Chapter 5
The next morning, Dangersignal was down at the large storage sheds, which were comfortably holding the large collection. He was inspecting a large tender engine, with light green paintwork, the words “Great Western” on the engines strange looking thing called a tender. The engine had two leading wheels, eight drive wheels and no trailing wheels.
According to Alistair, the locomotive was a 4700 2-8-0, built for the Great Western Railway to handle coal trains, as well as the occasional passenger trains. He had said that the locomotive would be the best to run an “inspectors” train, to gauge the railway and see what improvements were needed to bring the entire system up to codes.
As the dark red Alicorn checked the water in the tender, he noticed Alistair checking over a line of Inspector saloon coaches. It took the human only forty minutes to make sure everything was in working order, then he joined Dangersignal, who was piling wood into the firebox.
“Jaisson and Jordon will join us as the station,” Alistair explained. “Also, he suggested that we work rotations, meaning that you’ll fire on the journey to this Crystal Empire, then drive the train down to this Appleloosa place, while Jaisson rides the coaches and Jordon acts as the guard, then at Appleloosa, Jaisson will fire while you take up the guard duties, allowing Jordon to ride the coaches. From there…well, you get the picture.”
“Yes,” the dark red Alicron chuckled.
The two worked at getting the engine ready. It took three hours to get the steam engine ready, but once it was ready, Alistair moved it to the large doors, which stood open. Dangersignal did some manipulation of track called “points” to make sure the engine was on the proper line for the coaches.
“All set!” Dangersignal called to Alistair, who reversed the locomotive down the line to the coaches.
When the engine buffered up to the coaches, Dangersignal gave a hoof gesture to tell him that the engine was in position. There came a quick, single shriek and Alistair joined Dangersignal to help couple the coaches.
“What was that shriek?” Dangersignal asked as he joined the chain couplings of the coaches to the locomotive’s tender.
“That was the whistle,” Alistair replied, joining some steam pipes. “One on the whistle in a yard like this means that I am stopping or ‘holding’ the locomotive while you join the couplings. I don’t want to rip a hoof off or crush you between the coaches, as that would not do.”
“Good point,” Dangersignal conceded. “Anyway, how many inspector’s coaches do we have?”
“Five. One LNER Teak; two small six wheel, one formerly owned by the Longmoor Military Railway; one formerly owned by the GWR and the last one formerly owned by British Railways,” Alistair said. “The coaches are in arrangement of having the two small six wheel coaches between the bogied coaches, with the teak coach at the front of the train and the GWR coach at the rear.”
“Ah,” Dangersignal said. “I take it that it’s to see how each one handles the routes?”
“Not exactly,” Alistair said. “It’s to see how much resistance the coaches give us on the gradients.”
The two continued on talking as they took the train to the platform. Jaisson and Jordon were waiting on the platform. When the train came to a stop, Jaisson boarded the GWR inspectors saloon coach, while Jordon checked his watch. The local train to Baltimare arrived ten minutes later.
Jaisson blew his guard’s whistle, raised his right arm and shouted, “RIGHT AWAY!”
Alistair responded with a single toot and the train rolled away. Soon, they were making good time as they thundered through the countryside.
“How fast are we going?” Dangersignal called over to Alistair as the Alicorn threw another shovel load of coal on the fire.
“About forty-five miles per hour,” Alistair replied.
Dangersignal looked out and noticed a tail lamp. His eyes widened in horror as he saw the obstruction moving!
“STOP THE TRAIN! THERE’S SOMETHING AHEAD!” Dangersignal roared.
Alistair grabbed the brakes, jammed them hard on and hung the whistle. The engine’s wheels locked and the heavy train was sliding. The coaches were bouncing around, throwing the two passenger about. As the obstruction became clearer, it was another train!
“OH SWEET BRUNEL!” Alistair cried, and threw the 4700 into reverse, in hopes of stopping the train from colliding, but the weight of the coaches and the forward momentum weren’t easy things to combat.
Dangersignal tightened down the hand brakes and looked to see that Jordon had tightened the brakes in the rear coach and was going from coach to coach, applying the brakes. All the crew of the “test train” could do was pray that they stopped before there was a fearful collision.
The other train wasn’t making any attempts to stop. Dangersignal noticed young fillies in the brake coach and his eyes were now wider than anything! He looked at Alistair.
“I’m gonna try to stop that reversing train! You fight for control!” Dangersignal shouted.
“Go it! I’m counting on you!” Alistair replied.
Dangersignal teleported into the cab of the reversing train and saw the brake lever. He grabbed it and threw it hard on and moved the regulator hard over and released the brakes, in hopes of moving the offending train forward.
“Hey!” the driving pony snapped. “We’re going to Fillydelphia this way!”
“Not with another train in section!” Dangersignal roared in anger.
Not wanting a fight, the driver watched as Dangersignal got the train moving forwards. The points that lead to a siding were set for that siding. Acting quickly, Dangersignal put the train in the sidings and ran back, turning the points to the main line.
Dangersignal turned to see the “test train” come into the station. The brakes were slightly smoking and there was a dull red glow from what Alistair had called “brake shoes”. The driving pony of the reversing train was now in a fine temper and he let everyone know what he thought of interfering ponies, especially dumb Alicorns who haven’t found their calling in life.
