The Guild of Equestrian Railwaymen: Dual bands of steel through the hills

by bucking bronco 1968

Chapter 1: Bridge Over the River Dragon Tooth

I walked along the track, kicking at the ballast. It seemed like I made this walk so often now that it was almost a weekly routine.

It had been a hard week, no thanks to the decision makers upstairs, and I needed to escape everything for a while and clear my head. I had been walking for a while but I finally made it to where I wanted to go. I looked up to see the railway bridge that spanned the Dragon Tooth River.

River was a little bit of an understatement, though, as it was almost 200 feet in width.

The bridge was just over 350 feet long and 28 feet high. It had been built when my Grandfather, Hotbox, was 20 years old, a bit younger than I was now. The sight of the bridge made me think about the old stallion. It had been such a long time since I had seen him, but there wasn't much I could do about that.

I shook my head, knocking that nasty thought from my brain. Hotbox wouldn't want me to pity him, so I thought about better times. The bridge gave me just the times to think about. He had brought me here to this same bridge so many times in years past, that it had become part of my soul.

He brought me here on days when he was off shift and we would sit down by the river listening as the water thundered over the rocks, and trains bounced over the bridge above us. It became a sort of save place for me over time, and it became a place that I would turn to when I needed to get away. Often times I would get there by hopping into empty boxcars and jumping out when I got to the bridge, or the closest signal so I could walk along the line in peace.

I remembered the many times I had come here with big thoughts on my mind. One of the biggest that always stuck out was when I had sat under the bridge for nearly an entire day when my friend was in the hospital on life support with a broken neck, after getting hit hard in hoofball to get the league winning touchdown.

He did get it though, and after months in intensive care, lived to tell the tale and become my fire stallion.

And of course there were the multiple times I had come here with my High Schools friends to use the deep river below the bridge as our own private swimming pool, with the bridge acting as a high dive. It was an incredibly stupid idea, and there was more than one time someone hit the water wrong and broke something. But that was what me and my friends were like back then, idiotic dare devils who thought we owned the world, and couldn't die.

As I walked down the steep bank, gravel slipping under my hooves, I went back to the many times I had climbed down this same gravel with my grandfather. Sitting under the bridge talking about what had went on at the railyard over the last weeks and months, and just bonding on the banks of the river.

I then spotted a rather large rock sitting near one of the bridge's thick wooden supports, and it made me smile. It was the rock that Hotbox and I would usually sit on when we talked.

I trotted over to it and took a seat on the rock. It had been a long time since I had been able to come up to the bridge, and even longer since I had sat down there with my grandfather. Thinking about the old stallion again and being on our old rock made me flash back to the last time I had been down there with Hotbox, back when I had only been 8 years old.

---

He had gotten back from talking with the princess about the Guild a few days earlier and I was so excited to hear what she had said.

We had hitched a ride up on a slow freight and we had been sitting down by the river for a few minutes in silence when I finally couldn't contain myself anymore. "Well, are you gonna tell me what the princess said?"

Hotbox laughed a little before he turned to me, "Well, me and the others were a little worried when we first got there and heard the nobles around us commenting on how she wouldn't want anything to do with dirty commoners. I think that was mostly directed at me because I was still in my engineer's denims."

We both had a laugh at that. Being a crew member on a locomotive is a dirty job usually involving you getting covered in coal dust, soot, and grease. So it wasn't uncommon for ponies who weren't from a railway background to stare at us is we haven't changed out of our denims.

"So." I said as the laughter died down, "Was she really mean?"

He just smiled at me, "Not at all. She was the picture of kindness to us. When we told her about our, organization, for lack of a better word, she was very interested. We probably spent hours talking to her about what we wanted to do. By the time we were done, she was quite impressed and said she'd help us any way she could. And that's when Ditchlight brought up something that I thought was asking a little too much."

I was obviously confused, "What do you mean?"

"Well it's not too hard to see that the railway's struggling a little bit. The old 4-6-0's and 2-8-2's have taken a hard beating from the grade and they're starting to wear out. We do what we can to keep them running. But as it stands, we can't take them out of service to be overhauled as we need every engine pulling trains day in and day out to keep the railway going."

