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// Chapter 6: Of brass and iron 
// Story: Rise of the fallen 
// by Iron Sides 
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When steam was king people stood in awe of its power and sheer size. Now is a completely different story…
I speak for the machines that built this country for they will be back to aid us in our time of need, relinquishing the past in favor of the future…
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The shrill whistle howled in the morning air. Waking all the sleeping crews and making them rise from there slumber with groans and sighs. Slowly but surely the camp awakened and turned a whirling mass of bodies as they went back and forth from the showers and the rough sawn wooden mess hall. If you could see this in person you would have thought it was a ghost town by night and a huge city by day. One by one humans and ponies alike filed into the light wooden coaches coupled behind the Jupiter. The ever vigilant engineer saw that the crews had taken their respective seats and with another blast of the single chime whistle he tugged the throttle open, spewing wood smoke and steam into the morning air, powering down the line towards their tracks terminating end.

Twilight had been up for the past 4 hours helping Richard steam the massive blue steam engine. It was slow work that was for sure. She was tired but sat in the fireman's seat with confident smile on her face. At the present time, the ends of the tracks were a little over 4 miles ahead. With a wicked smile Rich flung open the brass throttle and let all the steam from the boiler flow endlessly into the pounding pistons. Gaining speed steadily with each cracking report of the labored exhaust they arrived in mere minutes. With a hiss the air brakes came on and the train came to a screeching halt 10 feet behind the construction train.

Richard let out a satisfied chuckle; His reflexes were still tuned to this kind of stuff. He sat there waiting for the human and pony brigades to disembark so he could back the train down the line to Lazarus to gather much needed supplies. After 5 minutes the train was completely empty. seeing the clear opportunity he pulled the reverser all the way back and started the lumbering beast backwards to uncouple from its train at the spot which was aptly named Gladstone for its conveniently located gravel pits which had been worked by Twilight and Richard the day before. Slowly the engine and its track clacked down the hastily laid track, rocking back and forth all the way. 

The young engineer grabbed hold of the brake handle and pulled it into the application position and stopped the train on a short siding that was built only a few days ago. Richard hopped out of the wooden cab and made his way to the rear of the engine to unlock the knuckle couplers on the engines tender and the first car on the train. With a clunk the massive fists opened, relinquishing their grasp on each other. He didn't even bother to unhook the air lines, and just climbed back into the roomy cab. 

The engine slowly pulled forward before the air hose came apart with a snapping whoosh. These couplings were meant to do this so he didn't worry. The air pumps thumped along, making up for the lost pressure as the engine maneuvered over 2 switches and coupled to a waiting train of 5 boxcars. With a solid clunk the couplers locked and the engine and train were now one. He asked the young pony to go connect the air hoses as she had seen him do in the morning when he had coupled the Jupiter onto the passenger coaches.

With a gleeful smile the mare jumped down with enthusiasm, Richard had no idea why, and proceeded to let the air flow through the entire train. It took the unicorn 10 minutes to figure out how to connect the 2 hoses. Once she did that she just appeared in the cab with a flash of purple light, scaring the shit out of Richard...

"WHAT THE HELL TWI!!!!" He yelled, flailing his arms about

"What? I figured this would be easier then climbing up here myself." she stated

Richard just glared at the young pony, "At least warn me when your gonna do that next time."

"Don't worry, I won’t." she replied with a smile

Richard just shook his head and grabbed the whistle cord, without letting the mare know. It scared her nearly out of her own skin. She turned her head towards the laughing human and rolled her eyes; “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” She muttered

"Hey twi. Could you pull on that rope above your head please?" asked Richard, pointing to the braided rope

Complying she surrounded the rope in her magic and gave it a good yank. Attached to the other end of the rope was the brass bell which clanged in delight at its first ringing in 2000 years. Once the pony got the rhythm down it clanged nonstop until Richard was forced to tell her to stop. He shook his head and opened the throttle slightly. Seeing an error, he quickly pulled a lever on the floor that released a whooshing sound that was near in sync with the exhaust beats of the locomotive.
After a few revolutions of the massive red driving wheels he pushed the lever closed with his foot, silencing the sound. He opened the firebox door and tossed in 5 chunks of wood before closing the gate to the mini hell.

