Immediately after Pippin set off for Canterlot, Scootaloo realized they had a huge problem, one that could potentially ruin the whole evening.
“Can’t you go any faster?” she asked for what seemed to Pippin like the ten thousandth time, but then he had been hearing that question all his life.
“I’m a tram, knot som express engine. If you wanted speed en you picked the wrong train.” Pippin wasn’t about to admit his driver didn’t know how to disable the mechanism that restricted his speed. He was perfectly fine with rolling along at a peaceful twelve miles per hour, but for the little orange Pegasus staring at him from across his buffer beam, the trams slow pace was infuriating.
“Aaaarrgh! For neighing out loud, I can glide faster than this!”
“Will you relax?” Apple Bloom groaned as her fellow crusader kept throwing her fit all around the caboose. “Just sit back’n enjoy the ride.”
“Aye. Why jus look at the bea-utiful views.” Apple Bloom nodded, and even Diamond Tiara moved over to the cabooses window, but Scootaloo simply sat down, crossed her hooves and pouted.
“It’d look better from the air,” she grumbled, but her friends ignored her sour mood. As Pippin trundled along the main line, past peaceful farm fields and over lazy streams, he was thankful for how little this part of the railway had changed. While most of the mainlines that met in Canterlot were now triple or even quadruple track, with fancy banking, barriers, and signals built up along the right of way, this stretch was still green. Here on the old double track mainline there was just the open rails, and farm fences standing out against the rolling rocky hills. Pippin still remembered where all the little bridges and tree covered cuttings were, and rang his bell when he passed a pair of colts working a corn field he remembered their grandparents tending once upon a time.
Inside the Caboose, as Apple Bloom and Diamond Tiara watched the scenery go by, and Scootaloo sulked, Sweetie Belle was scribbling on a piece of scratch paper from her note book, until she happened to glance up and spotted the look of distant gloom, not out the window, but on a certain grey filly’s muzzle. One too many crusades in Sugarcube Corners kitchen had left all the original crusaders with more than a few lessons in frown extermination from Pinkie Pie, and Sweetie Belle was determined to help her out of her funk.
“Hey Silver,” she said nudging the grey filly’s slouched shoulder. “Bit for your thoughts?” It took Silver spoon a moment to realize the little unicorn was talking to her.
“Hm? Oh, it’s nothing,” she sighed dismissively, but Sweetie Belle wasn’t convinced.
“Is it about what Scootaloo said?”
“Maybe,” The grey filly sighed, slouching even further over the cabooses tiny table.
“I’m sorry if she hurt your feelings. Scootaloo just doesn’t think about what she’s saying sometimes. My Big Sister says it always important to look before you leap.”
“Uncle Hatty says that too,” Silver commented with a small smile creeping up her muzzle, only for it to run away a second later. “Sweetie Belle? Do you think I’m … a nerd?”
“Um, Yes?” She answered hesitantly, only to regret it when Silver’s head dropped down into her hooves. “B-but in a good way! I mean, being a nerd isn’t all bad right?”
“No,” Silver sighed dismally. “Until somepony wants to have fun. Then you’re all alone in a library while they go outside with their other friends.” Sweetie Belle’s jaw dropped with a gasp.
“That’s not true! Where did that come from?” The grey filly kept quiet for the longest second, her eyes glancing up to dart between Diamond and Scootaloo. It took Sweetie Belle looking to where her silver haired friend was staring to understand what was really bothering her, but before she could say anything about it, Scootaloo’s head perked up like a spring.
“What the?” she wondered out loud, getting up and trotting to the front of the caboose, leaving four very confused friends behind her.
“Well,” Diamond Tiara said. “That was … odd.” Apple Bloom wasted no time in following her winged friend outside, and with curiosity guiding them, Sweetie Belle, Silver and Diamond soon followed.
“What’s wrong Scoots?” the farm filly asked as the orange Pegasus strained her neck out past the edge of the cabooses small deck.
