Lonesome Whistle

by Vauclains Understudy

A Special Coach

With Pinkie now busy with the rail-kiosk, Gallow decided that lunch plans were down the toilet. Not surprising, seeing as how she and Pinkie had spent the past three hours assembling the darn thing. The sun was now setting on the horizon, so Gallow figured that she should find some dinner. It would be nice, Gallow thought, to at least eat with somepony I know. Of course, Twilight, Spike, and Ironside were still in the same place they’d been for the past three hours, and it didn’t look like they were leaving anytime soon. So, Gallow headed for the familiar carousel-shaped house near the center of town.

Remember how Rarity was having a panic attack when she learned that she lost her fabrics in the freight train accident? Well, she was still having one. In fact, she had never stopped having the one that started on the sleeper car. As in, she was going through her “Worst Possible Thing” routine for the fifteenth time and actually had her couch carried across the street from the station to her house while she performed the routine on the couch. [facepalm] In any case, her condition had not improved, and it was now becoming an annoyance to both Sweetie Belle and Opalescence.

After watching her owner for about five minutes, Opal left the room with cotton balls stuffed in her ears. Sweetie Belle was about to do the same, but a knock on the door distracted her. Trotting over, she opened it to find Gallow Drop standing in the doorway. “Hello. May I help you?” Sweetie asked; she had never met Gallow before.

“Yes, um, is Rarity at home right now?” Sweetie pointed her hoof in the direction of her hysterical older sister, of whom Gallow caught a good glimpse. “Rarity, what’s going on? Is everything alright?” Gallow asked. Rarity immediately stopped her routine and looked in the direction of the door.

“Oh, Gallow dear,” Rarity replied, “Yes, um, everything’s fine, heh-heh.” She kicked her couch off to the side with a nervous smile on her face.

“Do you mind if I come in?” Gallow asked.

“Not at all. Come in, come in,” Rarity said, waving her hoof in the “come hither” fashion.

Sweetie Belle stepped aside to let Gallow in. Gallow had never been to Rarity’s house before, so she scanned the whole house as she walked towards Rarity. “What can I do for you, dearie?” asked Rarity as Gallow approached her.

“Well, I was hoping I could find a nice place for dinner,” Gallow replied, “I was going to eat lunch with Pinkie, but we got caught up in her latest project and I lost track of time.”

“Did this project involve a mining engine with a kiosk on top of it?”

“Um, yes…it did.”

“Did it end up running off the rails and smashing whatever was in its path?”

“Yeeeaaahh…”

“Well, that explains Applejack’s mental breakdown.” A sweat drop slid down Gallow’s cheek upon hearing that. Sweetie Belle giggled.

“In any case,” Gallow continued, “Our lunch plans were shot, so I was wondering if you didn’t mind me having dinner with you.”

“Oh, not at all, sweetheart,” replied Rarity, “Let me just gather my bearings and we’ll get cooking.”

Rarity trotted off to wash up before dinner, leaving Gallow and Sweetie Belle alone. “So, what was all that about?” asked Gallow.

“What, you mean the drama on the couch?” replied Sweetie. Gallow nodded. “Oh, she lost some fabrics she needed for her dresses. Something about a train wreck,” Sweetie Belle said. Gallow instantly knew which train wreck Sweetie was referring to, causing another sweat drop to slide down her cheek, followed by an “Oh crap!” expression. Sweetie Belle looked at Gallow in confusion. “You OK?” she asked.

Gallow shook off the shocked expression. “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” she replied. Sweetie Belle didn’t seem convinced, but she let it go. Rarity soon returned and headed straight for the kitchen. Gallow and Sweetie Belle followed her, both anxious to get munching.

Rarity put on her favorite apron and started boiling the water for the soup. As she did, Gallow decided to get Rarity’s mind off the train wreck and instead asked her, “So, how did the test run of the new sleeper car go?”

Rarity turned her head. “Would you believe that I’m looking into purchasing the car?” she responded with a smile. Gallow and Sweetie Belle’s eyes widened when they heard her say that.

“Really? You’re thinking of buying an actual sleeper car?” Gallow asked, incredulous.

“Do you have any idea how expensive that would be?!” Sweetie Belle shouted.

Rarity just winked. “I’ll have Ironside put in a good word for me. It’s not like they’re going to use it on the railway anyway.”

Gallow raised her eyebrow. “Why not?” she asked.

“It’s much too massive for the existing track,” Rarity replied.

“How would you know that?” Sweetie Belle asked.

“I overheard a couple of the railway officials saying such things during the test,” said Rarity. Here her smile faded. “I’m actually quite sorry for Ironside. He put a lot of time and money into having that car built.”

“Really?” asked Sweetie Belle, “Ironside built it?”

“No, dearie,” Rarity replied, “He got the designs from the castle and brought them here. He paid the coachworks to build the car.”