It was 10 miles to Lazarus and the engineer was going to use every inch of it to let the lumbering behemoth stretch her legs in an all out run. With a wicked smile he glanced at the unsuspecting mare who returned the look with confusion. Jerking open the throttle the drivers spun wildly as they fought for grip on the cold steel rails. Slowly the engine regained its grip and chugged backward, advancing in the direction of the small city. With another pulled of the whistle it let out a wild shriek as the blue locomotive charged down the line at 40 miles per hour.

With a grin the engineer motioned for Twilight to look at a gauge bolted to the middle of the back head. With only a glance her jaw hit the floor. She had only seen pegasi move at speeds this great. Slowly the speeds built up the the point where it was traveling at 50 mph; an astonishing speed for something so large and heavy.

"What makes it able to travel at such speeds?" asked the quizzical pony

"Remember what I told you yesterday?" he replied

"There are no gears on this engine though..." she pointed out

"That's true, but the same thing applies here." He took a quick glance behind him before continuing, "The rods are bolted to the driving wheels at a point where it can travel at these speeds but have a good amount of power as well. Say if the rods were 3 inches lower from center on the wheels it would go slower but have a great amount of power. But if the rods are closer to center it would go faster but have an extremely hard time pulling anything at all."

"I guess I can see how it works." she said, placing a hoof to her chin in thought

"I was taught how to understand it, not how to teach It." he said with a smile

He turned around to see the first of the outlying buildings of the expanding town. Turning serious he grasped the shiny brake handle and swung it into emergency. With a sharp hiss the brakes clamped down, hard, on every axle of the train. Somehow, some way, the train ground to a halt a scant foot before the end of the tracks. He wiped the sweat from his brow with his arm before replacing his Stetson. With a slight laugh at his luck he leaped to the ground and walked to the storehouse were the supplies, such as apples (of course), meat (we needed protein), and the rest of the food stuffs were kept. He lifted the heavy cast iron latch and pulled the heavy oak door open. Inside were mounds of produce that could feed an army for a while year, it had to. At least until the crops came in. 

With a groan at the task ahead he started the arduous work of transferring the food from the storehouse into the boxcars. Before he reached the location of the first crate it was surrounded in a purple aura and slid into the air with ease. Twirling around he found a smiling Twilight with her horn shining with the very same color aura. They worked for hours, loading crate after crate into the wooden boxcars. It was slow and tiring work but by 3:00 PM most of the food had been moved. Throughout the work Richard had kept the fire hot but not hot enough to make too much steam and send it out the safety valve.

"Time to go back..." Richard said flatly
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"When I asked you if I could help you I did not mean like this..." growled the grease covered unicorn, trying to wipe the grease and grim from her face

He laughed, "Well, this is how you maintain a locomotive like this Twi; though it doesn't help when you trip and have all the grease and oil drop on your head."

Twilight threw the soiled rag at the laughing human but he dodged it. He went about greasing and oiling ever joint and pivot on the massive locomotive like he was tending to a newborn child. Grabbing the oil can he proceeded to fill the little reservoirs that sat atop the piston rods. Finishing the oiling process he grabbed little white sticks of solid grease. He motioned for the unicorn to grab the little bundles of fat and had her follow him to the first of the giant red driving wheels. 

Pointing to what looked like a screw above the main crank pivot he said, "This is where the grease sticks go." He pulled a wrench out of his pocket and undid the little bolt, "Now all you have to do is mash the grease in and replace the bolt." He then placed the stick in the hole and mashed it down as hard as he could. Placing the bolt back, he threaded it down a little before cranking down on it with the wrench. He repeated the process for each of the wheels until grease had squeezed out around every pivot.

