The Only Chapter
A Brief and Wholly Accurate History of the Equestrian State Railways
By Jelly Hatchet
The fairly recent dissolution of the E.S.R. – the Equestrian State Railways – offers the pony historian a unique opportunity to chart the decline and downfall of one of Early Modern Equestria’s captains of industry. What will become clear in this brief look is how even a Good Thing can become a Bad Thing over time ( BT = GT/t ), and how even bad eggs can ruin a perfectly fried omelette, or a confused metaphor for that matter.
As most ponies – excluding everypony who is not a historian, an engineer, or a model train fanatic – will know, the first commercially successful locomotive in Equestrian history was Stableton’s Arugula, which launched a nationwide fever for heavers, levers and steam-powered overachievers that we today call the Steam Revolution – so named due to one eccentric vehicle requiring a rider to be tumble-dried while it was being operated – and it was at the end of this first great Equestrian locomotive boom – which incidentally echoed for several minutes according to a number of eyewitness accounts – that the E.S.R. was created.
The E.S.R. began initially as a private venture, known as Equestrian Railways or E.R., and was launched by two enterprising earth ponies, Messrs. Brae and Bray, with the explicit support of H.R.H. Princess Celestia. It, alongside other such ventures, including the Baltimare Union of Trainways and Tramways or B.U.T.T., were amongst the first wave of railway corporations to be inaugurated in this period. The support of the Crown, of course, meant that this private venture became, to be precise, not so private – and public interest in the private is as visceral in those days as it is today, albeit with a few more exclamations of ‘oh my!’ from those of more rarefied sensibilities.
Regardless, the E.R. was soon renamed the E.S.R. – the addition of a letter being a great privilege in those days. This was obviously a very Good Thing. Not only did this allay issues regarding how ponies should pronounced the acronym – ‘Er? I say!’ being the favoured one amongst Canterlot elite – but the E.S.R. or Equestrian State Railways were brought under the jurisdiction of the newly created Ministry of Railway Transport, a.k.a. the M.O.R.T. which saw the two enterprising earth ponies installed as both room fixtures and equal heads of the new ministry, with the understanding that two heads are presumably better than one and that two brain cells could presumably understand more than just one single brain cell alone.
With much fanfare, the first national railway was laid between the cities of Canterlot and Baltimare, creating the foundation for the maze of railway lines that would soon crisscross the entirety of Equestria’s east coast – scholars still debate as to who won the inter-ministry tic-tac-toe competition which saw the only map of Equestria in the M.O.R.T. offices having the honour of hosting the games – and, of course, it was clear to none at this point that the failings of the bureaucratic machinery even at the E.S.R.’s inception would eventually lead to its implosion a hundred years on.
Having focused its energies on the east, it was clear to the M.O.R.T. that the next endeavour was to go west – for a given value of west in those days, considering equal efforts were being made by the only still-independent railroad company at that time, the Trainways for Heavy Industries and Concerns Company, a.k.a. the T.H.I.C.C., of going east from Las Pegasus. It was only through a coin flip that it was agreed to meet half-way – the coin having landed squarely on its edge, and it can be found on record that H.R.H. Princess Celestia swears that she had no influence on the results of the flip. Regardless, the slogan ‘Go for the Middle (of the Country)’ was not a popular cry for enthusiastic rail-heads of the era.
The union of the railways was a proud moment for the M.O.R.T., with a golden spike signalling the completion of the first transcontinental railway in Equestrian history. Of course, with the golden spike came a golden hammer, and a golden suit, as well as a golden medal for every participant and guest at the much-publicised event, meaning that the cost of said event was phenomenal. Indeed, the cost was such that T.H.I.C.C. had to downsize significantly immediately after the event. Eventually, the leaner corporation was purchased by the M.O.R.T. at a low, low price, resulting in the ministry finding itself in total monopoly of the railroads of Equestria. For a time, this was also considered a very Good Thing.
Around the same time, Messrs. Bray and Brae both exited the M.O.R.T., apparently due to an unexpected onset of la mort. What happened to them both to cause their sudden departure is still hotly debated by biographers, but common consensus is that the two ponies expired due to either snu-snu or choo-choo – the general split in opinion amongst scholars being around fifty-fifty. However, from this high – in more ways than one – the E.S.R. would begin its slow, scenic route to decline and dissolution, with approximately twenty years of extremely expensive operation after the completion of the transcontinental railway ending in the infamous Hay Bridge Disaster.