“Can’t you feel it?” She asked back, clearly focused on something.
“Feel what?” Diamond returned almost rhetorically as the Pegasus filly flexed and stretched her wings.
“The wind. It’s, being pushed and shoved. But there’s not a cloud in the sky.”
“Oh that?” Pippin scoffed with a laugh. “Ats e ole viaduct. What’s left of er any-ow.”
“Viaduct?” Apple Bloom asked.
“A kind of railway bridge,” Silver Spoon explained almost be reflex, though she was just as confused as her friends. “The term’s mainly used on long stone arch bridges, but I’ve never heard of one being built on the mainline between Canterlot and Ponyville.”
“Well to be fair it wan’t a true viaduct,” Pippin admitted. “It was an experiment by a Cloudsdale engineer ta see ow fast he could build a bridge strong enough to carry trains. So what’s the bleeding fool do? Make it out of clouds!”
“But that’s stupid,” Scootaloo said, still flexing her wings in the odd air currents. “You’d have to slap like a million cloud walk spells on it, and don’t those wear out?”
“Yeah,’ Sweetie Belle frowned. “The last time my sis visited Rainbow Dash, she spent all day complaining about how often she had to re-enchant her hooves.”
“Well,” Pippin smiled as he rounded a bend. “If you all look left, you’ll see that’s just what they did.” The five fillies trotted out onto the cabooses narrow deck, craning their necks and heads left of Pippin and the caboose as their short train trundled across a wide stone bridge, stretched across the wide valley. Below them the Bridle River sloshed and churned on its way toward Saddle Lake, the calm shimmering crystal blue surface broken in spots by old trees lying half sunken in the river, or rocks that the waters flow had not yet worn away.
Sweetie Belle couldn’t help but squeak when she noticed the drop on either side of them, and Scootaloo stretched her wings as far as she could in the wind blustering through the valley. But none of them could look away from where the wind seemed to splash and break like the rivers own current against an invisible structure. When a particularly strong gust forced itself and a spattering of small clouds past their small train and collided with the immovable force, the outline of a long bridge with ten arches became visible, if only for a moment.
“See? They slapped so many spells on it that it’s still mess’n up the weather.” But while the Tram told his story, Apple Blooms eyes caught something else.
“What’s that down there?” She asked pointing her hoof down into the river valley. There, snaking along the water’s edge was what appeared to be a long line of mossy rock and stone, following the river until both vanished around a bend in the valley.
“It looks like an old track bed,” Diamond observed, earning a tired nod from Pippin.
“Probably. Ere’s plenty of ole lines litter’n ese hills. South off Ponyville, ere used to be dozens of stations connect’n to the little railways. Why when I was young, I knew this one wee engine who.”
All five fillies hooves snapped up to clamp down on their ears, their teeth rattling as a sleek blurr of orange and gray streaked past them on the other line.
“You bleeding Git!” Pippin shouted as the other train thundered past. “Mind where you’re blast’n at orn off will you?!” Predictably, the other engines response was again, blasted through his horn.
“Stuff it up your stack old timer! Unlike you smoking relics, I have a railway to run!” Pippin wanted to fire back with every colorful trottingham insult he knew, but it wasn’t until the other train had click-clacked its way past that the old tram could even hear his own thoughts again. With the offending engine and his train well out of shouting range, his attention turned to the fillies stumbling around his caboose.
“What in tarnation was that?!” Apple Bloom asked, her friends flinching and holding their still sore ears.
“Not so loud,” Silver Spoon winced, her eyes screwed shut behind her glasses as a headache besieged her senses, only for Scootaloo to scream at all of them.
“WHAT?!” She yelled, looking around at her friends in pure confusion, and maybe a bit of fear. “WHAT’S GOING ON?!”
“Quiet!” Diamond Tiara shouted back, only for the orange Pegasus to keep shouting, her ears temporarily numbed by the horn.
