It's never a good start to the day when the warning klaxon sounds.
Sunny had been awoken by the noise outside. She sat up in the trailer she was staying in (the Marestream was out of action for repairs as it needed spare parts), and rubbed her eyes in confusion. "What'sh going on?" she asked, bleary eyed, as she looked out of the window.
The klaxon continued to blare into the region, sounding all over the place with its ominous message of doom and destruction.
"Something's wrong!" said a worker.
"You don't say!" said another. "If nothing was wrong, no alarms would be sounding, would they? So you can say again that something is wrong!"
"Something's wro-"
"Not literally!"
That joke's overused, Sunny thought to herself. She pushed open the door, her brain still switching on from all that was going on. "Is something going on?"
"Some sort of problem higher up the line," said a pony. "Possibly just a rockfall or something like that. Or maybe a lineside fire. Either way, they'll probably soon have something sorted out and then work can continue."
Suddenly, noise came from a nearby tunnel. This was the tunnel that connected one of the bridges to the next major section of line up ahead. And suddenly, a pump cart roared out of the tunnel, two ponies pushing up and down on the handles with all their strength, as if their life depended on it.
"RUNAWAY TRAIN!" one of the ponies onboard the pump cart shouted. "RUNAWAY TRAIN! CLEAR THE AREA! CLEAR THE AREA!"
The ponies suddenly began to take notice of what was going on. They certainly seemed to be worried, so it probably wasn't a false alarm, right?
Sunny checked her map. "That can't be good," she said, as she loaded the gradient profile. "This bit's all downhill. If there's a runaway train it'll have a hard time stopping!"
Just then, a series of loud percussive beats echoed through the valley, and most of the residents of the construction camp looked up and heard it too.
The lead forepony had had enough. "Move quickly!" she shouted. "Evacuate the camp and move to higher ground!"
The workers quickly complied, leaving the area as quickly as they could. Pots, pans, tents, and entire buildings were left behind, all with most of their stuff that wasn't in use still inside. It was far more important that they were safe, after all, than to be potentially reduced to a squidgy mess below a bridge.
As the area was cleared, vehicles were also backed out of the area by those who were already driving them. They rattled for the hillsides and surrounding terrain determined to get out of the way and avoid being hit by flying debris.
"Anything else we can do?" Sprout asked, who had also been woken by the commotion. "Coffee, Sunny?"
"Is that all you can think about?" Sunny asked in return.
"I find it calms the nerves," the red earth pony replied, before taking a sip. "WHAT IS THAT?!"
Just then, the runaway train emerged from the tunnel mouth. It was going at full blast downhill, steam pouring from the cylinders and chimney, and running far too fast to stop safely on the bridge. As it hit the curve, it began to tip over.
And when things going at speed tip over, it usually doesn't bode well for anypony below. It fell off the rails and began to descend towards the ground below, dragging most of the freight vehicles behind it down with it. It plummeted into the ravine at speed before crashing into the ground. Wooden vehicles splintered apart like matchwood, and metal was torn apart from boxcars and frames. Bogies were shorn from bodywork, and vehicles were smashed together.
The locomotive itself was reduced to a fraction of its former length, now resembling a bizarre piece of protest art rather than a functioning piece of machinery. Remarkably, though, the caboose had remained on the bridge, and it sat there rather awkwardly above the carnage below.
"Is everypony OK?" called the forepony.
"Yes!" called back many voices.
Sunny grabbed a pair of binoculars and took a look. "That's a pretty nasty wreck," she said. "Zipp isn't gonna like this at all."
"Nor do I," said the forepony. "We need to get that mess cleaned up, but first we need to stabilise that bridge. There's a high chance it took damage in that accident. This is really gonna slow us down."
Sunny looked worried. "If this is true... then the line may not open in time!"
Sunny was right to be concerned about the accident's potential knock-on effects further down the line. The construction project had been planned with each time making roughly equal progress each day, as the lines would need to connect to one another. True, there had been problems along the way, but by and large proceedings were proceeding as normally as proceedings could proceed. (That sentence is probably the greatest number of times the word 'proceed' and its variants were used in one sentence.)
Pipp had been sent to take a look at the pegasus construction towards the earth pony lines. Safe to say, she was not enjoying the visit very much. "Yuck!" she said. "This mud is gonna be a nightmare to get out of my coat!"
"Well, Your Maje-"
"Higheness. I'm not the Queen. Yet."
"Well, Your Highness, We've had a bit of trouble with some rain. Rain clouds have flown overhead and made the ground a bit boggy. We've had to spend quite a bit of time laying earthworks and ballast to compensate for the bog as otherwise the track keeps sinking into it. Not to mention some of the supplies we need haven't arrived."
"Namely?"
"Some track panels, but if you look at this map," the worker continued, indicating to a map, "this is the point where our rails are supposed to join onto the earth pony line. The main problem is they aren't here, so we cannot move forward. This track will have to sit in storage until the earth ponies get their mess cleaned up."
Pipp looked at her phone. "HashTagNotGood."
"I don't think this is working!" called a worker. "There's too much rubble to clear!"
Sunny got closer to the wreck site. "What's going on?"
The forepony looked serious, but then she always did. "The wreck can't be left sitting here, as damaged equipment is unsightly and also could cause stability issues later in the day," she explained. "But we have nothing big enough to recover this lot in one go. We'll need to cut it into pieces and ship it out in bits. The freight cars are totalled, or so one of the railroaders tells me, but the engine may be repairable."
Sunny turned her mind to another thought on her mind. "Well, who caused the accident?"
"That's a good question," the forepony said. "But surely the question should be what caused the accident. There's no guarantee this was an act of sabotage, and jumping to conclusions is always dangerous, especially these days when rumours spread so easily."
"I certainly learned that one the hard way," Sunny admitted, her mind briefly returning to the Zephyr Heights jewellery theft all those moons ago. "Who should investigate the accident?"
Zipp touched down outside the Palace and trotted over to the information board. The Grand Commission on the Restoration and Reunification of the Trans Equestrian Railroad and Subsidiary Branchlines (or GCRRTERSB, for short) had established a digital display to allow for information to be added in real time to the board. And it wasn't looking too good.
"Is everything OK, Zipp?" Queen Haven asked, continuing her well established habit of appearing suddenly from nowhere. "The board is apparently slightly out of date, but that can be fixed."
"No," Zipp replied. "Everything's fallen behind. The gauge mixup caused unicorn construction to slow down, and that's having serious effects on other sections. They've had to modify some of the bridges to take dual gauge track, and that's caused a slowdown on their end. And now this accident in earth pony territory has put the entire project at risk!"
"How so?"
"The earth ponies are accusing the unicorns and pegasi of deliberate sabotage."
Queen Haven blinked. "Well, I hardly think there's such a thing as accidental sabotage. But what could prompt them to pursue such a preposterous idea? I thought we were all supposed to be friends now!"
"Seems old habits die hard in Equestria," Zipp said quietly. "Maybe this was a bad idea after all."
The princess jumped slightly when she felt a hoof on her shoulder.
"Zipp, if there's one thing you mustn't do it's give up on your dreams. True, we all encounter hardships and struggles along the way, but it's the way we rise above those hardships that defines us. And we all need to work together." Queen Haven paused. "I am calling another summit. Hopefully there we can get this nonsense sorted out."