Dirty Water
One day, after having gotten in from a lot of work, Peter Sam was being cleaned by his driver, Silverstream, and her brother, Terramar. Only Silverstream had gone to Wales with Peter Sam; Terramar had stayed behind as he had been helping with Luke to keep the railway running.
"They clean engines very well on the Talyllyn, you know!" Peter Sam said with a smile.
Terramar looked over. "Are you saying that just because, or are you implying something else?"
"He's implying something else," Silverstream said quickly. "After all, he's a great engine to work with, and the crew at the Talyllyn did a good job."
"I remember the time I got ill after being cleaned there," said Peter Sam. "Would you like to hear the story?"
"I was there, so I know what happened," Silverstream said. "But I'm sure Terramar would love to hear!"
"I would," Terramar said, and pulled up a chair. Silverstream sat down in the driver's seat, as she and Peter Sam began to tell the story.
Pendre, North Wales
Silverstream held her tea in a mug in one hand. No point in drinking scalding hot liquid from your hands, after all. She tasted some more of it. "This tastes funny!" she said. "It seems oddly sweet."
"That's because the water here is soft," explained the depot manager, with a smile. "The water passes through very few rocks, and surrenders very few minerals to the water, which is what gives it the strange taste. There you are from, they have hard water, which surrenders most of its minerals. The only problem with soft water is that all that silt and other things in it produces limescale that clogs the tubes. I recall one story where they had to remove an engine's boiler tubes with another engine because the tubes were jammed in solid!"
"How do you deal with the problem?" asked Peter Sam.
"We use a special chemical process to remove all of that stuff, which is fitted to most of our water towers," the manager went on. "This is why our engines can use the water with no difficulty. Otherwise, cleaning out the boilers would be a right mess!"
As the manager walked away, Silverstream backed Peter Sam up to the water pipe, ran it into his tank, and turned the tap. Water soon began gently rolling down the pipe and flowed in Peter Sam's water tank. He was a saddle tank, and thus only had one tank, not two, as was once erroneously reported by somebody (who I can't recall). Peter Sam, however, did not react well to the water.
"Silverstream?" he called. "Something doesn't feel right. The water tastes off, somehow!"
"Maybe that filter thingy takes affect in the tanks?" Silverstream suggested.
There was a loud whistle behind them. "Can you please hurry up?" asked Talyllyn. "I've been sitting here for a while whilst you two have been blathering on. We have a railway to run, you know!"
"Sorry, Talyllyn," said Peter Sam. "We'll be on our way momentarily." Then his boiler was full. Silverstream turned the tap off, and walked back to the cab. With precision and care, she moved him onto the main running line, and then began to reverse to Twywn Wharf station, where a little diesel called Mountaineer had already moved the coaches into position. Peter Sam was coupled up, and all seemed good. Silverstream opened the injectors to fill the boiler.
"Ouch!" Peter Sam exclaimed. "I feel sick! This water does not sit well with me at all."
"Oh dear," Silverstream said. She started to fidget. You could tell she was worried if she was fidgeting more than usual (given her usual inability to keep still). She glanced back. "We'll take a look when we arrive at Nant Gwernol at the end of the line, OK?"
They never made it that far. The last of the passengers boarded, the guard blew his whistle and waved his green flag, and soon the train was ready to depart. Silverstream pulled on the whistle chord, and grew even more concerned. "The whistle doesn't normally gurgle," she said, confused. She then opened the regulator.
Suddenly, a massive jet of dirty, white water blasted out of his funnel and fell everywhere. It landed on the track. It landed on the platform. It landed on Peter Sam. It landed on the station canopy. It landed on Silverstream. Water was everywhere.
"Yuck!" Peter Sam exclaimed. "What a mess!" He was in no condition to operate, but luckily Mountaineer was nearby, and shunted him out of the way so that Talyllyn could take his train instead. Silverstream looked upset, and her voice quivered. She seemed legitimately upset.
"P- Peter Sam?" she asked quietly. "I- I'm sorry. I shouldn't have tried to run you in these conditions!"
"It's alright," Peter Sam said. "You weren't to know. Now let's hope I can be wheeled back to the shed and get this mess cleaned up."
