found anywhere on us or anything else."

"That's easy for you to say," said Keith, on the other side of the shed. "It's a never ending battle against all the dirt and muck over here. And the fact I've failed with a faulty whistle hardly helps. I'll have to sit here until it gets fixed."

"You poor thing," Sophie said gently. "I'll see if there's any way we can help you pass the time."

Just then, the shed manager came through to hand Zipp a piece of paper. "Hmm," she said. "Collecting the mayor? Looks like a special train is in order for us." She headed over to Charles to start him up whilst Pipp got her own work order.

Pipp looked even more excited. "O. M. GOODNESS!" she said, and flipped on her phone. "Check it out, guys! Me and Sophie-"

"Sophie and I," an engine corrected.

Pipp rolled her eyes. "Sophie and I are off to collect somebody super important from Whitby today! The Queen of Yorkshire!"

"Yorkshire isn't an independent country," said Keith. "I know Yorkshiremen think they're better than everybody else, but they have gotten too big for their boilers if they think they have their own monarch."

"I'll be updating you with more when I get there. Gotta go. Pipp Pipp Hooray!"

"Pipp Pipp Hooray!" her fans chorused. And with that, Pipp deposited her phone in the cab's lockbox, locked the lockbox, and then got Sophie ready to run.





A few minutes later, Charles was being attached to the empty stock he would be taking to Pickering to collect the mayor. "Typical," he grumbled. "An important engine like me, only getting the mayor. Why does Sophie get to take the Queen?"

"I suspect that she actually isn't a monarch at all," Zipp replied, as she made some extra checks and attached the brake tender to the front of the formation. "Britain has a King, as you'll recall, and that means it's probably an honorary title. Unless somehow a monarch from another dimension has arrived in Britain and needs transport."

Charles snorted. "Monarchs from other dimensions? That sort of thing only happens in cartoons. Next you'll be telling me that there's a pony counterpart of you who's the princess of a city!"

Just then, Sophie emerged from the darkness, going a bit fast. "Slow down!" Charles shouted.

But it was too late. Sophie crashed into the brake tender, which was knocked backwards a bit.

Charles was apocalyptically cross. "SOPHIE!" he boomed. "YOU DINGBAT!"

"What's happened?" Sophie asked.

"You've smashed up the front of my brake tender!" Charles complained. "Now we'll have to get it fixed."

Pipp looked out. "Oops."

Luckily, the signal then changed which permitted her to move forward, and then reverse out through the other platform towards Whitby.

Charles rolled his eyes. "Amateurs."





Later on, Pipp and Sophie arrived in Whitby. To the left hand side of the station sits a siding, and this is usually filled with coaches. But today it wasn't. Two flatbeds sat there, with a barge that had been seemingly chopped in half.

Pipp blinked. "I'm confused. I was told we were to collect the Queen of Yorkshire."

Just then, the yard manager arrived. "There she is," she said. "That's the old barge over there. It's being shipped for scrap. You two can move it as far as Whitby, where a mainline diesel is waiting to take it to the scrapyard."

Sophie looked bothered. "Look at all that sludge!" she said. "This will get all over my paintwork!"

Pipp looked similarly bothered. "When I was told I was collecting the Queen of Yorkshire, this isn't what I had in mind."





Charles rolled along through the countryside, his wheels rattling and the coaches behind him behaving well. "Well, this isn't too bad," he said, as the birds sang in the sky.

Zipp had the cab windows down to ensure she didn't get too hot. "We've certainly got a good climate out here."

But as they passed through Levisham, they suddenly heard a mysterious squeak. "Oh, not again," Charles said.

Zipp sighed. "Probably a wonky bearing... again. I'll slow down until we get to Pickering, which conveniently is our final stop."





It was not so easy for Pipp and Sophie. The barge was long and heavy, and furthermore seemed to be an oversized load. The heavy vehicle seemed to also sway despite being chained down on the flatbeds. It also smelled awful.

