See the Engines Rolling down the Track...
Falmouth was as chaotic as ever. The port was full to bursting with ships that were offloading large amounts of cargo. Naturally, this meant the engines were being pushed to their limits.
"I don't know if I'm on my dome or on my wheels!" Porter said. "We've been rushed off our wheels the entire morning!"
Izzy laughed. "You look the right way up to me! If you were the other way up, the sea would be at the bottom and the dockyard would be above us!"
Porter glanced up. "The sky is in the right place, then."
Elsewhere in the yard, Salty was prepping a heavy goods train for departure to somewhere on the mainland. "Now, where was this going?" he asked his driver.
"Somewhere in the north of England beginning with B," Sunny replied, as she realigned another switch. "Can't remember which one, though. Was it... Bournemouth?"
"That's in Dorset," Salty said.
"So, it's not Bournemouth," Sunny replied. "Maybe... Skegness?"
"That starts with an S, and it's actually in Lincolnshire," Sophie said, as she rolled by.
"Let me try and figure this out."
Meanwhile, on the approach to Falmouth, Charles was trying to break his own record... again. "SPEEEEEED!" he shouted as he flew down the hill.
"Easy Charles," Zipp said, as she applied the brakes. "We're not breaking the record. Only 40 miles per hour permitted."
"Boring," Charles replied, as the yard hoved into view. It was just then he noticed that the speed didn't seem to be particularly dropping. "What was that about miles an hour?"
Zipp glanced at the brake gauge. "The brakes are applied, but we're not slowing down. This isn't good." She grabbed the radio as the speed through Perranwell began to climb out of control. "33021 to yard control, how copy over?"
"Yard control to 33021, please state your message, over."
"Mayday, mayday, mayday, train has lost control. Speed reading is fifty, I repeat, Five Zero. Braking is innefective."
"Understood. We'll be diverting you to another siding. Prepare to bail."
"Understood. Out." Zipp prepared herself for the task ahead as speed continued to climb. "Maybe I set something wrong?" She applied the brakes harder, but it seemed to be having minimal effect.
"I don't think that house normally passes at this speed!" Charles called.
"That's because we're a runaway, you dolt," Zipp replied. She slammed the brakes into emergency, which only seemed to have the effect of increasing sparks as the train skidded along. "This is gonna be messy."
Down in the yard, Ray was being cleaned by Lady Haven. "And that," the big tank engine finished, "is how an alternator works."
"Fascinating," Lady Haven replied, as she got him ready to move to the platform. "You really are a treasure trove of information."
"Thank you, ma'am," Ray replied, as a few moments later he began to roll backwards. "Unlike Charles, who only knows two facts about ducks and both of them are wrong."
As he cleared the yard and parked up in the platform, a siren began to sound. "What's that?"
"That's the repurposed foghorn which caused all those accidents a month or two ago," Lady Haven replied. "We now use it to warn of runaway trains."
"Runaway train?" Ray asked. "That could mean-"
"GET OUT OF THE WAY!" shouted a familiar voice. "I HAVE NO BRAKES!"
No sooner had they heard that, than Charles barrelled into the yard. The points had been set to clear him of the station and the yards, which meant he could only go one other place.
It was only then they remembered Rebecca was still inside it, and unable to move as she wasn't in steam!
Lady Haven watched in horror as she saw Zipp jump from the cab seconds before impact. The heavy train slammed into the end of the building, causing the wall to collapse as the diesel punched through it. The wagons came to a stop as the shed walls collapsed around it.
Charles, on the other hand, kept going. He skidded down the harbour road, still going far too fast to stop and screaming the entire way. The sea loomed closer and closer as he kept going, only to be suddenly stopped by a wall. "That wall will stop me!" he said.
Or so he thought. He was wrong, as he was about a lot of things. He went straight through it, fell straight down the embankment on the other side, smashed through another wall at the bottom of that, and came to a rest in the wall of Posey's house.
Charles looked at Posey. Posey looked at him. And Posey was not happy.
"Look what you've done to my breakfast! Now I'll have to cook it again!"
Charles, wisely, chose not to mention the ruined plants currently under his wheels.
