Wych Elm

The Wagon Repair Mare
Spuds Terkel
For Brumby Run

To ponies who don’t live there, the name Manehattan brings up visions of a vibrant collection of restaurants encompassing pony culture. Of fashion and plays, or of museums if one is so inclined. Of broad spreading parks, peaceful islands of trees and flowers. Of harbors, bustling with ponies travelling to and from Equestria: the city is a gateway to the world.

Yet, ask anypony who lives there, and the first thing that will come to their mind is the traffic.

The streets of Manehattan are filled with ponies going about their business. Taxis, delivery wagons, omnibuses, carriages, and carts crowd the cobbled streets, moving about with a purpose which almost defies understanding. It is often chaos, and yet it is a synchronized chaos which words alone cannot adequately describe.

Collisions are rare, although at every moment they seem inevitable. Taxi ponies dart out of traffic to gather a fare, and then back into traffic again. Wagons stop to load and unload their cargo, often with complete disregard for whatever they might be blocking. Sometimes, voices are raised, but for the most part the flow of traffic continues in its purposeful course.

To a Manehattanite, it fades into the background of the city. Tourists gape at the sight; business ponies riding in taxis and hansoms have their muzzles down in a newspaper, perhaps, or are engrossed in conversation with a fellow rider. Shopkeepers have only eyes for their delivery wagons; everything else is unimportant. Omnibuses travel their routes, never failing to make their stops.

Even I do not always notice the traffic, nor the ponies who keep it going.

Her name is Wych Elm, and if you weren’t in harness in Manehattan, you’d never have thought of her for a moment . . . but if you were, she is a mare you would want to know.

I first saw her outside The Royal Roost. She was stopped behind a delivery wagon with a broken wheel, her own wagon pulled right against the sidewalk.

The wagon itself was brightly painted, more than one would expect for such a plain vehicle. A vibrant yellow that makes it stand out and complements her blue coat. It's an older design, simple but reliable, small and lightweight, easy enough for a mare to pull solo.

A half-dozen wheels were arranged at the front of it, all of them different. One would be familiar to any Manehattanite; it was the humble taxi wheel. The others were bulkier, heavier wheels for working wagons.

There was a small ramp to unload them, which I might not have noticed if it had not been down.

Her harness was unusual in that small pouches and holders were fitted to the straps, clear of interference from traces and shafts, yet within easy mouth reach.

Another thing that caught my eye were toolboxes mounted below the floor of the wagon, filling the space that often goes to waste between the wheels. One of them was opened, and as I watched, she removed a screw jack.

We often pay a great number of bits for the privilege of watching an artist perform, but if we just opened our eyes we would see the artistry of the common mares and stallions all around us.

She jacked the broken wheel off the ground and went back to her toolbox for a hammer and drift. In very little time, she had the lynch pin driven out of the axle. From there, it was hardly any effort on her part to remove the damaged wheel and roll it back out of the way.

One of the spare wheels in her wagon was nearly the same diameter, and she rolled it alongside the wagon. I had expected her to fit it on the axle, but the hub was the wrong diameter.

She came prepared. The toolbox on the other side held a variety of bronze bushings and wooden sleeves, and without taking a single measurement, she found the correct one and hammered it into the hub with a wood hammer.

She sat on her rump to fit the wheel, paying no attention to the traffic that rushed past her close enough to unintentionally dock her tail. Her only protection was a old rug that she laid down to sit on.

The wheel slid on the axle easily, and a few well-aimed blows with her hammer drove the lynch pin home. She spun the wheel once to make sure it was running true before lowering it to the ground again.

It took but a moment for her to settle with the driver of the wagon, and he pulled back into traffic. His delivery was delayed, but it would get where it was going.

She rolled the damaged wheel back up on her cart and folded the ramp back up against the side, then put her tools back in her toolboxes. Satisfied everything was in place, she moved around to the front of the wagon and hitched herself back up.

I hadn’t wanted to interrupt her while she was working; I was content to be an observer, but I moved forward before she could merge back into traffic.

She tells me her friends call her Felly. She’s a wheelwright by trade, but rather than take the conventional route of simply building new wheels, she repairs broken ones for the working ponies in Manehattan. Dozens of repair wagons like hers ply their trade in the city, for where there are ponies in harness, there are bound to be unexpected failures.

Her cart not only contains spare wheels—the common sizes, she informs me—but she’s got roughed-out oak for spokes and elm for naves and ash for the felloes. She knows how to wedge a repair piece in place without removing the iron tread, making at a minimum a repair that will get a pony home if she hasn’t got a wheel that fits.

During the workday she’s on the street, always ready to rescue a pony in need. She knows the flaws in the streets better than the ponies that maintain them, she says, the places where wheels break. She knows where inattentive taxi ponies sometimes jam their wheels against the curb, and she guards those secrets as well as fisherponies guard their best spots. She knows the difference in the streets when it’s dry and things shrink, and when it’s wet and they swell.

The wagon itself is a castoff, long past its prime, one which she lovingly repaired and repurposed to suit her needs. It’s strong where it needs to be and light everywhere else.

I trot alongside as she moves back into traffic, ears and eyes alert for an opening, for the motions of the other ponies. Sometimes they signal their intentions and sometimes they don’t.