I could understand where they were coming from. The Tall Tale Mountain Short line had its name for a good reason, as it crossed the entirety of the Smokey Mountain range, running from Tall Tale to Vanhoover, a total distance of 132 miles, not including the line down to Hoofington. Ironic that it was called a short line. It wasn't uncommon for railways to cross mountain ranges, but Tall Tale was special. Coming up from Tall Tale, there was a 1.7% grade. That means that for every 100 feet, the line rises 1.7 feet, which by railway standards is pretty steep. But that had nothing on the side of the mountain toward Vanhoover, which had an average grade of 2.23%, with a max grade of 2.9%, which is near unheard of for something outside a mining or logging railway.

The grade was one of the first railway lines to be laid 40 years ago when the idea of railways spread across Equestria. Because of that, the line had earned the nickname, The Olde Grade. The Grade dealt out a beating on the engines that ran it, and often times they couldn't keep to the speed limits posted. This lead to the trains often being behind time when they reached the summit, which was their saving grace.

The summit of the line was a flat, straight piece of track that spanned for 15 miles that engineers often ignored the speed limit on to make up for lost time that might have racked up on the grueling climb up.

As if on cue, a train rushed over the bridge above us, shaking the ground as it thundered past over our heads.

"So Ditchlight brought up how the railway was experiencing hard times and that they needed new engines desperately to keep the railway going."

I couldn't even imagine that. Someone like Ditchlight, one of the railway's owner, asking the very ruler of our land, for something like help in keeping a business alive. At the time I severely underestimated the princes's kindness, but I was 8 and just couldn't imagine it. "What did she do?"

Hotbox turned and smiled, "She said to us that she couldn't have the leaders of the biggest work force revolution in centuries, and hub of raw materials coming into the nation lose their jobs, so she signed an letter and sent it to the Canterlot Locomotive Company which placed an order for various freight and passenger engines. Turns out the princess is versed in the types of engine in the kingdom."

I was more than a little dumbstruck, "How many did she order?"

My grandfather's smile couldn't have been wider, "Just over sixty, enough to replace the entire mainline fleet. They should start showing up in about a month."

---

Just then I heard the sound of an immensely powerful engine pounding its way up the line behind me. I scrambled my way up the gravel bank to the top to catch sight of the train before it flew across the bridge.

I popped my head over the top of the hill to see a marvel of railway engineering racing toward me. It had been nearly twenty years since Princess Celestia had done the railway the favor of buying it a new set of engines. At the time, 4-8-2's and 4-8-4's had been the pinnacle of locomotive technology.

That of course had been twenty years ago, and demand leads to innovation, and the demand on railways had only increased in that time. So 8 drivers had turned to 10, and for bigger engines 10 turned to multiple sets of 6 or 8, but for one class of engine, 10 went to 12. And that engine was now flying towards me at nearly 60mph.

The Canterlot Pacific 9000 class 4-12-2.

Personally I preferred the locomotive the 9000 class replaced, and kinda stole their design from, but the twenty-four wheeled monsters were an impressive piece of engineering none the less. They were easily capable of taking a two mile long train over The Olde Grade on their own, and make it almost the entire way to Vanhoover or Tall Tale only having to stop once for a top up on coal and water.

The one flying down the track toward me was one of the first members of the class, #9007, delivered just over a year earlier. Yet, despite the fact that it, along with it's other 17 class members designated for Tall Tale had been delivered 10 months earlier, they looked as if they had been around for five years.

Ever since those stupid noble ponies in Canterlot took over the railway, everything had gone down hill. The freight engines over the entire roster were in terrible shape, ever since the "Only regular maintenance for passenger engines" policy went into place. Now, the only time freight engines went into the shop was when they were on the verge of blowing up.

My anger for the railway's owner's died in the back of my head when I heard the engine's whistle blast. In a very specific way.

It was something that very few of us used anymore out of fear. But some of us were stubborn enough to still use it. It was the whistle of the Railwaymen, somewhat of an identifier between guild members.

As the engine drew closer, I looked to the cab. There were only a few ponies I knew on the railway that still dared to use the Guild whistle, and I knew them all.

As the front truck grew within 100 feet of me, I saw a grey head pop out of the cab, and smile when it caught sight me. "Heeeeeey Stokeeeeeey!" I barely heard it call over the sound of the engine.