“What was that?” Sweetie Belle asked meekly, her ears seeming to have fared the best out of the bunch, but she was still nursing a burgeoning headache.
“Just a-nuther pain in thee smokebox diesel,” Pippin sighed. “Ey’re almos all e southern uses on the line te Dodge ese days. They do good work, but you won’t find a worse bunch o braggarts here o anywhere else. Cept maybe Manehattan. I knew this one bloke, talked abou a fleet o tugs ported ere who … Hmmmm.” The old tram seemed to trail off, his features squinting and concentrating on something either right in front of him or all around them.
“The line’s steeper en I remember.”
“Is that a bad thing?” Apple Bloom asked.
“It depends on what kind off cars our loads been put in,” Pippin explained with experienced anxiety. “If the cars have a goo set o brakes fited it shoul’n be a problem, but if this load’s as heavy as I think it’ll be, and the cars ain’t fitted, we coul be in a steaming heap o trouble.”
“Wait,” Apple Bloom said as her young mind found a gap in the explanations logic. “Why the hay wouldn’t all the cars have brakes? They gotta be safe to be used right?”
“Ose are the rules,” Pippin admitted before his tone turned sour. “Leas they are here. Knot all the other railways safety regs are as strict as the ENER’s, and technically, it’s knot illegal to run a train without end to end brakes, long as you ave a brake van or som’n o the sort behind. I tell ou what thoug, it nevah fails. All it takes is one tricky car, one bad linki, and you gots yourself a runaway fit for a wreck.” Silver Spoon looked away as the tram started in on a long winded indignant rant, walking over to the opposite end of the carriage and back to her seat at the cabooses bench. She started reading back over her class notes, and only looked up when Pippin began to chime his bell. They were coming into the yard.
Silver Spoon of course knew why the mainline seemed unfamiliar to Pippin. Many years ago Canterlot Yard had been located at the base of the mountain, sprawling out where it had grown up around the mainline from Canterlot to Baltimare, but a rockslide twenty years ago had forced them to move the facilities further south. Now the yard sat away from the mainline, isolated from sight by a high row of craggy rock outcroppings and short trees. They were switched across the tracks and off the mainline, Pippin grumbling under his whistle and chiming bell when he had to puff up the incline that marked the entrance to the yard. It was a deliberate feature, a hump at both ends to keep trains from running away out the yard without somepony at the controls.
Silver Spoon was about to explain why the yard looked like it was sitting in a giant bowl, when Pippin and his driver launched a whole new line of complaining when the switches took them not to their cars, but to a short stump of a siding that ended at the base of an old Pransylvania signal box. Before Pippins brakes had even brought the old tram to a creaking halt, his driver was hopping down from the cab toward the signal boxes stairs, grumbling the whole way.
“Hey,” Scootaloo called, already bounding her way back onto the cabooses deck. “What gives? I thought we were here to get some rocks not tea time.”
“Well,” Apple Bloom shrugged. “Unscheduled visit means unscheduled wait’n I reckon.” Scootaloos reaction was as predictable as it was instant.
“Wait-smait! There’s stuff to do here and I’m not sitt’n around for some grown up!” She turned to jump down from the caboose and onto the tracks beside them, only for a freight train to roar past them on its way out the yard. After that, Scootaloo bravely decided to stay right where she was.
Pippin couldn’t help but chuckle, knowing the orange filly’s foolhardy courage would be tempered eventually. His smile though became concerned when he saw Silver Spoon sitting off by herself near the back of the caboose. He spared a glance up at his firepony where he stood checking his pressure gauges, and that was all it took to let the stallion know Pippin had a plan.
“Girls?” He called from Pippins cab, earning the attention of five quickly boring fillies. “What say we get back on at less’n ou started wih Mickey eh?” Pippin doubted He’d ever seen a filly move faster than Diamond Tiara when the pink filly practically teleported out the caboose and into his cab, followed swiftly by Apple Bloom. Sweetie belle however seemed reluctant to leave the sulking Silver Spoon, but a wink from the old tram let her know he’d take care of it. So as The white unicorn hopped down the cabooses steps and Scootaloo began to drag herself away from her own perch on the footplate, Pippin set his plan in motion.
