Centralia
Destination Unknown
Centralia
Admiral Biscuit
Like most grain trains, this one wasn’t in much of a hurry. It trundled along the parallel main at a fast trotting pace—she’d thought it would pick up speed when it left the yard, but it didn’t.
There were trees on one side and a golf course on the other, not as industrial as most cities she’d been in. She would have thought she was already out of town, although she’d seen how far the city extended while she was flying.
Just past the golf course, one line branched off to the east, and a moment later she was jerked across a switch as well, diverging west from the main line as the train crossed under a highway bridge.
Industrial buildings started to line the tracks, and rail spurs joined in to their line. This was a more familiar industrial setting to her: parking lots, security fences and dumpsters faced the track, along with stunted trees and bushes.
Did I get on a train that’s going to a grain elevator? She hadn’t spotted any export elevators on the waterfront, but that didn’t mean there weren’t any. That was a problem for later.
Sweetsong yawned and then reached back for her saddlebags. A tug with her mouth and her army blanket was out; she stretched it across the floor, right up against the slope sheet.
A belt of trees on both sides of the tracks was enough cover for her to stretch, and then she settled down on her belly, disappearing into the shadows at the end of the car.
•••
Lights were coming on in the parking lots and on the buildings, and she was constantly rocked as the train crossed switch after switch. A steady parade of tracks came in from both sides, and she watched a northbound local pass, a caboose with big porches and no windows on its tail.
She dozed off as the train passed by a wood treating facility; when she woke again, the train was in a yard.
One side of the yard was walled in with concrete warehouses; the other side had a patch of trees visible above the stored railcars. The yard was well-lit, although the close-packed railcars would give her a decent number of hiding spots, if she wanted to abandon her train.
Sweetsong stuck her head over the side, checking to see if there were any grain elevators in sight. There weren’t, nor were there any employees that she could see. It looked like the locomotives were still on the front of her train, and she considered her options. She had no idea what time it was, or for that matter where she was. The safest bet was to stay put, make sure she kept under her blanket, and see if she woke up somewhere else.
•••
The train finally getting underway woke her in the early dawn. Her ears perked at the sound of slack coming out, and she was ready as the car jolted under her, then started moving.
It was smart to keep her head down in the yard, so she burrowed under her blanket and became a shapeless lump in the shadows, her ears monitoring the train’s progress as it switched across the yard throat and onto the main.
She stuck her head up when the train’s sound became hollow: that meant it was on a bridge. A rusty truss bridge across a muddy river, with a highway to her north. She could faintly smell salt in the air, which meant that she was still near the Sound or if she was lucky, the ocean.
As soon as it had come off the bridge, the train promptly went into another yard, and she ducked her head back down. Sometimes railroads didn’t have enough bridges across a river and it turned into a choke point for trains, so they’d put yards at either side so the trains could wait their turn.
The track made a sharp turn at the end of the yard, and then it started to pick up speed, almost immediately passing under a bridge with big curio windows on it. She couldn’t help but stare at it, even though there was a road right next to the tracks. She’d seen various kinds of fences and decorations on bridges before, but never glass objects.
Before she’d pulled her head back in, she heard a hiss of air, and the train began to slow. Did they see me? The locomotive had a mirror on it, and she should have been far enough back to be out of their sight.
Maybe someone on the ground in the yard had noticed her, had seen the lump of blanket tucked under the slope sheet. It didn’t matter. Sweetsong stuffed her army blanket back into her saddlebags and looked around—there was literally nowhere to hide. A road on one side, thin trees barely covering a hillside. She’d caught glimpses of water beyond the buildings, and that might be her best path. She could circle back around and catch a train later.
She looked up towards the front of the train, trying to get a good idea of the best place to bail, and realized what they were actually slowing for: a giant grain elevator with a ship anchored beside it.
That gave her a few minutes, anyway. Enough time to pick a better landing spot.
•••
She didn’t want to fly back to the yard if she could help it, but looking up the coast there just weren’t many good places to hop a freight. The tracks were pinned between the water and a road with no tree cover at all, and as she passed by a pair of ugly grey ships tied to each other, she started to wonder if she was making a mistake, if she’d be better off retracing her route and trying again.
She glided around on the weak early morning thermals and followed the tracks with her eyes. Further north, the tree cover was better on the inland side, and as long as she was careful, she ought to be able to board a train, if it was going slow enough. There were plenty to pick from.
Northbound trains took the outer track, which meant she would have to pay attention to any oncoming freights on the inside track. And she wouldn’t be able to look down the line as easily, not without people getting suspicious. Instead of hiding in the trees and hoping for the best, she could stop at one of the parks or beaches. She could earn some more bits, and find a train around nightfall. But she wanted to move, be back on the rails. She’d had a nice time in Seattle and now it was time to go on. Just as soon as she had some breakfast.
