//------------------------------//
// Chapter 2 
// Story: The Railway Ponies: Highball 
// by The Descendant 
//------------------------------//

Chapter 2
 
  

One day, not long after I had watched Highball and his good lady take The Alydar off into the distance, I was making my way through the wet, slushy railyard.

This was always an iffy proposition at best; we were always taught to look up and down each track, keep our ears up and listening, and to never place our hooves on the rails as we made our way across. A tumble to the timber and steel would leave us in a world of hurt, and the wet snow of a late winter made things that much more dangerous.

But I was young and stupid—unlearned in the harsh ways of the railway ponies. 

That is opposed to now, of course, when I’m old and stupid.

There was some matter on my mind that, at the time, must have seemed quite heavy, but which has passed away into insignificance with each growing year. It was most likely union work, rent, or some other damn thing.

I stepped through the yard with my coal scoop swaying from my mouth. The tang of metal and sweat sat deep in the steel and wood of the handle, and I picked my way through the web of steel, not much aware of anything else.

I’d just crossed behind a long string of boxcars and set out across the next set of tracks when the air was ripped out of my lungs. My senses came awake as my vision filled with rust and steel. White lettering sped past, flashing through my racing, panicked thoughts.

My coal scoop dropped from my mouth, clanging to the ballast.

I stood there, breathing heavily as the cut of three freight cars that had nearly dashed my brains across the yard rolled farther away and down the long classification track. 

When I had entered the yard, some foolishness had been going through my head. I stared at the cut of cars as it slowly came to a stop in the distance. Instead of my foolishness, I had almost had three freight cars try to go through my head. The realization of how poorly that would have gone made me suddenly feel quite ill. In my carelessness, I hadn’t heard the switching engine “kicking cars” into the track—giving them a swift push and then just letting them roll away under their own volition—and simply assumed from the smoke that it was working far away.

Those freight cars… they had come as close to my face as a razor during a shave. The very thought of it made me nauseous. I wanted to be sick. 

I picked up my coal scoop, and as my body shook, I hopped up into an empty boxcar. There, my eyes settled over flattened, empty shipping pallets marked with “Property of Mairsy Dotes, Inc.” Vast, uncontrollable shudders racked my body, and staring at the empty pallets, I realized how very close I had come to heading off to the Happy Valley Railroad.

I sat there for a good twenty minutes… then picked myself up and went back to the roundhouse, fully alert and watching the yard tracks with a newfound focus.

The railroad sings a song of steel, and we railway ponies can only keep the refrain. Some sing it better than others, and I’ve missed a few notes here and there, like I did there, alone, in the snowy yard.

Some sing it better than others, and Highball sang it very well, he and #3803.

But even he couldn’t sing it forever.





Further down the line from Capital Transfer is the nice little city of Ponyville. It is the actual terminal of the Canterlot Division, but I didn’t get down there too much. There was one day a year, though, when Ponyville vexed the whole railroad.
 
Every year, a festival called Winter Wrap-Up brought all of the ponies that lived there, past and present, back home to clear away the winter snow and ice and such. It was a bit baffling to those of us who didn’t make our homes there, but it was a fine earth pony tradition, so I didn’t say much about it.
 
Most railway ponies are earth ponies, you see. I’m not saying that there weren’t a few unicorns, or even a pegasus pony or two, but earth ponies held most positions. It’s just a natural extension of the earth magic of our race. What is steel but refined earth, after all?
 
It was the day of Winter Wrap-Up in Ponyville, and for a good solid week, the passenger trains had been full of ponies heading home for the holiday. To the railroad, that was a blessing and a curse, as we found our callboard absent of many Ponyvillians.
 
“Seems like we forgot to plan for it again this year,” I heard File Cabinet say. He rustled through the papers on his desk, searching to see if there was some name he’d forgotten. “How do we forget to plan for it every year?”
 
“Well, we’d better get on it fast,” I heard Grease Pit answer. “You’ve already stolen away all of my older wipers to become firestallions and brakeponies for the day. Celestia willing they all come back in one piece.”
 