Recovery operations were underway to recover the damaged trucks. Those that weren't derailed were shunted into another siding by Salty. "It's been a while since I saw a serious accident like this," he said. "It's the second most severe incident in recent times."
"After the collapsing cliff fiasco," Sunny mentioned. "Not an experience I'd recommend."
Charles had been pulled from the remains of Posey's house, which had been stabilised to prevent it from collapsing.
Ray was not especially sympathetic to Charles' plight. "Look what you did to our shed!" he snapped. "Now we have nowhere to sleep at night! This is exactly why you don't go down the hills at such speeds!"
"I guess expecting some sympathy from my colleagues was too much," Charles grumbled, as he was loaded onto a lorry and driven away.
Lady Haven, on the other hand, was tending to her eldest daughter. "Zara, are you OK?" she asked, forgetting in the heat of the moment that Zipp disliked that name.
"Mom, I'm fine," Zipp replied. "The doctor said it was just a few bruises. He said I timed my jump very well. If I hadn't it's likely I would... well, let's just say the end result wouldn't have been pretty."
Hitch walked over with a damage report. "It most certainly wasn't pretty," he said. The shed's totalled. Charles is out of action, as is Rebecca, as she sustained severe damage in the collapse."
"However are we going to operate with two engines down?" Sunny asked. "How can we reallocate?"
"Easy," Porter suggested. "Have Ray cover for Charles and Rebecca, and put Sophie on the train to Darlington."
"So it wasn't going to a place beginning with a B after all!" Sunny said.
That evening, Izzy had invited Misty to watch the sunset near Perranwell. As the sun fell below the sky, the two girls smiled. "Lovely, isn't it?" Izzy said. "Another day over, and a new one beginning in a few hours. Just imagine what we can do in that time?"
"Yeah," Misty nodded. Truth be told she still felt a bit awkward. "I heard about the crash. Good thing I was up at Truro, eh?"
"They took the two engines away for repairs. Charles is being fixed in Crewe, whilst Rebecca was taken to Eastleigh," Izzy explained. She got up and they walked down to the station. It was just then she began acting oddly.
"Izzy, are you feeling alright?" Misty asked.
"Provided a talking tumbleweed doesn't roll past we should be OK," Izzy replied. "Don't evenings like this make you feel like bursting out in song?"
"I'm still not sure why everybody around here sees evrything as a musical," Misty replied.
Izzy opened her mouth- only for somebody else's voice to interrupt.
"Somebody has to be the favourite!
The one that everybody wants to see!"
"Sophie!" Izzy protested. "It's my turn to sing this week!"
Sophie ignored her as she rolled to a stop. "Somebody has to be better than the rest!
Somebody has to be so good that they're the best!
Somebody has to be the favourite!
Somebody has to be me!"
Pipp stuck her head out of the cab door. "Perfect weather for a sunset stream, I think," she said.
"What in the world has gotten into Sophie's radiator?" Misty asked.
"That goods train going to Darlington?" Sophie said. "I'm taking it tomorrow morning! It shows that I really am important and can travel long distances!"
As she rolled towards the siding, she began to sing again. "Sometimes you have to blow your whistle!
"You don't have a whistle!" Izzy shouted.
Unfortunately, this meant that Sophie started from the top.
"Sometimes you have to blast your horn!
To let the other engines know you're near!
Sometimes you have to make a racket and to shout!
In order to ensure that they're not left in any doubt!
Somebody has to be the favourite!
Say hello! The favourite is here!"
"Let's head back to Falmouth," Misty said. "I'd rather not have that in my ears for the rest of the evening."
This was fortuitous, as the next passenger train arrived. "Is she still going?" the DMU asked. "She was singing when I left Falmouth an hour ago."
"Seems that way," Izzy replied, as they showed their season passes and boarded.
Pipp set herself up on the seaside, and set the camera. "Good evening, Pippsqueaks! I'm doing a stream this evening to make up for the fact I'm going on a big journey tomorrow! All the way to this place called Doncaster! Whoo! Hopefully there'll be great food and plenty of singing opportunities. Speaking of singing, fancy a duet Sophie?"
"I'd be up for that!" the diesel said. And off they went.