•••
Her saddlebags were devoid of food—she’d forgotten to stop at a grocery store to get anything for the road. None of the restaurants she’d flown over were open yet, which left her to either fly away from the tracks and find something, eat leaves and grass, or try her luck fishing. Just past the Silver Cloud Inn, there was a small park with a cluster of piers in the water, and she knew some fish liked to swim around piers.
Piers also might have mussels on them which were okay to eat and easy to catch. The difficult part was getting inside; they had hard shells that had to be cracked open with a hoof.
She stashed her saddlebags on top of a pier, then took flight again and circled around the forest of piles, doing her best to think like a fish. The water wasn’t very clear, which made it hard to spot them.
A smart fish would stay hidden unless it was after food. Minnows and herring and other small fish were easy enough to spot in their flashy schools near the surface, and a bigger fish might be hiding near one of the piles, waiting until he saw a meal passing overhead to dart up and grab something.
It was easier to fish when she wasn’t distracted by the sound of every passing train, but she nevertheless managed to find a small trout and flew it to shore.
When she was done eating, she kicked the bones and guts back into the water, retrieved her saddlebags, then flew over to the park’s restroom to refill her water bottle.
There was a small flier taped to the wall imploring her to help save the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus, a creature she’d never heard of. Octopuses lived in the ocean, not temperate rainforests . . . but the flier had a picture of an octopus nestled among pine branches. That was something to watch out for next time she found a tree to nest in.
•••
Her belly full, she settled into a scrubby, tree-y hillside just north of a fireboat on display in a parking lot and watched the trains go by. A southbound grain train, a northbound container train. A mixed freight with long strings of tank cars, clusters of centerbeam flats, and a few auto racks coupled near the end.
Some of them had locomotives on the rear end, others didn’t. There wasn’t enough cover to risk boarding a locomotive.
By noon, she was getting hungry and impatient. She could have bought a ticket on Amtrak and been on her way already, but there was no fun in that. Instead, she nibbled on some wild berries and watched another northbound train rush by too fast to catch. It was hard to say which was worse, to not have any trains, or to have a plethora of trains she couldn't catch. It was obvious most of them were accelerating out of the yard and had picked up pretty good speed by the time they passed her hiding spot.
She would have been better off flying back towards the yard and finding some cover there, picking a train that had just left. She could even do reconnaissance and find a likely-looking one, and then her ears perked as she heard another approaching train. This one was running slow, and she risked a short flight above the octopus-free trees to see what it was hauling.
Loads of grainers, one of them a familiar pink color. She’d found her ride.
•••
Catching a moving train in broad daylight with limited cover was not unlike stalking a tasty trout. She dropped back into the trees and waited until the locomotives thundered past, then she broke cover again to get an eye on the cars, checked for any southbound trains that could ruin her approach, and launched herself out of the tree.
She could lose some height to gain speed as she dropped down to track level, and then she was flying alongside the train, the slipstream of passing cars buffeting her. She’d memorized the cars leading her target, and as her grainer rolled alongside, she was nearly on pace with the train.
The next part was the trickiest. One more glance to make sure that there were no oncoming trains or any other obstacles to ruin her day, and then a quick snap to her right between the supporting bars of the grainer and its side. Confusing winds off the back of her grainer and the trailing car, and then her hooves were on the steel floor.
She’d barely had time to settle in when the train decided to go into a tunnel.
•••
When the train emerged on the other side, Sweetsong cautiously poked her head over the edge. The water was still on the right, but now they were headed southbound.
On the plus side, there were no roads or houses, only trees and tracks and a view of the water. She leaned up against the ladder on the car and after looking down the length of the train to make sure there weren’t any more tunnels coming up, gazed out over the sound. Off in the distance, she could see a suspension bridge that they would go under. The land to the south didn’t curve around as far as she could see, although she knew the train hadn’t gone westward enough to be at the Pacific.
The tracks were close enough to the water that she wondered if waves sometimes splashed the train. Today it was calm, but it was easy to imagine a strong storm washing up against the rails.
She’d gotten wet with rain, but never sea spray, not while riding a train anyway.
There were only a few places where she had to duck back down as the train hugged the coast, a few small clusters of houses or an industrial building. There was a chance that the engineer might spot her in his rearview mirror, but she thought that was unlikely—with all the trees and gentle curves in the track, he wasn’t likely to spot her muzzle or forehoof sticking out of the edge of the car.
A sailor might, but the boats she’d seen were staying offshore.
They skirted the edge of a town, passed a ferry terminal, and before too long were back in the woods again. An island off to the west had a ferry tied up to its dock.
Further along, she spotted a wreck jutting above the waters, a grey-colored hull with its upper works missing, no doubt torn off by waves.