I placed my few small things in my locker and then slowly trotted forward into the office, wondering all the while what fate would bring me that day.
 
“Well, you best find me a senior firestallion right quick,” Bullpen said, trotting in from the roundhouse in a cloud of cinders and streaked with oil. “Number 3803 is all steamed up, and The Affirmed will be arriving in half an hour. Highball will be needing a senior firestallion.”
 
My head dropped low. I had only been with the railroad for three years, and despite only having a few demerits, I still didn’t have much seniority over many of the other firestallions. I sighed and leaned against the rack that held all of the union paperwork and safety pamphlets. My eyes went back and forth across all of the titles. Asking for Time Off: A Survival Guide, Switch Stands: Knowing Your Enemy, and So You’ve Been Dismembered… all of the titles just sat there, sitting in my perceptions as I waited my turn for the stallions to notice me.
 
In a mere moment, everything changed.
 
A hoof lay across my shoulder, and I felt somepony patting me on the back. I jumped a little; as I looked up, I half expected to see Fusee or one of my other friends, associates, or co-conspirators looking back to me. 
 
“How about this colt here, File? I’m sure that he’s equal to the task. Is there any reason why I shouldn’t have him as my firestallion today?”
 
I stood there, my jaw open, as Highball brought his hoof from my shoulders to his vest pocket. The quiet stallion took a few steps forward, his hooves sounding out against the tiles, and repeated his question.
 
“Well, gentlestallions, is there any reason why he shouldn’t be?”
 
“No, I suppose not,” File Cabinet said. He looked at me over the top of his glasses, leaned back, and moved my name on the callboard, marking me as being assigned Train #22, The Affirmed.
 
At some point, I remembered to breathe again.
 
“Well, colt,” Grease Pit said with a smile. “Hop to it! You know to get the fire…”
 
I heard the three stallions laughing as I sped out of the office and into the roundhouse. I’m certain that my hooves never once touched the concrete. I did a fine impression of a pegasus as I flew to where I could hear #3803 simmering away.
 
I don’t even remember how my coal scoop got in my hooves. All that I knew was that I suddenly found myself staring up into her cab, the bright work shining in the reflection of the small fire that the hostlers had kept in her firebox.
 
I lifted myself up, making the grand entrance that I had envied time and time again. Her cab was remarkable. It was immaculate, clear of debris and grime. As I looked at it, all that I could do was imagine myself entering a mare’s boudoir, awaiting her presence.
 
My striped cap came off my head in respect. I wiped back my mane, making myself presentable, and held my cap to my chest.
 
“Ma’am,” I said, reintroducing myself, then I set to work.
 
I remembered every mistake that I’d ever seen other firestallions make, and I banished each one from my performance. Her fire was up and ready, resting easily and burning contently by the time I heard Bullpen and Highball approach. I wiped off anything that my hooves had touched, making sure that nothing was out of place, and then I took my prescribed place in the left-hoof seat.
 
Highball lifted himself into the cab. His grey eyes slid across the backhead of the engine, taking every detail of his lady. His gaze settled across the fire and the water levels. He smiled a little as he heard her injectors open up, feeding the water slowly as I had designed.
 
“Have you fired a TW3a before, colt?” he asked, settling into his seat. The engineer turned around so that he faced backwards to look out the slowly opening roundhouse bay doors.
 
“N-no sir, I can’t say that I have,” I stammered.
 
“Well, don’t worry about that too much,” he said, resting his hoof on the throttle. “Just treat her like a mare, and she’ll be a lady about it.”
 
“Yes sir,” I said. Bullpen waved us on, and steam filled 3803’s cylinders. With that, my first trip up the Old Main with Highball began.
 
You’d think that I’d recall more of it.
 
At one point we came out of the “haunted” tunnel at Moonville, a place that would figure prominently later in my career. I remember the great wash of light that filled the cab, making her brass fittings shimmer and shine.
 