Sophie was focusing on the line ahead to avoid thinking about what would happen if the boat leaked some of its gunk onto her. Pipp, on the other hand, had thought ahead, having pulled on a HAZMAT suit to protect her from any muck.

The train continued to roll along at very slow speed, having to constantly stop as things got knocked over. Telegraph poles were toppled. Bits of station platform got battered. And worst of all some trees got scraped.

Whomever had loaded the boat onto the train hadn't thought to remove the chimney either, which was partly the cause of all the problems they were having.

Pipp checked behind. "I'm not good with numbers and figures, but this load looks to be top heavy," she said.

Sophie sighed. "Tell me about it. It's always lurching about and-"

Then there was trouble. Just before the junction there is a large sewage pipe that runs over the line. And because nobody had thought to check the height of the load, the chimney smashed through it! Sewage and water went everywhere in the fields, around the lineside, and then began to flow towards the nearby water.

Pipp stopped the train. "That doesn't look good!" she said, hopping out of the cab to take a look.

"At least there's none on my paint!" Sophie said.

"Never mind that! If that sewage gets into the water supply it could make people very ill!" Pipp grabbed the cab radio. "We've had a sewage spillage near Grosmont. I'll need some backup to clean it, over?"

"How bad is the spill?"

Pipp thought for a second. "About a quarter of a Chernobyl."

"Looks like we'll need the HAZMAT gear."





Charles arrived at Pickering, looking positively splendid with his rake of coaches. The train was ready for the mayor and his family to board.

Zipp leaned out of the cab. "I'll need to get down to check the bearings. Don't move anything until we're done, and don't tell them you saw me there working on it."

The porter nodded. "There's no way I could. I don't even know your name!"

Elsewhere, Lady Haven was showing the passengers to the compartment. "As you shall see," she said, "we spared no expense. I know that local important people enjoy travelling in comfort, so you shall too."

"That's very kind, Your Ladyship," said the mayor of Pickering. "I see they've rolled out the red carpet."

Sure enough, a member of platform staff opened the door.

Zipp, who was down below, suddenly heard a loud scream. "What the?"

Whomever was screaming must have had an enormous pair of lungs, as they kept going for so long that windows began to shatter all across the station. When they had finally run out of air, Zipp popped up from the platform to see what was going on.

The compartment had a mouse in it! "Oh, that's what was causing the squeak," she said.

The mayor looked over. "And you would be?"

"Zipp. Just call me Zipp."

"Her mother's the Duchess of Dorset!" said the station master.

The porter from earlier looked in amazement. "If your mother's the Duchess, that makes you a lady!" he said.

Zipp rolled her eyes. "Will you look at that. The porter just became a detective."

"What's going on back there?" Charles called.

"We're just getting rid of a mouse!" Zipp replied.





Things had gone considerably better down at Grosmont. The biological hazard had been cleared, and the barge was then left on the sidings for collection.

At the end of the day, the Haven family gathered at Grosmont station to help lock up before heading on their way home. "Well, seeing as nothing went quite to plan we made a good day of it," Zipp said.

"And neither me nor Sophie got dirty on the way!" Pipp replied.

"Which is quite remarkable, considering all the waste that got released," Lord Haven noted. "Who thought putting that up was a good idea?"

"I think they thought people would use common sense and not try to move big objects," Zipp replied.

"Oh well," Lady Haven said. "What's done is done. I've booked us a nice meal down at Whitby, so that gives us plenty of time to get home, shower, and get changed. Misty will join us once she and Bellerophon have finished putting the stock away."

Just then, a whistle sounded through the station, and the evening fish and chip train puffed through on its way to Pickering. Steam shot from the chimney as it rolled past.

And straight down on the assembled Havens.

Pipp was the first to react. "Seriously?"

"Well, that's the shower done!" Lord Haven joked. And they all had a good laugh about it.