“Old up ere ou,” he said, stopping Scootaloo in her tracks. “Now it might be a slight much, but I’m fraid I need te ask ou two a faver.” He saw Silver Spoons ears and head perk up, but kept his serious tone. “It’s very impo-ant, an it needs done right quick.”
Even as she stood from her seat and walked toward the door Silver Spoon looked nervous, while Scootaloo was all but standing at attention.
“What is it?” She asked eagerly, cheat puffed and fluffed at the idea of being important.
“Well see’n as ou spent most oh the trip complain’n bout me speed, I figured ye jus the pair o hooves to get at pesky limiter o mine switched off. Tween you an me, it’d make gett’n ease trucks back to Ponyville go much fasta.” Even with his accent in the way, Scootaloo immediately recognized her second favorite word, and quickly threw of hoof around Silver Spoons shoulders, the other snapping up in a salute.
“You bet your boiler we can! Come on Silver, it’s time for some mate-nance!”
“Don’t you mean maintenance?” the grey filly squeaked against the little pegasi’s grip before the orange filly dragged her out of the caboose and into Pippins front cab, the old tram now feeling slightly sorry for Silver, but still very pleased with himself.
“Now,” he said as he began to wrack his old steam powered brain. “I can’t say fo sure, but I think it was somewhere on me left side.”
“Got it,” Scootaloo said, eyes scanning up and down the trams inner workings, as Silver Spoon cringed. Like all steam trams Pippins side walkways were narrow cramped spaces even for little foals, with pipes, pumps and gauges covering his boiler and making the space quite difficult to navigate. Thankfully his workings were relatively clean and despite his age, well looked after, but they were still looking for a needle of a component in an industrial haystack.
“Okay,” Scootaloo huffed as her tongue stuck its way out one corner of her mouth as she set to searching. “Any idea what this thing looks like Silver? Shiny, round, square?”
“Um, not really,” she admitted shamefully, looking anywhere but the orange filly’s face. “Diamonds always been more into the technical aspects of the engines. All I know is their history.” She sighed, falling back on her haunches and staring at the floor, feeling as useful as an extra piece, when Scootaloo surprised her.
“Just the history?” she asked with a laugh. “Come on Silver, that’s over a thousand years you’re talking about! I mean hay, ain’t steam trains been around since before Nightmare Moon?”
“Yeah,” the grey filly admitted, sagging shoulders inflating ever so slightly as Scootaloo climbed onto Pippins boiler. “But, how is that going to help find Pippins limiter? Maybe you should just get Diamond to help. You two already work great together anyway.”
“Nah,” Scootaloo scoffed, reaching her hoof into the nook of a pair of tubes near the top of Pippins boiler. “Diamonds smart and all, but she ain’t an egg-head like you.” Before Silver had been startled, but now she was completely flabbergasted.
“Bu, but I thought,” she stammered, swallowing to get her voice back. “I thought being an egg head was … wasn’t.”
“What, not cool?” Scootaloo asked rhetorically, earning a numb nod from Silver. “You’re right. It’s not cool. It. Is. Awesome!”
“Whaaa?”
“Helloooooo? Have you met Twilight Sparkle?! She was the biggest, smartest eggiest-head of them all, and now she’s a Princess!” Silver Spoon didn’t know what to say. Scootaloo of all ponies, the self-proclaimed future Wonderbolt lieutenant, had just given her the biggest complement the filly could have imagined.
“Th-thank you,” she finally managed, the metallic fur of her cheeks now tinged a bright crimson.