Glancing at his watch after the maintenance he realized that it was 6:00, quitting time for the crew. Climbing into the wooden came of the hissing locomotive he grabbed the whistle cord and let out 2 long blasts, signaling for the crew to get back to the train before it left in 10 minutes. As time slide past the men and ponies filed back to the trains and one by one boarded. Like clockwork, 10 minutes passed and the labored chugging and clanging of the brass bell echoed across the flat landscape. The Jupiter powered backwards down the line with the twilight sun glinting off its polished brass that adorned its massive girth.

"I have a friend that would think this machine is truly beautiful." Stated Twilight, gazing at the sheer beauty of the beast

"She isn't the only one." Richard pointed out with a smirk while he looked over his shoulder at the rising silhouettes of the camp. "Some people could never grasp just how beautiful these machines were. They didn't when the humans ruled at least." he sighed
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The next day was nearly exactly like the first except for the fact that the rails had reached a point were they couldn't go without help. Upon seeing this, the leviathan had been pulled back to camp with its train of flatcars yesterday before Richard hit the sack. Steaming silently, it sat directly between the Jupiter's passenger train to the right of it and the string of boxcars to the left. With a roar the safety valve popped open and spat searing hot steam into the air. It was restless after sitting for the past few days and wanted to move out. Richard had been known to talk to his machines for some odd reason but no one ever questioned it.

Walking up to the red giant he spoke, "I know you’re angry at me for not usin ya for the past few days, but you'll be able to stretch your legs today."

Twilight had spoken with Richard earlier that day and said she was needed back home. She wanted to stay and see if she could learn more from the weird human but she could hardly understand any of it. Before leaping into the cab she asked for several locomotive mechanics book.

"All right... So you want mechanics books? Why?" asked the quizzical engineer with a look of confusion

"I guess I want to learn as much as I can about these machines." said the studious unicorn

Rolling his eyes he replied, "Still don’t understand but you can have them if you want. I got copies in storage. Your gonna have to wait till we get back to Lazarus before you get them though."

She shook her head, "I don’t mind."

(A little video for your viewing pleasure :Leviathan and no, this has nothing to do with the story.)

Feeling time was of the essence the young engineer started the empty train backwards towards its destination. Traveling at 30 miles per hour for the duration of the trip they quickly found themselves among the hustle and bustle of the small wooden city. It looked very much like your average western town that you would see in a Clint Eastwood or John Wayne movie. Most of the buildings were of the false front verity that was incredibly simple but exponentially strong. Richards engineering mind kicked in and it was like X-ray vision; he could see the skeleton of the buildings around him. Mentally flicking a switch in his head he turned to the pony and said Goodbye, after giving her the books of course.
Once Twilight left on the pony train he walked to the spindly construct at the edge of town. The rails needed to cross a deep creek and to do that they needed lumber, and lots of it. Luckily Richard had seen this coming and had a saw mill delivered via rail over a month ago. Somehow it had been thrown together in a matter of days, much to the satisfaction of the engineer. The only problem was... they didn't have a way to run it. The mill needed to be belted to something in order to get the circular blade spinning at the right RPMs but that wouldn't happen. Not with the Traction engine in Gladstone anyhow. The problem was puzzling to the engineer but he knew there was a way to get it to work. He was trained to do this stuff after all. Slowly he scrolled through a list in his mind of the supplies still in the Storehouse. There was the 8 barrels of fuel left and the engines from the military vehicles. His eyes widened at the realization. He could weld together a frame for the engine and somehow bolt a pulley to the flywheel. 

'Hmm... Yes! That will work!' he thought and ran into the empty storehouse with the plans in his mind...

The hours ticked by as the bright lights of an arc welder flashed from the double doors while Richard cobbled together something that would work. Piece by piece it came together and soon it was ready for the 6.5 liter V8 engine. Sadly it was fuel injected which meant it needed electrical power in order to run. Rich wasn't an electrician, even though he was everything else, so he asked one of the maintenance crews to build a wiring harness for the saw mill’s power plant. With the engine hoist positioned over the V8 the man pumped the hand operated lift cylinder and the engine slowly took to the air. It swung from side to side as he pushed it over to the stand and lowered the heavy engine into its new home. A few bolts later and it was ready, ready for more work anyway.