Rarity then turned her head toward the counter, where a small group of papers and photos sat. Using her magic, she picked them up and set them down on the table. “There you are,” she said to the fillies.

Gallow then used her magic to pick up three manila sheets of paper. These were the blueprints for the car. “Where’d the photos come from?” she asked.

“Ironside got them from the castle as well,” Rarity replied.

As Gallow picked up each one of the photos, her eyes widened. This car was from the world outside of Equestria; the human world. One of the photos showed humans in mourning clothes lined up alongside a train draped from locomotive to end coach in black crepe: a sign of a funeral train. Upon careful inspection, Gallow noticed that the second-to-last car of the train was the sleeper car. Turning to the blueprints, she looked for a sign of the car’s history. She found one clue in Princess Luna’s handwriting on the top of the first page: Pullman Sleeper Car “United States,” Built 1865 in Alexandria, Virginia, United States. Apparently, Luna was aware of the car’s history, but it didn’t make sense to Gallow why she had taken the blueprints of the car. It was well-known that Luna had taken an interest in railroading thanks to her friendship with Ironside, but Gallow didn’t understand why this particular car was so important to them. Looking for more clues, she then had the sense to check the back sides of each page. Again, the first page held the clue.

“This sleeper car was the first constructed by George M. Pullman. It is best known in the human world as the funeral coach of Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States. The coach was to be test ridden by the President on April 15, 1865, which was the day Lincoln died after being shot in the head by actor John Wilkes Booth the night before. The ‘United States’ was reassigned to be the hearse car of the funeral train, which would carry the bodies of President Lincoln and his son Willie back to their home of Springfield, Illinois. The train retraced the route the President had taken to his inauguration in 1861. After the President and his son were buried, the ‘United States’ served more mundane roles until it was destroyed by fire in 1911.”

Gallow took a look at the blueprints of the “United States.” The car was quite exquisite, especially by Equestrian standards. Like the Equestrian coaches, its body was made of wood, but its clerestory roof was straight and flat, unlike the curved roofs of the Equestrian coaches. The body was paneled and sat on four two-axle trucks, indicating that this coach was heavy for the time, probably equivalent to a modern steel-bodied coach. Equestria’s locomotives and rolling stock were pretty small compared to those of the human railways despite being run on similar track gauges, meaning that the sleeper was gigantic for Equestrian rolling stock. Only engines like 2398 or Hildegard were capable of pulling this car without assistance.

As Gallow continued browsing through the pictures and designs of the Lincoln car, a bowl of soup floated down and landed in front of her. “Time to eat, Gallow,” Rarity said, “I’ll let you look more at the car when we’re done eating.”

“Oh, OK,” Gallow replied. Rarity lifted the papers off the table and replaced them on the counter, safe from harm. As the three ponies sipped their soup, though, Gallow couldn’t help but ask, “Um, Rarity, have you even looked at the papers Ironside gave you?”

“Well, just the blueprints,” Rarity replied.

“Because the photos show it being used as a hearse for a human head of state,” Gallow said. Rarity put her spoon down and looked up at Gallow.

“A hearse, you say?” she asked. Gallow nodded. She then lifted the photos back off the counter and laid them in front of Rarity.

Rarity’s expression upon seeing the photos of the Lincoln funeral train was the same as Gallow’s. “I don’t think she’ll want to buy the coach now,” Sweetie Belle whispered to Gallow.

Rarity put the photos down and stared down at the bowl of soup in front of her, deep in thought. “Hmm…” she hummed. Gallow and Sweetie Belle looked at each other, and then back at Rarity. She seemed to be conflicted as to whether or not buying the coach given the original one’s history was such a good idea. “Well,” she said finally, “I think I’ll still purchase it.”

“Really?” asked Gallow.

“Yes,” Rarity replied definitively, “It’s obvious this coach is a very historically important piece of rolling stock. I’m glad Ironside had it built. Perhaps I might be able to use it for its original purpose.”

Gallow seemed content with Rarity’s decision, but she still felt uneasy about the whole thing. Why would Ironside want to replicate a coach with such a morbid history? She worried that bad luck might result from it, and she was especially worried about Rarity purchasing the car. If bad luck did indeed result from it, Rarity would be the first victim for sure…

“There’s nothing wrong with wanting to own a sleeper car that was used as a hearse,” Rarity said suddenly, placing her hoof on Gallow’s shoulder. “I’ve heard that there are humans out there who collect motorized hearses.”

Gallow was taken aback by what Rarity just said, but the comforting look the older pony gave her calmed her down. “Is that true?” Gallow asked.

“Mm-hmm,” Rarity replied, “And nothing supernatural ever happened to any of them.”

“In fact,” Sweetie Belle interjected, “Ironside has a bit of that same interest.”

“Really?” asked Gallow.

“Yes,” said Rarity, “And he’s just as superstitious as you.”