A few blocks away she finds another job, a hansom cab with a cracked spoke. She stops alongside it, her wagon now an obstacle for other ponies. They squeeze together tighter on the street and flow around her, like a river might flow around a tree trunk.

Once the pony in harness agrees to her terms, she pulls her wagon forward, clear of traffic, and unhitches to get a closer look at the damaged spoke. Felly doesn’t have the right size wheel on her cart—this is an older design, tall and slender, with a rubber tire for smoother riding.

She places her jack under the axle and lifts the wheel just slightly off the ground. I expect her to pull it off next, but she does not. Back to her cart for more tools, this time a stiff piece of paper and a pencil to make a template of the felloe. She sets that aside on her wagon, weighted with a scrap of steel so it won't blow away.

She cuts the felloe out around two spokes with a saw, right along the joint-lines. She has to split it with a chisel in order to free the spokes from their bores, and then she hammers it out of the wheel, occasionally turning it to get the best working angle. Repairing a wheel that is still mounted on the axle is far different than repairing one on the comfort of a workbench, but she’s got lots of practice.

Now that the spokes are free, she tugs the broken one out of the nave. She has to work it back and forth a bit, and it finally clears the tread.

All the pre-cut boards she has on her wagon come into play. She selects a length of oak that’s just a bit longer than needed and starts trimming it, first to length with her saw, and then to shape with a spokeshave.

Some ponies might just get the length right and not worry about the profile, but she’s too professional for that. It only takes a few more minutes to closely match the original spokes, and after a couple of test-fits, she’s satisfied.

She goes back to her wagon and finds two slender lengths of ash, and traces her template onto it. A door folds down with a vise firmly attached, and she clamps two boards tightly together.

With a saw, chisel, and plane, the wood quickly takes shape. She rarely needs to check the light pencil marks on the wood as she works.

She has a clever treadle-operated drill that attaches to the side rail of her cart, and first drills two holes down through the concave side, where the spokes will rest, and then four more through the sides. She counterbores those slightly.

Her first test-fit is her last; the two sides of the felloe are a perfect match.

She rolls the wheel around until the new felloe is against the ground and moves her carpet under the wagon, then drives four pegs through the holes to bind the two halves together. They’re already a tight fit, but her repairs are meant to last, so she drives a wedge into the other end of each, expanding the peg so it cannot work loose.

A few more passes with the plane, and the repaired felloe is as smooth as its companions. If it were painted to match, you would never know it had been replaced by the side of the road as traffic rushed by.

She collects her fee and then puts her tools back where they belong.

It’s getting late in the evening, and there are other ponies who perform the same work by lamplight for the night owls. Manehattan never sleeps, after all.

Her workday does not end when she returns home. There are more wheels to be repaired so she’ll have a supply for tomorrow.

Her workshop is small and tidy. It’s cluttered, but it’s a purposeful clutter.

She has an apprentice, a young colt named Truckle. He puts aside his work and restocks her cart while she takes a well-deserved break.

Upon her return, the two of them set to the evening’s tasks. Wheels are mounted one at a time on her workbench and disassembled. Here she can take the time to knock the iron tread off the wheel, a reasonably simple task to accomplish when a broken spoke or broken felloe makes the wheel smaller than it should be.

Pieces are repaired or replaced as needed, and even those which seem undamaged are studied with a critical eye for splits and chips and cracks, flaws which might quickly become apparent when the wheel is put back into service.

Watching the two of them work is like watching the ballet. They rarely speak, for each one knows what is needed and when it is required. Sometimes the air rings with blows of hammer on iron; other times there is just the soft scraping of steel on wood.

Luna’s moon is high in the sky when the last of the wheels is repaired, and now it comes time to retread them.

Her shop provides plenty of fuel for the fire. Small wood shavings make for a quick-burning, furiously hot fire, just the thing that is needed to expand the iron treads. She has a large fire ring behind her shop and with a splash of lantern oil, the fire is quickly lit.

The first tire goes in, the biggest one. It’s from a heavy delivery wagon that would be pulled by two teams of ponies. It’s followed by the smaller ones, all nestled inside of each other, down the the center where the nave-hoops are heated.

They don’t wait around as they heat; Felly and Truckle mount the first wheel on the tiring platform and screw it down tightly so it can’t move.

The iron is red-hot when it’s pulled from the fire with tongs. They drop it in place, and then Truckle grabs a tire dog while Felly pounds the tread home with a sledgehammer. She gives occasional directions of ‘three left,’ or ‘two right.’ The smell of the wheel singeing is different, more urgent, than the blazing fire behind them.

Once she’s satisfied with the tread, she steps on a catch, and the wheel drops down into a quench tank, furiously steaming. The iron squeals as it cools, a sound that sets fur on end. They pay it no mind.

The two of them wait for a minute for the frantic bubbles to clear, and fish it back out of the water. Truckle removes it from the tiring platform while Felly rolls the next one over. There is no time to relax.

When they’ve finally finished their work, several repaired wheels lean up against the wall. Tomorrow morning, when they are dry, Truckle will paint them and grease the hubs, and the next day or the day after that, they will be in her wagon, ready for use.

Next time you are about in the city, keep your eyes open for a wagon such as hers. It will be in the curb lane, where she can keep her eyes peeled for wagons in need. Or maybe it will be at the side of the road, toolboxes open. She—and her peers—are constantly patrolling the streets of Manehattan, keeping the traffic moving.

Author's Note:

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