South of that, at the base of the sound, the water started turning marshy, and became solider and solider until there was land on both sides and then there was a road, and she had to crouch back down in her car and watch the scenery pass from a lower vantage point.
Now the land looked more like the Midwest she was familiar with, although with far more pine trees. Fields and farms and towns, level crossings, and the train kept paralleling roads.
Judging by the sun, the train was headed generally south-southwest.
It waited outside a small town, and then when it continued on, it was on a single track.
A few miles further on, it slowed again, and she stuck her head over the side, quickly spotting the signals and an approaching yard.
It was getting late and she was hungry, so she hopped off the train alongside a lumberyard, stretched out, and flew into town to find dinner.
Stats
Page generated in 0.045 seconds
Total duration
804 users online
1,191,997 hits today, 2,054,621 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Northwest_tree_octopus
Be careful flying around Tacoma. McChord Air Force Base homes a fleet of jumbo cargo jets there. They enjoy flying a southbound approach pattern over part of the city.
As the first town south of Tacoma with a real railyard, Centralia is a decent small city. Plenty to see and do. Plenty of places to find a bite to eat. There's really only one active sawmill left in town.
11170656
That’s the one!
11170705
She’s probably smart enough to avoid a jumbo. Probably.
Yeah, it’s a good place for her to get her bearings, resupply (since she forgot in Seattle) and then catch another train to the Pacific. I did find a restaurant that offers some rather unique pizzas.
11170737
The noise they made on approach was enough to make watching TV nearly impossible for 30 seconds at a time.
Have to be careful with railway tunnels under water. She might have ended up in Canada.
And nothing about Centralia's ever burning ground? Or is that a different Centralia?
The YouTube algorithm can be a wonderful thing. Just the other day, I was recommended a video from this channel:
Hobo Shoestring - YouTube
Yes, it's about a guy who does this sort of thing. We don't have to try to imagine your descriptions; we can actually see it for ourselves.
11171274
That one would be in Pennsylvania.
11170791
I can imagine . . . I wouldn’t want to live near an airport.
Weirdly, though, I’d be totally okay living next to an active rail line.
11171115
Those tunnels are a few states back . . . although if she’d jumped on a train going the other way in the first chapter, she would have gone through an underwater tunnel and found herself in Canada.
11171274
Yeah, like 11171515 said, the one that’s on fire underground is in Pennsylvania. It’s been on fire for like 50 years now, and probably will be for a long time.
11171332
That’s a good channel, and in fact part of the inspiration for this story. There’s a brief Hobo Shoestring cameo a few chapters back.
I also adopted a bunch of his slang, like calling covered hoppers ‘grainers.’ And a few chapters or scenes were heavily influenced by his videos, such as Wind River Canyon.
I had no luck finding that golf course, or anything the looked like one, at the beginning of the chapter; I'm not sure where Sweetsong was at that point, and I'm wondering what I missed.
...And I have no idea, looking at the area, where the sound would have been on the left side of a southbound train, having been on the right side before a tunnel.
11171653
Not a line, but I do live next to an active rail yard. :) Small one, for a commuter railroad, but I can, for instance, hear at least one locomotive idling there now, which is often the case.
11171699
...Uh. She didn't? Okay, that's what I thought, but in that case, what did you mean by "as to the first, she does mean literally landing on top of the monorail and train-surfing her way to the next station"? I am quite confused.
But, uh, if she indeed did not do that, that's what does seem to make more sense in the text of the story itself, so... good? I think?
Hm. Interesting. Mine shows track, freight, passenger, light rail, whatever (though it's not perfect, of course), through Layers>More>Transportation... ...But I can't figure out how to make it show train and bus routes. (I think it might have had that functionality in some places before, but without the clicking on them -- but I'm not sure, and might be misremembering.)
11171274
This Centralia is in Washington, a few dozen miles south of Olympia. There's another Centralia in Illinois. That one sees multiple times the rail traffic and related activity as my Centralia, WA does. Interestingly, there is also a coal mine (Open pit stripping type) some miles east of Centralia, WA. It closed down more than a decade ago.
11171653
I'm there already. In fact, The train Sweetsong rode passed by my the far end of the block from my house. I often hear trains sitting and idling while they wait for clearance to join traffic on the mainline. The downside: There's like over half a dozen grade crossings in the first mile between the yard wye and the curve at the end of the old residential neighborhood I live in.
.
Here is where I remember that there are in fact TWO active sawmills in this town. So, Sweetsong's train routing makes more sense all of a sudden. Changing from a southbound mainline to the yard to the Grays Harbor line, while not impossible, is not in exactly common. They usually enter the yard from the south.
.