I remember him testing me at one point. We were pulling fine and proper, the engine singing her song in staccato notes, when suddenly everything seemed to go to the Well. I found myself shoveling at a rate that didn’t seem, well… very ladylike for 3803. I checked the water levels and the fire over twice, and it didn’t seem as though I had done anything wrong. A glance out the window told that there was no grade of any note.
 
All sorts of possibilities raced through my mind as I fought to keep up with her demand for more fuel, my back aching as sweat began to pour down my face in new abundance, catching in tangles of my mane that had come loose.
 
I risked a brief look to Highball to see him eyeing me over the top of his glasses. I blanched for a second and went running around screaming in my own mind as my idol watched me huff and puff. Just then, a realization went through my head. My eyes levelled across the reverser; I noticed that it was sitting just a few notches forward of where it had been the whole trip.
 
That’s important, you see, as it meant that more steam was going through the cylinders than needed to, and I was shoveling faster than I should have. Bewilderment settled across me. Why was he making extra steam? My gaze returned to Highball, and saw him smiling at me. I nodded, acknowledging what he had done.
 
He had tested me–had wanted to see what I would do under the pressure.
 
“Always stoke smarter, not harder,” he said. It was the only thing I can remember him saying the whole trip. It was a lesson I kept with me throughout my career.
 
You’d think I’d remember more from that trip. I do recall seeing the ocean from a distance as we came out around a sweeping curve, #3803 staying true as the spires and rooftops of Baltimare spread out before us. I remember the muffled sounds inside Baltimare’s ancient, covered roundhouse. Number 3803 looked positively regal, slowly spinning on the decked turntable and awash in steam as they serviced her for our return trip.
 
I remember Highball taking me across the street to a bar, of all places. We sat off to one side and had beans and hashed browns at an old, time-worn table, one I suspect he had eaten at for years. I recall him telling me that it was time to couple to the southbound Alydar.
 
I remember thinking about how the uphill climb all the way back to Saddleburg would be hard work, and that 3803 would finally show me her rough, unhappy side. I was dead wrong. The engine purred and sang her song as her groom sat in his chair, the cold spring air flying through his beard and greying mane.
 
I should remember more. I should have so many crisp, clear memories of that day, but I don’t. Nope, they’ve all dimmed with time, I suppose.
 
One stands out, though. One memory remains as clear as the moment it happened.
 
We returned to the roundhouse, and as Bullpen gathered 3803 back into the bay, we stepped down and headed for the office. File Cabinet nodded to Highball as he turned in his report. “How did the colt do?” File asked, nodding in my direction.
 
“He did quite well,” Highball answered. “I should like to have him as my firestallion during any of my runs, if he’s available.”
 
They both waited for a moment as I gathered up my coal scoop. I don’t think that I even recalled dropping it, but the moment it clattered to the floor, I knew this was no dream.
 
So I became Highball’s firestallion, and bucking the seniority of the roundhouse only cost me an extra tray of my mother’s brownies at the next union meeting.
 
I had finally come to a place where I could study under a master… where I could become a railway pony of the first order. I could be an engineer.
 
Like Highball.
 
If I had known at that moment what the cost would be, I would have quit on the spot and gone off to college like my mother always wanted.
 
 
 
 
 
There were three things that made Highball the engineer he was.
 
The first was #3803, of course, as the two were a single being. The second was his long decades of skill and practice. He had hired out as a colt, just like me, but his past was a bit murky. Truth be told, he had started out when he was hardly higher than a stallion’s withers, not much past the age most fillies and colts would still be in school. Those were different days though, and he was made of firmer stuff, like most older generations always seem to be. His schoolyard had been the railway yards, the tangle of steel where little black switching engines had kicked cars around. His schoolhouse had been the roundhouse in Baltimare.
 
The third part of the trifecta was older than Highball or #3803 and filled with many more legends than just this one stallion and his steamer alone.
 
The Old Main was the first section of the Baltimare & Ohayo railroad ever laid. That, by the space of a few months, made it the oldest stretch of railroad in Equestria, and perhaps all of Equus. It had been hewn from rock with muscle and magic. It had been laid across woodlands and swamps by the heaving strength of stallions and the guile of all three races. It had tunnels deep and dark, and bridges high and lofty. The division had sharp curves and long stretches of sweeping tracks whose miles had been paid for in ponies' lives.
 