“No problem,” the little Pegasus shrugged. “Now where could that limiter?” Before she could find the answer though, Pippins driver had climbed back in the cab, and started the old tram rolling back through the yard. At Pippins back, Diamond, Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle watched as the firepony moved a few light shovel fulls of coal into Pippins firebox, just enough to keep the flames burning hot. Further along his boiler, Silver Spoon and Scootaloo watched steam come hissing and spurting from the odd loose pipe, or force water to drip free of the surfaces it had started to gather on while the steamer sat idle. But more importantly, it let Scootaloo notice something.
“Hey Silver,” she said slowly, gears turning behind her eyes. “Pippins limiter only works when he’s moving right?”
“I suppose so,” the grey filly said adjusting her glasses. “I don’t see the use of having it on when he’s just sitting. Why?” Scootaloo’s smile became triumphant as she pointed a hoof up.
“Because that thing there wasn’t turning until we started moving again.” Silver spoon looked up to see she was pointing to a strange turning mechanism sitting just aft of Pippins steam dome. It was mounted to his boiler and connected to his dome by two thick valved iron tubes. It seemed to be a short pole on top of which a diamond shaped frame rotated. On the two outer points of the diamond, two round metal bearings spun around and around.Silver spoon realized the frame was actually a flexible spring loaded mechanism when Pippin’s braking caused the bearings to come closer together. Silver couldn’t believe her eyes.
“That’s it! Scootaloo you found it!”
“Was there ever any doubt?” she asked, positively smug, until she tried to fly up to it. Even with her exercises, her wings it seemed weren’t quite as strong as her ego yet. “Aw horse-apples not again.” Silver couldn’t help but laugh.
“We should probably wait until we stop to mess with anything.”
“Yeah, probably,” the orange filly admitted. She nearly reached for it again when Pippin came to a slow stop, only for Silver to call her back when the tram began reversing onto a siding. The two fillies peeked outside and saw they had arrived at their train, and that Pippin was working as fast as his limited top speed would let him.
The old tram meanwhile was still grumbling about new ways. The Canterlot Yard he remembered had been a sprawling forest of gantries and frames holding dozens of colorfully banded signals high against the sky. Now however his driver had to squint and stare to see the distant pin pricks of light from multicolored gem light signals spread like weeds throughout the yard, making it hard to tell at first which points were for and which were still against them.
Thankfully the siding the trucks were on had an open line next to it, allowing Pippin to easily shunt his caboose onto the end of the train and run back around to the front. But their load was making him and his driver re-think a few things.
It seemed to them that Mr. Top Hat was determined to win the citizens of Ponyville over with the new railroad, because he had certainly spared no expense on the latest building materials.
The paving stone loaded in their trucks was no less than Imperial Rose Granite, only found in mines nestled amidst the glaciers of the Frozen North, and until recently, exclusively available to the stone masons of the Crystal Empire. Pippin however was less concerned with the stones quality and more with its weight. Each truck was a standard seven plank two axle wagon, a car Pippin had been pushing and shoving around for as long as he dared remember, and this time they were loaded to well past their tops with thick red and pink slabs.
“I’m not so sure about this old boy,” his driver admitted as they buffered the caboose onto the trains end, wincing as the cars wheels barely budged.
“We’ll be fine,” the old tram said as they heard the coupler click into place, though he may have been reassuring himself more than his driver. Regardless of what was coming, he had five other concerns at the moment. “All-right ou lot, back in e ole brake van ou go.”
“One sec!” Scootaloo shouted from inside, her tiny wings still buzzing uselessly as she tried to scale Pippins boiler.
“Here,’ Silver said kneeling down beside the wall of curved metal. Scootaloo carefully stepped onto the grey filly’s back, reaching for the valve knobs until she managed to land her hoof on one. A few turns later and she used the now closed valve to climb over and reach its twin, effectively removing the suspected limiter from operation.