Unfortunately, it wouldn't be. The visitors had come to see Peter Sam, and would have been disappointed if he hadn't been there. So he sat on the siding for the rest of the day, covered in sludge. Silverstream did her best to clean him up, but the mess remained, and Peter Sam had to endure hours of people laughing at him.
"...Silverstream did finally get a chance to wash me thoroughly, although she ended up extremely mucky herself," Peter Sam finished. "Eventually, it turned out that they had put far too much of the special substance into the water tower, and that was what caused the water to go weird. They use a different substance to clean the water now, as a consequence of that incident, and that is what I was referring to when I said that they clean engines very well on the Talyllyn, given how much muck was stuck on me."
Terramar nodded. "Remind me never to complain about cleaning Rheneas' ashpans again," he said, and he and his sister went back to cleaning Peter Sam.
Limescale was a massive problem on British Railways, especially on the North Eastern region. In fact, you could tell the state of the water table simply from looking at an engine's boiler!
This image gives a good sense of what a limescale encrusted loco looked like. The incident in this story is loosely inspired by an incident on the Talyllyn that occurred in the 1980s.
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Isn't Mountaineer a Ffestiniog loco?
And that kids is why never use dirty water. IT IS REALLY GROSS. DX
10773040
Which, I appreciate very much
This was a nice story and I figured there'd be an origin to this story's events somewhere.
On another note, Peter Sam and Silverstream may of got to visit Talyllyn Railway, I wonder who will be next?
10773356
Thanks for pointing that out. I meant to write Merseysider, which is a Talyllyn loco.
10773469
It also depends on the cleaning quality-though most humans never have to deal with the effects of limescale!
10773500
No problem!
10773505
Well, apart from the Skarloey, there are only two 2ft 3in railways in Britain. There's the Talyllyn as discussed above, and the Corris Railway not far away (where Skarloey went for his test run after being overhauled at Pendre).
10774014
Alright good to know that, however, I was referring to who would be next to visit Talyllyn railway.
10774039
Good question. Rheneas would be an obvious choice.
10774106
Ah yes, most certainly. As none of the books had him visit.
The only engines who visited in the books was Peter Sam, as this chapter shows. And Sir Handel in the book "Great Little Engines".
10774108
The engines of the Talyllyn are also repainted into their Skarloey Railway counterparts on occassion. For example, Sir Haydn has run as Sir Handel for a while.
10774128
I've seen it before. I even seen Midlander dressed as Rusty on a picture once
10774130
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The original Sir Handel face was OK, but the second was the stuff of nightmares.
10774141
You mean the one with that weird unibrow? Cause if that is the one you mean, I conquer cause that face looks more like something you'd see on a knock off toy
10774145
images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/15b039ee-66bf-474c-b354-c8bf078f0973/dafbn46-8f4942a2-d909-48fc-8acd-ceb53f2fe370.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOiIsImlzcyI6InVybjphcHA6Iiwib2JqIjpbW3sicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvMTViMDM5ZWUtNjZiZi00NzRjLWIzNTQtYzhiZjA3OGYwOTczXC9kYWZibjQ2LThmNDk0MmEyLWQ5MDktNDhmYy04YWNkLWNlYjUzZjJmZTM3MC5qcGcifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6ZmlsZS5kb3dubG9hZCJdfQ.0yqc_8_-ra90dmxqSfcpzZvQyWzhJpljdIuIcitLxF8
The one on the right looks like Nicholas Cage who has just had a botox injection.
"NOT THE BEES!"
10774150
Yeah it really does. That face doesn't fit the Skarloey engines at all and the one on the left is very inaccurate as non of the engines wore hats!
10774152
Indeed, how on earth would a hat even fit onto the front of the smokebox?
Sadly, the Talyllyn are the victims of Mattel's protectionism, in that they aren't allowed to use most of the character names (them being registered trademarks). Thankfully, HiT's attempt to claim the names of the Talyllyn engines as trademarks was shot down, as the engines are all named after places.
10774176
Quite right.
And yet another reason to hate Mattel.
10774194
It's hardly the silliest copyright case. Games Workshop once tried to copyright skulls.
10774213
10774217
That fell through.
Poor Peter Sam.