"Somebody has to be the favourite!
That's just the way it is, you must agree!
Some get to see the world and travel far away!
While other engines have a place they always have to stay!
Somebody has to be the favourite!
Somebody has to be me!
Somebody has to be me!"
Pipp checked the comments. "Oh, superchat from a fan here. They ask us if we plan on hitching a ride on a container ship to travel all the way around the world, exploring railway lines in the process and getting into unrealistic hijinks." She snorted. "Pfft. That sounds like the plot of a bad movie written by people who know nothing about railways!"
The next morning, Pipp got to the shed nice and early, or rather the temporary structure that had been built overnight to house the engines. Firing Sophie's engine into life, the pair set off for the yard to collect the train.
"Hello!" Sophie called. "Is our train here?"
"I'm afraid not," the foreman said. "It left about an hour ago."
Pipp looked horrified. "But if we're here, and the train is already on it's way, then who in the world is pulling it!"
Porter snorted with laughter as he and Bellerophon headed the formation onto the Cornish Main Line. "What a lark!" he said. "I can't wait to see the look on Sophie's face when we get back!"
"Are you sure this is wise?" Bellerophon asked. "Neither of us have particularly large water tanks."
"We should be fine!" Izzy said. "Besides, we can scrounge water as we go along. There's plenty of it in England!"
Misty checked the controls. "I haven't done a cross country trip like this in a while. And that race with Rebecca doesn't really count as I was sat in a support coach for most of that."
Suddenly, Izzy began singing, and they all joined in- except Porter.
"Sometimes you have to get up early!
If there's some place you really want to be!
Sometimes you have to be awake before the dawn!
Sometimes you're up and out before they know you're gone!
Somebody has to be the favourite!
And this time it's going to be me!
This time it's going to be me!
This time it's going to be me!"
Porter's comment broke the silence afterwards. "I must ask why this has become a musical."
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That's not good!
'how copy over?' makes no sense.
Lol, nice reference to 'Thomas comes to breakfast.'
This is why you shouldn't break records Charles.
"The shed's totalled.*
And damn, looks like they got an engine shortage with two of their engines out of service.
How does she know about that? The talking tumbleweed?
everything*
You and me both Misty.
It is.
Huh, I was expecting only Izzy and Porter to be the ones taking the train. Still, this just makes the story more interesting.
Best not to question it. It gets old pretty fast.
11546754
1. Indeed, it is bad.
2. How copy, over is standard radio protocol for 'is this message understood'. It's used in place of 'how do you copy' as the former takes less time to say.
3. It seems Posey has the same skewed priorities as the stationmaster's wife.
4. Nope.
5. And at the worst possible time too.
6. I don't know.
7. Yes.
8. Or is it? Remember that T&F doesn't exist in this universe.
9. More characters makes things more interesting. Besides, a 2F Dock Tank would struggle to move that lot.
10. Yes.
11546881
noted and thx.
11546883
Np.
I'm impressed you made a reference to the 1989 Cajon runaway in this story. But I wonder what caused Charles to lose his brakes?
And to answer Misty and Porter's question, almost everything in MLP has a song number in it. Done from the 1980s cartoon up to G5. It's kinda a thing in the show.
11546933
1. All shall be made clear.
2. I assigned that to Misty as, AFAIK, Misty is yet to get any solo musical numbers (MYM heavily implies she is tone deaf).
11547063
Hmm, 40 years and now they decide to make a character that's tone deaf.
11547065
The Dazzlings sorta count. The time loop special reveals they rely on autotune to sing after the events of Rainbow Rocks.
11547203
I meant with normal Equine characters. Not EQG, or humans. Cause all Equines had more song numbers than anyone else.
11547207
Oh. I think it highlights how she's had no real contact with pony society, seeing as the others are good singers.
11547314
That would make sense. I mean not once has Opaline ever done any singing. (And if you ask me, I think it would be better if she didn't, cause not every single villain needs to sing)
11547315
The third TYT album gives Opaline a villain song, which is done in the style of a classic Disney villain song.
11547427
Oh, I guess I missed that part.
11547459
It only came out recently; the accompanying short is yet to release on YT.