The technology had been new. The techniques had been new, and there had been a price. Invocations were still said in roundhouses, interlocking towers, and section houses all along the Baltimare & Ohayo for those who made it possible.
 
Then, a decade later, some pony in management realized that the real money was in Manehattan, not Baltimare, so the New Main was built connecting Saddleburg and that glittering metropolis. The difference between the two divisions was night-and-day. Technology made the new line a much easier bit of railroad to handle.
 
It took a special kind of engineer to move what traffic went up and down the Old Main over it at a steady, safe clip. It took a special kind of engine, too. Put all three of them together—Highball, 3803, and the Old Main—and I had a perfect school for growing into my mark.
 
I recall that year fondly. I remember the spring breaking cold and wet, but turning warm… and wet. One day we came out of the cuts above Moonville to find the valley awash in fog, obscuring the rails completely and leaving the signal targets looking like the forlorn lights of ships on a forgotten ocean.
 
Highball settled deeper into his seat, drew his hoof through his beard, and gave a contemplative hum. His practiced hoof guided his engine through that fog with a casual ease.
 
I swear he could sense the rails beneath him, and that he could feel the way that they were flexing beneath 3803’s drivers. He was built for this stretch of track. He anticipated every unseen curve, and I watched my water and kept my fire hot as we flitted across the landscape like ghosts floating through a memory.
 
Later that spring, we were proceeding up the hill to Saddleburg with a special mail express when Highball suddenly dumped the air brake.
 
I had been in the middle of throwing a scoop of coal into the firebox. When the train went into its emergency stop it dashed me against the back head and firebox door. I went sprawling to the deck of the cab as Highball guided 3803 through the worst of it, doing his best not to send the engine off the tracks and the express cars flying across the farm fields that lined the grade.
 
When I was able to pull myself off the floor, I looked out the window and down the length of 3803’s boiler. My face went white as I saw what Highball had somehow sensed. There, just on the inside of the curve, was a section crew moaning beneath their toppled speeder. Behind them, their cart lay upside down, their tools scattered across the mainline.
 
As the conductor came trotting forward, Highball and I leapt out of the cab and to the aid of the six stallions that lay sprawled across the track. They had taken the curve too fast and flipped their speeder, pinning two beneath it and sending the rest tumbling across the ballast, rails, and ties.
 
There was no way he could have seen them, not on that curve. Somehow, he had just known, sang the refrain in my head. Somehow, Highball just knew… could sense that something was wrong.
 
That was how it was with Highball, #3803, and the Old Main. It was something to see, that I can tell you. That spring was the happiest of my career to that point, and the images that have sat behind my eyes all of these years remind me that it was one of the best of my life.
 
I remember looking up one evening to see Highball sitting in his chair with his left hindhoof resting on the back head. He was leaning deep into the cushions, looking as content as a cat in the jaybird seat. The wind was whistling past us as we flew up the Old Main, and his beard bounced on the winds. The clear grey of his eyes settled across the rails in front of him, and the first stars appeared over the tracks.
 
His hoof went from resting on the throttle to lovingly stroking it. The spring winds, complete with their chill, buffeted his mane and beard as he leaned out the window or stared ahead down the length of the boiler jacket. The headlight found the rails, showed him every approaching milepost as the telegraph poles flew by like fenceposts, and sparks flew overhead in the form of dying embers. The starlight caught Highball in his repose, and when I opened the firebox doors, the soft oranges flickered in the reflections that fell off his glasses and the chain of his pocket watch. 

Here was a railway pony of the first order. Here was a true railroader, a wabash artist… a stallion who knew his mark well and who had the right tools and talent to fill it.
 
I have always thought that if there was ever a stallion and a steam engine that were made for each other, then it was old Highball and his longtime partner, Ten-Wheeler #3803. Together they sat as royalty over the division, and they simply were a sight to see.
 