“Got it,” The orange filly and her grey friend grinned together as they darted past Pippins driver and back into the caboose. The old stallion looked after them for a moment, sharing a confused glance with his firepony where the other was uncoupling Pippin. As soon as that was done, Pippin reversed away back across the points, back around the train and finally backed down on the trucks. As soon as they were secured to the train, his driver turned to him.
“Well old boy, here goes everything.” They only had to wait a moment more before the signals ahead flashed to green, signaling the all clear for their departure. Pippin set his bell chiming as his driver eased the throttle open, and both hissed at the rattling ring that answered. Pippin was immediately thankful for the trucks old design, their loose chain link couplers letting him use the momentum of their heavy loads to start the next car rolling. In the cab his driver maintained a delicate balance, trying to keep the train rolling while building up the steam they would need to pull the train up and over the hump at the yards exit. He honestly doubted the old tram could do it, but Pippin knew otherwise.
As soon as his driver had backed them off of the caboose to run back around their train, he had felt the difference. His puffs came more easily now, quicker too, and each turn of his hidden drive wheels felt only half as difficult as before. The old tram felt stronger than he had in years, enough to make a point. He held back, waiting until their caboose cleared the last switch before the hump. By then Pippin had a good head of steam waiting for his cylinders, and he was ready to give his crew and passengers alike a show.
When his driver finally opened his throttle, Pippin charged. Unbidden by the limiter, steam came roaring from his cylinders, spewing out the grates in his sideplates, and launching the old tram and his train forward as if on a spring. The noise alone was tremendous, carrying across the yard and out over the countryside for miles, echoing loud and clear off the slopes of nearby Canterlot. And as Pippin pulled his train over the hump and onto the mainline, his smile was as bright as Celestia’s sun.
It almost compared to the grins worn by two fillies as the proudly pranced around the caboose, especially that of a certain orange Pegasus.
“And that, my fellow fillies, is how you turn slow into awesome.” Apple Bloom just rolled her eyes over at Scootaloo’s reinvigorated smugness.
“Yeah yeah, ya got yer fast train. Now we can get home in time fer chores. Hoooo- raaaay.”
“Oh quiet,” Her orange friend scoffed through her smile. “This happens to make two things we’ve done right, and I’m not about to let you spoil it.” Apple Bloom couldn’t help but smile, the sweet taste of success slowly overpowering the dread of whatever chores her big sister might have in store on their return. Even Diamond Tiara couldn’t help but bask in her friend’s victory.
“I still can’t believe you found it,” she said hugging her best friend. “How in the world did you find Pippins governor in all that mess?”
“It was Scootaloo actually,” Silver Spoon admitted bashfully. “She noticed how it was only moving when Pippin’s throttle was open.”
“Aw come on,” The orange filly laughed, throwing a foreleg around Silvers neck. “I couldn’t have even reached it without you giving me that boost.” Before Silver Spoon had blushed, now she was beaming with pride, but also something that brought more than a few tears to the little filly’s eyes.
“Th-thank you,” she stammered, taking off her glasses to wipe her eyes. “It’s really nice to be part of the group.”
“Hold up,” Apple Bloom said as the grey fillies tone clicked with the bits she had been gathering in her head all afternoon. “Is that why you’ve been so mopey today?”
“Well, kind of,” she admitted, looking up guiltily at Scootaloo and Diamond. “I guess I saw how nice you guys were being to each other now, and thought that you might not, well, need me anymore.’
“Are you kidding?” Diamond laughed. “I’m always gonna need my best filly friend forever!”
“Yeah!” Sweetie Belle cheered. “You’re a crusader now Silver!”
“And never forget,” Apple Bloom chimed. “Once a crusader.”
“Always a crusader!” Scootaloo finished with a flare of her wings. Silver Spoon almost couldn’t believe her ears, so when the next cheer went up, and never hesitated to join in.
“CUTIE MARK CRUSADERS FOREVER! YAAAAAY!” Pippin did his best, but even the shriek of his whistle rolling over the rocky hills couldn’t drown out the five ecstatic cheers from the caboose.