“For your information,” Alistair replied calmly. “We had permission for the road. You were in the wrong by attempting to take the road for your own, when your train was scheduled for 11:45 am. It’s 10:25 am and we were making good time. You also put your passengers at risk of being crushed under the immense weight of my train.”
“Pah!” the driving pony snorted. “It’s no skin off my back! I don’t really care about passengers anyway! Noisy, complaining things!”
Alistair was absolutely angered now. He open palm smacked the driving pony of the other train.
“Passenger are your paychecks to keep your house up to code!” he told the driving pony. “You need to be more wary of what you say! Where I come from, that kind of talk is what gets you fired or beaten into dust by several large guys with shovels. Trust me, you need to think in future.”
Alistair walked back and inspected the locomotive and coaches. Dangersignal joined him soon and Alistair looked at Dangersignal.
“The brakes aren’t too bad,” he said. “But we’ll have to take our train back and put it in the sheds for maintenance.”
“That means?” Dangersignal quizzed.
“That means either we fire one of the other engines or we cancel today’s shakedown run,” Alistair said.
It was agreed that they’d fire another engine and come rescue the Fillydelphia commuters. Jordon pulled out a strange device and after pushing some buttons, he put it to his ear.
“Hullo, Franklyn,” he said into it. “Can you fire up the Maroon 8F and have it sitting, tender first in the platform? Our ‘test train’ ran into some trouble and nearly crushed another train. The brakes have suffered and are in need of replacing. Oh? You got some people to come and help us? That’s excellent! Oh, Darryn and Jeffery are coming up with the 8F? Tell them to wait and if you can, send another engine to rescue the crippled ‘test train’. Oh? You’ve got the 2800 fired up and it’s waiting for a job? Who’s working it? Dylan and his brother Keyth? Very excellent indeed! We shall wait their arrival!”
He closed the device and put it in his pocket.
“Some of my old college mate-Keyth, Dylan, Darryn and Jeffery are here to help out. Keyth and Dylan are coming up to rescue the crippled train, then Jeffery and Darryn are coming to rescue the Fillydelphia train,” Jordon said.
“Most excellent!” Alistair said.
Dangersignal, now inquisitive, asked the four humans he was with about their collection and friends. Alistair, Jordon, Franklyn and Jaisson explained everything.
“The friends are friends from when we went to college,” Jordon said. “They promised us that they’d help us if we got a railway to run our engines on.”
“As for the large collection,” Franklyn said. “That to us is a mystery in itself. We were only told when our grandparents died and their wills had been read to us. Right now, it’s a miracle that we have spare engines and coaches!”
“Agreed,” Dangersignal said.
They waited for a total of fifteen minutes before an engine, similar in shape to the 4700 arrived. Dangersignal’s eyes popped.
“I thought you only had one 4700?” he quizzed.
“It’s a 2800,” a teen said. He had long, well trimmed platinum blond hair, tan skin, wore a black shirt, khakis and tennis shoes. His companion looked exactly like him, except the shirt was blue and the trousers were dark green and the shoes were sneakers.
“Keyth!” Jordon called to him. “It’s been a dogs age!”
“Same here,” he said. “Ah, I see you have come here to help the railways?”
“Yes,” Jordon replied.
As the two caught up, Jaisson explained to a confused Dangersignal that all Great Western engines were built to a standard policy, making it easy to repair.
“Ah,” Dangersignal replied.
Jaisson nodded, then hand motioned the 2800 to back up to the coaches. Once the buffers connected, the couplings were joined and the 2800 huffed away with the “crippled” train. Fifty minutes later, a large maroon tender reversed into the station and standing there was another 2-8-0, with a larger boiler, bigger tender and the letter ‘LMS’ on the tender.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, please reboard your coaches,” Jaisson said. “We’ll get you to Fillydelphia in no time at all.”
The group clambered into the coaches. Jordon stood on the platform, checking to see if there were any stragglers. When he was convinced that the platform was clear, he blew his guard’s whistle, raised his right arm and shouted, “RIGHT AWAY!”, then jumped into the coach.
The train started slowly away and began to gather speed. Soon, they were bucketing along at a good pace. It seemed that time had flown by, as Fillydelphia station had appeared and the train began slowing down. Soon, it stopped in the platform and the passengers left the coaches.
The return journey was boring, but Alistair managed to get all the confusion sorted out and the next day, he and Dangersignal took a train of Dean 31 four wheel coaches and brake coach along the lines, making notes and looking at everything.
That night, after the tours were done, the group met up with two boys who were waiting around.
One had neatly trimmed jet black hair, blue eyes, skin the color of snow. He wore a dark green shirt, cargo shorts and sneakers.
The other had neatly trimmed shoulder length sandy blond hair, green eyes, dark tan skin. He wore a dull red shirt, cargo shorts and sneakers that look like they had seen better days.
“Dangersignal, please meet Jeffery and Darryn,” Alistair said.
The trio got through the proper greetings, then went to hotel dining facility, where they talked about how they were going to improve the railway line. Once they had a plan of attack, they went off to sleep.