I smiled as I was able to make out who it was just as they flew past. It was my good friend Crankshaft, a fire pony and one of my old high school friends. I knew that if he was firing the engine, that over on the right side driving the beast was another one of my high school friends, Blastpipe. Though Blastpipe was the designated engineer for a different fire pony on the line, he had been working with Crackshaft for the last week or so as Ash Pan, his normal fire pony, had been stuck on yard shunter training duties.

As they blasted across the bridge, I noticed something. As the engine ran over the center section of the bridge, 120 feet from the bank, the engine rocked to left slightly. But more than normal.

Once the train was over the bridge, I walked out onto it to the bridge to check figure out what was going on. When I got out to where I had seen the train rock, and was shocked by what I saw. The left rail had slightly sunk into the beams of the bridge, which were starting to rot out.

I then heard the bark of an engine coming up behind me, another train that must have been waiting on the Vanhoover side of The Grade for #9007 to pass. I could just see off in the distance the headlight of the locomotive. It might have still been miles away, but on the straight flats of the summit, trains could be heard at the opposite hill crest.

I quickly made my way off the bridge and waited for the train at the track side. The engine was an older 4-8-2 heavy freight engine that leaked steam and creaked in places that it really shouldn't have been as it past by me.

I stood at the track side as the train slowly rumbled past me, waiting to see of there was an open boxcar for me to hitch a ride back in. As the middle of the train trundled past me, I heard a load whistle behind me over the sound of the train axles.

I turned to see a pony leaning out of the open door of a box car waving to me. I smiled as I recognized who the stallion was, it was my fire stallion, Coal Dust.

The train was still going under 15 mph when the box car passed me, so I grabbed Coal Dust's outstretched hoof and swung myself into the box car.

"What's going Dusty?"

The dark blue and dirty grey stallion smiled at me, "Oh just coming back from meeting up with some friends on the Vanhoover side. I take it you were enjoying your day off at the bridge?"

I nodded at him, "Yeah. It's been a while since I've been able to get out here, so I took advantage of it."

Coal Dust just smiled as we sat back and enjoyed our ride back to Tall Tale, listening to the distant sound of the locomotive as it pulled us home.

Author's Note:

What's going on guys, I hoped you liked this first chapter of my new story. And there is a reason I wrote this chapter this way, is to show how much this railway means to Stokey, and why what happens in the future hits him so hard. This chapter was a slow one, but that serenity won't last for long.

Comments

[masterblotart]

i love it

[Marauder15]

KEEP MORE COMING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[bucking bronco 1968]

7732427
I plan too. Chapter 2 is already in the works. I'm glad you like it.

[LionelCorp315]

Just like the US railways in the 30s and 40s. Great story.

[SWEETOLEBOB18]

The bridge was just over 350ft long and 28th (ft) high. It had been built when my Grandfather, Hotbox, had just been born. The sight of the bridge made me think about the old stallion. It had been such a long time since I had seen him, but there wasn't much I could do about that.

I shook my head, knocking that nasty thought from my brain. Hotbox would want me to pity him, so I thought about better times. The bridge was gave me just the times to think about. He had brought me to this same bridge so many times in the year past, that it had become part of my soul.

IMO, you probably mean wouldn't

He brought me here on days when he was off shift and we would sit down by the river listening as the river thundered over the rocks, and the trains bounce over the bridge above us. It became a sort of save (safe) place for me over time, and it became a place that I would turn to when I needed to get away. Often times I would get there by hopping into empty boxcars and jumping out when I got to the bridge, or....(the)…. closest signal so I could walk along the line in peace.

You know what? I'm going to stop reading now.
You need a proofreader. You can get one here
https://www.fimfiction.net/group/27/]The Proofreader Group

[bucking bronco 1968]

9338595
Yeah I am well aware I need a proof reader, and trust me I had going back and reading the typos myself. But this was the first chapter of the story, and I feel that I've gotten better over time with the others. Not perfect, but better

[bucking bronco 1968]

9338595
I would also like to point out that I wrote this chapter two years ago, and my writing wasn't that great. I'd recommend you at least read the next chapter before giving up on the story