//------------------------------//
// A Fresh Pair of Eyes 
// Story: Thomas and Friends: the Ghost Train 
// by The Blue EM2 
//------------------------------//

Harrison rolled into the yard at Golden as the previous duo left for their respective destinations in Canada. Moonstone looked down the line and was pleased to see it was quiet. "We should have a clear run from here!" he said.

"At least as far as Field," John replied. "That's where Marie is working. I was thinking we could ask her if she saw anything odd, as we can at least figure out what's going on."

"Playing detective, are we?" Moondust smiled. "I'll be happy to join in with that game, as I often enjoyed solving mysteries back in my youth. Me and my sister often did that sort of thing."

"Which one?" John asked, as they began the climb out of Golden and up into the mountains. "I recall you saying you had three."

"Oldest," Moondust replied, as he checked the speedometer. "The other two were born a fair bit after us, and tended to be with each other. We used to joke that the youngest partly existed to give the one older than her a playmate!"

Both engine and driver laughed at that as they continued on their way. Pulling into Field, they noticed some stock waiting in a siding. "Looks like we got a traffic jam," John sighed. "We'll probably be cleared to start the climb after these two trains have gone."

As he sat there, waiting for the line to clear, a familiar horn sounded nearby, and a small diesel on two four axle trucks came to a stop. Although the bodywork towards the back was narrow, the front was tall and bulbous, making visibility harder on the driver.

The engine was also painted in an odd livery. The front and back were red, but most of the bodywork was painted in black and white stripes. The letters CN were also emblazoned on the side.

"Bonjour, Marie," John said, jokingly.

The diesel rolled her eyes. "I do speak English, you know. Just because I'm owned by a railway company from Quebec doesn't mean I speak French all the time."

"Noted," Moondust said quickly. "Have you noticed anything odd going on around here lately?"

"Apart from the usual?" Marie asked. "Well, come to think of it I can think of one thing. A few nights ago a motorbike crossed over the crossing and didn't stop when the barriers were down. An engine nearly hit them!"

"Did you see what they looked like?" John asked.

"Only that they were wearing leather and had a biker's helmet on," Marie replied. "They must have been a ghost as they had an implausible amount of luck that day."

Moondust put a hand to his chin. This piece of information intrigued him, as this was an oddly specific ghost. "Why would a ghost need to wear a helmet and leather?" he asked.

"Ghosts tend to wear the clothes they died in," John pointed out unhelpfully.

"You'll have plenty of time to discuss it," Marie noted. "With a broken air line that train isn't going anywhere fast."





"Ghosts, spooks, mists," Miranda snorted to herself. "John's gone soft in the boiler! There's no such thing as ghosts, after all!"

She came to a stop at the foot of the climb towards Rogers Pass. The signal was seemingly at red, indicating an oncoming train. But the signal didn't clear for a few minutes. "Come on! What's taking so long?"

Suddenly, the air seemed to grow clolder, and the sky began to darken around the steam engine. "What's going on?" Miranda asked, more in confusion than anything else.

The sky continued to darken, with banks of bad clouds building up and blocking out the sun, plunging the area into darkness. Then a heavy fog began to roll in from another place, blanketing the area and severely restricting visibility for anybody in the area.

Soon the fog was so thick that nobody could see more than a foot in front of them. "This'll make climbing the grade difficult," Miranda noted.

And the signal was still set to red, indicating that oncoming train was still not here. Had it suffered an air line failure? Was it halted for other reasons? Or was it not there at all for other reasons?

Miranda would soon have her answers. A puffing sound started up out of the fog, which was odd as no steam specials other than the one John was working were due for today.

And then it happened. A ghostly shape suddenly rolled past on the other line. The engine was spectral and grey, and the coaches were white as if made of nothing but air itself. It rattled past at speed before vanishing into the mist.

It took Miranda a few seconds to process what she had just seen on the other line, even as the fog stubbornly remained in position before her. But eventually she made the connection. "A g- ghost!" she said, after a moment. "John was right!"

"Excuse me?" called a voice further back. "I don't mean to be a bother, but the line ahead is clear, and this potash needs to get to the docks."

"Sorry!" Miranda called as she set off up the grade. This needed to be dealt with and discussed with the other engines before anything bizarre happened. Or anything else that qualified as bizarre happened around these parts.

She needed to get this information to the others so they could produce a plan of action. But first she had to complete her delivery.

She had always believed that there was no such thing as the spirit world. That this tangible reality is all there is before us, and that there is nothing else. But this bizarre encounter was something she could not explain with what was dreamt of in her philosophy.

She had to ponder the critical question that this bizarre encounter raised amongst those observing the circumstances and come to a conclusion about them as reasonably as she could.

It seemed like a bizarre question, but- were ghosts real?





John sat at Lake Louise water column whilst his tender was being refilled. The coaches sat in the platform, as the important people had gotten off and were currently in the static dining coaches next to the station, where they seemed to be enjoying something fairly posh.

Not so for Moondust, who was looking forward to his sandwich, which would keep him going until they got back to the staff canteen at Golden.

Just then, Harrison arrived, having trailed them from Mount MacDonald. "I'll take the coaches for you to Eldon to be sorted out!" he said.

"Thank you!" John replied, and watched the shunting operation start before the coaches were hauled away to a place far away. This was the train the railwaymen call-

"Wrong story, Mr. Narrator!"

Izzy? How did you get here? You hadn't even been born when this story happened!

"Glitter lets me see everything!"

Anyway... A few hours passed, and John later noticed a familiar shape rolling into the station, shorn of stock and running light engine. "If it isn't little miss brash herself," he said. "How'd it go down there?"

Miranda stopped in the loop, rather out of breath for some reason. Then again, climbing the spiral tunnels around Lake Louise is hard work. "Sorry," she wheezed.

"For what?" John asked.

"Turns out your ghost is real," Miranda replied, still exhausted. "I saw it on the way towards Rogers Pass. It was heading this way last I saw, but I saw no sign of it on the way here. It's almost as if it vanished!"

"Ghosts aren't known for obeying the laws of physics," Moondust noted.

"I thought I should head this way and inform you so we could figure out what to do," the consolidation continued, her tender being refilled from the nearby pipe.

John laughed. "The great, fearless, fire eating Miranda? Afraid of a ghost? I never thought I'd see that day coming."

"Very funny."

Moondust consulted a track map. "If it was coming down that line, then it must have come from the Mount MacDonald tunnel. Unusual, but that could make sense depending on the cargo. Now then, there's another line in the area that runs in, so it might have used that." A plan was beginning to form in his mind just as Harrison returned from switching.

"Something going on?" he asked.

Moondust had a plan in place. A plan so cunning you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel. "We've got a plan to catch a ghost," he said. "Tonight, we camp out in the siding next to the Mount MacDonald Tunnel and see if we can spot this ghost. If so, we follow this ghost and find out where it's going from and to, and if needed what is required to appease it and make it leave."

"Should we get Marie in on this?" Miranda asked. "Four engines is better than three."

"Let's do that," John said, and glanced towards the line before him.