It only made sense that disaster would come when the trinity was broken, when he and his engine left the Old Main.
 
It was strawberries, of all things, that did it.
 
The area west of Ponyville was good agricultural land. It was famed for its apple orchards, carrot farms, and flower nurseries. Another crop that was highly seasonable, and highly profitable, was strawberries.
 
Every year, just after the summer solstice, the berry crop would start rolling in. Whole yards full of white reefer cars that had slept for the last five months would suddenly come to life. Ice that had been harvested from frozen ponds in the winter was ground up and spread across green baskets of the plump berries. The railroad’s job was to race those trains north to Baltimare and Manehattan, or west to Los Pegasus and Vanhoover.
 
Highball had been quieter than usual, and our last few runs had passed in only the barest conversation.
 
“Oh, just feeling the tiredness in my bones, colt,” he had said as we arrived in Saddleburg with an express passenger train. “I could stand to mark off for day or two, I think.”
 
Bullpen came trotting up to us as I tried to wrap my mind around what I had just heard. Highball wanting to mark off was… well, he never wanted to mark off.
 
“Hello there, Highball! Do you still have time on your card? You haven’t outlawed yet, have you?” he asked, wondering how much time Highball and I had before we reached our legally mandated time off.
 
“Yes,” he said, a certain tiredness hanging in his voice, “I do have about four hours left, but I was hoping to go back to the boarding house and rest a little, though…”
 
I stood there, aghast. I’d never heard him actually state that he wanted to be away from the railroad. Bullpen noticed it too, and he stammered his request in surprise at the older stallion’s words.
 
“W-well, I s-suppose that’s your right, but with the berry rush on, we’re a bit short-hooved, you see?” He lifted his hoof, motioning towards the yard where another passenger engine, a TW2c, sat forlornly. Mechanics moved around the front of the locomotive and cursed under their breaths.
 
“That engine just shore a cylinder head,” he said, wiping his hoof across his forehead. “You can mark off, but #3803 here is the only engine available. W-we’ll have to have another crew take her and–”
 
“I’ll take the train,” Highball said, and before Bullpen had even stepped away he was back in his seat. He was indignant, of course. They may as well have attempted to sell a stallion’s daughter as let any other engineer touch 3803.
 
I worked the fire back up, and my friend Fusee, the brakepony, joined me as we backed down to the empty refrigerated cars. Fusee waved his lantern, guiding us closer as we coupled to the train.
 
I noticed that the coupling, though not bad, was harder than I had come to expect from Highball. I marked it off to him being upset. Though I had placed him on a pedestal, I knew he wasn’t above having moods. I simply went back to shoveling… though I couldn’t help but notice that Highball was a bit off.
 
In truth, I have to admit that it was more than a bit, now that I’ve had these years to think on it.
 
Fusee took up a position as a head-end brakeman, sitting atop the coal pile, watching me stoke the fire and watch the water levels. He made small jokes all the while, but the persistent feeling of unease that hung around #3803’s cab soon silenced him.
 
“Highball,” I asked. “Are you alright?”
 
“Why, I suppose I’m just a little tired, colt. That’s all,” he answered, forcing a smile. I tried to smile back at him, but the ashen look across his face stole something out of me.
 
He’s just tired, is all, I told myself. I looked up to Fusee. He didn’t believe it either.
 
We arrived in the yard outside Ponyville. Our run down the Ponyville Subdivision had been on time, but I knew that Highball had made the run with nearly twenty minutes to spare with heavier trains before. Fusee uncoupled us from the empties, and as we slowly turned on the Ponyville turntable, I watched the summer sun sitting across Highball’s features.
 
The color was washing out of him. Something was wrong.
 
“Highball…”
 
“I’m fine, dammit!”
 
It was the first time he’d ever snapped at me.
 
We backed down into the yard, and there we coupled onto a string of stark-white reefers. It was one of the half-dozen trains awaiting engines in the yard next to the icehouse and icing platforms. The strawberry rush was on, and there was already water trickling from their sills. The ice inside would only keep the berries market-fresh for a day, so we had to hustle them back to Saddleburg where they would be taken to Manehattan or Baltimare.
 