The Hay Bridge Disaster, as most readers will remember, was a watershed in the fortunes of the E.S.R., if by ‘water’ one means ‘tsunami’, and if by ‘shed’ one means ‘overflowing outhouse’. The causes were many, but included everything from misapplied funding, under-qualified workers, excessively optimistic estimates, inadequate technology, extreme atmospheric conditions, and a halibut. With almost three dozen injured, including five grumpy yaks, four earth pony farmers, three unicorns, two Wonderbolts, and a partridge in a pear tree, the public was quick to search for somepony to blame for the disaster. What they instead found was enough scandalous ammunition for the presses of the time to finance their own war of words for the next decade or so.
With the passing of Messrs. Bray and Brae, the running of the E.S.R. had fallen to Ale Capony, a unicorn of [un]impeachable behaviour – which, in modern parlance, means a right crook – who had been running a regular racket out of the Manehattan offices of the M.O.R.T.. This was, just as obviously, a Bad Thing. Noise complaints from irate neighbours were what cued Canterlot officials to the wrongdoings of the small-hoofed pony, whose flagrant tribalist attitudes and disregard for the law – which were themselves unbelievably insufficient to convict him in a trial a year prior due to a packed jury – were enough of a sign for the Service of Internal Revenue, a.k.a. the S.I.R., to investigate him.
As most ponies today know, the safest answer to the S.I.R. knocking on one’s door is to cooperate – leading to the now standard answer of ‘S.I.R., yes sir’ when faced with the S.I.R.. However, Ale Capony’s nature was such that it took a shootout involving three officers, four hired thugs, thirty apple pies, and a rubber chicken to arrest the gangster. Incidentally, the rubber chicken’s testimony was held to be the most enlightening and persuasive in the trial afterwards, leading to the life-imprisonment of Ale Capony and the subsequent investigation into the finances and conduct of the M.O.R.T..
The subsequent head of the M.O.R.T. was, incidentally, a classic case of ‘bossa nova, similis bossa seneca’, or ‘meet the new boss, same as the old boss’. This descriptor of the situation can also be supplemented by an old expression from Germaneigh, which goes ‘Alles ist wie immer, nur schlimmer.’, and which roughly translates as ‘Everything’s the same, except worse.’. Needless to say, this was, again, a Bad Thing.
It was at this time that it became public knowledge that the E.S.R. had been run well beyond its means. While this is not in itself unusual, the news came around the same time as the Great Crash of 929 C.C. – Celestial Calendar or seventy-one years before the return of H.R.H. Princess Luna, for those few non-ponies reading this. What caused the Great Crash? Speculate wildly, someponies say. The result of this event, of course, was that the M.O.R.T. came under fire from a number of public interest groups, for misappropriating public funds, betraying the public trust, and not being on fire in the first place.
This escalation of tensions culminated in the much publicised Battle of Stable Street, wherein railway workers took one of the locomotives off the rails and ran it down the main thoroughfare of Stable Street into a public urinal in a reign of tin-pan terror that lasted two hours and seven minutes before the local police forces and government officials managed to defuse the situation with promises of fair wages, guaranteed pensions, and a hot toddy.
Alas, it was at this point that it became quite clear that the E.S.R.’s days were numbered – one through sixty-nine for unsustainable operation, seventy through one hundred and eighty for bankruptcy – and it was with little regret and great fanfare that the E.S.R. and the M.O.R.T. were both formally dissolved by an Act of Parliament and a Writ of the Crown – although there remains some confusion even up till today as to whether that also constitutes a Writ of Parliament and an Act of the Crown. The differences between these things is, thankfully, an academic question.
It is here that we must close the chapter on the history of the E.S.R., this Brief and Wholly Accurate History of the long-established institution threatening to become a Long and Wholly Accurate History of the same unless it were wound it up here. It should be abundantly clear, however, that the failings of the bureaucratic apparatus were chief to blame for the train-wreck that the E.S.R. became, figuratively and literally.
The author can only hope that the recently inaugurated New Equestrian State Railways, or N.E.S.R – this being an entirely different organisation – will appreciate the lessons of the E.S.R.’s run. The author has also been informed that the N.E.S.R. will be occupying the old offices of the E.S.R., and employ roughly the same ponies. One can only hope that this entirely new government enterprise will be operated solely for the benefit of Equestria as a whole. It need not be said that this would be a very Good Thing.