Still, grain hoppers are usually sent as unit trains out on the Grays Harbor line. Usually. But there is a chicken farm a dozen or so miles to the west of town that receives feedgrain by rail. 2 or 3 cars at a time. Hiding in the middle car of a much longer block of such cars improve her odds of actually reaching the grain elevator at the Port of Grays Harbor. Rail activity west of the Hoquiam River in Hoquiam is light, but between the Hoqiam and Wishkah Rivers, there is a large industrial district that spans Aberdeen and Hoquiam.
11171946
It’s Foster Golf Links, just south of Boeing Field (King County International Airport); the street address is 13500 Interurban Ave S, Tukwila WA.
Did I mix up my right and left? I might have . . .
In Ruston, south of the Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium, the BNSF tracks run under the city, coming out on the other side of the peninsula.
I’d actually find that peaceful. Dunno why but I don’t mind the sound of idling diesels.
Yeah, the lines are drawn generally, but you have to trace them manually as far as I know, and they don’t tell you who owns them. I found for some bus and train routes, I could click on a bus stop/train station, it would tell me what ran there (i.e., bus 3, purple train, etc.). It doesn’t work off the sidebar (that just gives you the stops and times), but if you stay on the map and click the route in the popup, it makes a colorized line where the route runs. The more you zoom out, the easier it is to see. It does not work for long-distance trains (like Amtrak), but it sometimes works for light rail.
Sometimes you can get long-distance train routes by putting in the start and end points, but it’s not all that accurate when you zoom in. The line is near the rails, but not on them.
11172960
All the grade crossings isn’t great when you want to get somewhere. Sometimes I go to Durand MI (which has two crossing rail lines, the Great Lakes Central and the Canadian National) and there have been times I’ve been stuck waiting for one train . . . and once it passes, there’s another train on the other line.
.
Spi Centralia and Northwest Hardwoods? Those were the ones I found.
Could be that the car she’s riding isn’t actually hauling grain at all; covered hoppers are also used for plastic pellets (and other dry, powdery goods). I found out that both UP and BNSF trains are sometimes taken to Grey’s Harbor on PSAP trackage as is, but operated by PSAP crews, so any of those trains would stop in the yard long enough to switch crews, at least. I assume others go through town to other locations (north or south) although I admit I don’t know for sure. That information is surely available online, but I don’t know any good forums/websites for that.
Huh, I just found that on Google Maps! Briarwood Farms, it looks like. There’s a similar big chicken operation not that far from me, but they don’t get their feed by rail.
11171946
Yup, I managed to screw up left and right. It’s fixed now! Thank you!
A chapter that teaches me something new about this wonderful nation is always welcome.
LOOKS AT THE ARTICLE: Silly me, it was just a hoax. But damn that would be a cool animal. Octopi are awesome.
11178808
Tree octopuses would be cool. But the other ones are neat, too. Can’t recall if I’ve ever seen one up close.
Hiding under a blanket also adds extra cuteness in case she is found.
Octopus: "You got lucky this time, pony. This time..."
11186983
Rainbow’s other strategy (which Sweetsong also sometimes employs) is ‘rush in without thinking.’
It does! Nobody would want to boot a sleeping pegasus off a train, would they?
<shakes eight fists at her>
Camp Quest is a camping program for atheists. Camp Quest North West of Washington State will give any camper a godless 100-Dollar Bill from the Early 1950s (before the USA forced religion down our throats by adding "In God We Trust" to the money), to any camper who catches a TreeOctopus or who can prove that they do not exist. It teaches critical thinking:
One cannot prove a negative; so now, none can ever win the godless money by proving that the TreeOctopus does not exist.
11249112
It’s nearly impossible to prove something doesn’t exist (I think that could be debatable depending on the field; I suspect that there are math problems that it has been proven that there is no solution).
So the trick is to catch a ‘tree octopus’ and then have them prove that it isn’t. Get out the gene-splicing gun!
derpicdn.net/img/2020/7/4/2390330/large.jpg
11259385
By something, I mean physical object. a classic example is Russel's TeaPot (named after physicist Bertrand Russel). It is an hypothetical TeaPot orbiting the Sun between Earh and Mars, If one does not find it, it is possible that it exists, but one simply missed it. This comes up when theists harass atheists:
Theist:
Atheist:
Theist:
Atheist:
Theist:
Atheist:
11259515
There are probably still some real physical things that you can prove don’t exist due to physical impossibility, but I do get the point.
First I ever heard of the tree octopus hoax, only took me 24 years....
Still... I remember an early 2000's speculative evolution documentary, called 'The Future is Wild' that ended 250 million years in the future with super-intelligent tree-dwelling land squid. Makes me wonder if this was their inspiration.
11295941
You had to be around when the internet was invented to get in on the ground floor of that one . . . .
It's certainly possible. Octopuses (and maybe squid) are smart and clever, and can live for a while out of water. A few million years of evolution, and maybe they would out-squirrel squirrels.