Fusee waited until he saw the rear end brakepony and the conductor wave from the caboose before giving Highball… well, the highball, the signal to make speed. Fusee leapt up onto the engine as we began to make our way through the yard tracks and out to the mainline.
 
I nearly jumped out of my denim jacket when I heard #3803’s drive wheels slip. I had thought that it was impossible. I had never thought that he would… that Highball could ever…
 
We hit green signals all the way, but as stations began to pass less frequently, I had another horrible realization. We were losing time. Highball was losing time…
 
“We’re… w-we’re going to have to ssstop for water at Capital Transssfer,” he said, slurring his words and scaring me half to death. Usually a light express train could fly all the way between Ponyville and Saddleburg without stopping for water. Only poor handling and using too much steam would account for such a thing.
 
“Yes sir,” I said, heading into the tender.
 
Fusee looked at me as I approached, and I knew that he could see that something was horribly wrong, too.
 
“When we pull in for water at Capital Transfer, I’m going to need you to head into the cab,” I said, whispering into Fusee’s ear. “He’ll fight us, but we’re going to need to get him out of that seat. Something’s wrong. Something is very wrong… He looks like he’s dying.”
 
Fusee nodded, and I went back to stoking my fire. The life seemed to drip out of my idol as he sat hunched over, the color fading from his face.
 
We approached the final curve before Capital Transfer, and as the train began to slow, I placed my coal scoop on the deck and headed back over the tender to the water hatch.
 
I nodded to Fusee as I did. All sorts of worry and concern were painted across his face, and with a nod, he made his way into the cab. I felt like the steam of ten thousand engines was crammed inside my head. As I watched him go, I pondered what I should do next. I climbed onto the hot, steel deck of the tender. No matter what, this would change everything.

I only wish I had known how much.
 
I stood upright, expecting to feel the train slowing further as we approached the water tank. But instead, as we raced through the runaround tracks at Capital Transfer, I looked up to see the station agent standing at the platform with a hoop of orders…
 
… orders that were still in the hoop.
 
Highball hadn’t grabbed the orders. The look on the face of the station agent spoke volumes. He looked like he’s seen all of the horrors that lurked inside Moonville Tunnel. I watched as he sank to his hind legs, and I knew that something was wrong.
 
The train wasn’t slowing for the water tower. In fact, it was going faster. The speed picked up as we rounded the curve outside the station. A red target signal raced past me. The vacuum tore my hat from my head, and I dove for the deck of the tender.
 
I opened my eyes to see a sight that will stay with me forever.
 
In the cab, Highball sat limp across the throttle, the bar pushed far forward under his weight. He wasn’t moving, and Fusee was struggling heroically to lift the old stallion out of the seat.
 
It looked like a filly lifting her ragdoll. All of the life had left the stallion, and he sprawled across the deck, his legs unmoving, his eyes open, his jaw moving up and down.
 
“The throttle!” I shouted over the winds. “Fusee, the throttle!” I called to him again and again, braying the words into the air, fighting to lift them over the roar of the train. It was useless… utterly useless. We lurched through the final curve before the water tower, and there I saw something that froze my blood.
 
A brakepony stood by the trackside, waving his lantern furiously. He flashed through my vision in an instant, but it seemed like an eternity. The red signal… there was a train ahead of us, taking water. We were speeding into a train!
 
“Jump!” I cried. “Jump!” Fusee looked up from the fallen form of Highball and leaped to the engineer’s seat. He pulled back on the throttle and fumbled around, looking for the train brake to dump the air. For one brief instant, he looked out the window. All at once, he took my meaning.
 
I struggled forward over the coal load, fighting to get to Highball, but Fusee got to him first. He hefted the stallion into his forelegs, and then the two fell over the space between the cab and the tender to the hard ground below.
 
I lifted my eyes to see the spectacle of an empty engine cab. Number 3803 was racing forward to her fate without her master, and as I peered forward, I saw the horrifying sight of ponies fleeing from a caboose that sat dead in our sights.
 
The horror and fear in their eyes shot adrenaline through me. I placed my hooves across the edge of the tender and prepared to jump. I gave a great cry, and then I joined the birds.
 
May Celestia grant that I never hear a sound like that ever again. May she permit that the sights and sounds of a locomotive making splinters and shards of steel out of a caboose and reefer cars never meet my ears as long as I live.
 
May the sound of an engine losing her song–of an engine suddenly twisting her frame and lurching into the air–never meet me again… that I beg.
 
I thudded to the earth and rolled into the brambles and thorns at the side of the right of way. My eyes opened just in time to see the wreckage pile up beneath 3803, lifting her off the rails so that she did a ghastly pirouette against the sun of a summer’s day. She spun around amid the reefers of our train as they plowed into her. A great wash of ice, water, and red mash of berries flew across the scene as the water tower exploded under the weight of the engine that crashed through it.
 
Number 3803 wailed and moaned. She looked every inch a fine young doe being drawn down by a pack of white wolves, and the gore of her death struggle flowed over us all as a spray of water, steel, ice, and wood.
 
An entire wheel set came racing down the embankment not four feet from me, and a reefer rolled over, disintegrating itself and vomiting its cargo across me. I lunged forward on my broken legs, fighting to keep from drowning in the liquefied remains of the contents.
 
There was a vast groan, and a tangle of steel that was once #3803 came collapsing to the earth, spilling her fire across the right of way, a great cloud of steam escaping from her. Her torn boiler jacket thudded to the earth as she panted like a wounded animal, and shrieks ripped through the air from deep within her frame.
 
Suddenly, all was quiet. Nothing moved. It seemed, in those horrible moments that followed, that all of Equus was silently staring across the twisted wreckage that had come in the wake of the calamity.
 
“Can anypony hear me?” I whimpered as I fought my way out of the wreckage. My body shook in pain and I collapsed across a broken axle, my legs protesting every motion I made by shooting white-hot flashes of pain through my senses. I wiped the blood from my muzzle and lifted my head, trying to listen for any sound at all—trying to see or hear if anypony other than myself had survived.
 
As I surveyed the scene, something caught in my vision. My eyes fought to adjust through waves of pain and what would later be diagnosed as a concussion.
 
Still, what I saw before me played out in perfect, abject awfulness.
 
A figure crawled along the ground, pulling itself forward in disjoined motions as though the body was made up of distinct parts rather than a whole. I watched in disgust, attempting to figure out what it could be… and only when it spoke did I realize that it was a pony.
 
“Darlin'?”
 
It was Highball.
 
The stallion was swimming through the ballast, debris, and mountain of coal that still spilled slowly from the upturned tender.
 
“Darlin’?” he said again, his voice floating across the scene like a breeze drifting across ancient, forgotten places.
 
I watched in fascinated horror as he fought his way up the coal pile to where something sat shimmering in the sun. As I watched him the distant, plaintive cry of emergency sirens in Capital Transfer met my ears, and groaning forms began to emerge from amid the tangled mass of steel and wood like the dead rising from forgotten graves. I took some comfort in that awful scene… at least that meant that others had survived the carnage.
 
I lay slumped across the axle; darkness began to crawl into the corners of my vision. I watched as Highball struggled forward, drawing himself closer to the shattered hulk of 3803. Something shone amid the coal pile, and he wormed his way towards it.
 
He reached out with a bloodied hoof, wrapping it around the dismembered throttle bar. Burning embers fell from her firebox doors, the very life dripping out of his mare, and he lay amid the ruins watching as they dropped to the ground.
 
“Darlin’, I’m sorry,” he whimpered, cradling the throttle. “I’m so sorry.”
 
His frame collapsed on itself, the breath leaving his body—leaving his body still and quiet amidst the coal and wisps of steam.
 
I stared at him until my eyes went dark. I barely felt the hooves of other ponies upon me as I slipped away into a dark place… a tunnel in which there was no headlight to find the rails.