Lost, and then Found.
Traintober 2022 Day 13 - Lost
Summary - Blue Peter is Lost . Then he is Found.
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1962 - Dundee
I am lost
The engine stood outside the shed. The yard was still alive with the sound of steam, but it grew quieter each day. The quiet rumble of diesel motors grew ever louder in their absence.
At the standpipe, his sister sat, equally silent. He respected her greatly - and was quite jealous of her name.
Today, however, there was to be no jealousy, no friendly name calling, or even reassurances of a ‘next time’.
They both knew that there would be no ‘next time.’
“Are you the first?” He asked, voice solemn.
“No,” Velocity looked gutted. “They took Sugar last week.”
He felt powerless, and the whole world started to spin. One gone already? How many more can they take?
After a long and poignant moment of silence, Velocity left the yard - a slow empty stock train was to be her final duty, playing the ferryman of the damned for a group of old compartment coaches, before meeting her end herself.
Being “proper” express engines, they were not permitted to cry, and all he said when she departed was a quiet “Farewell, sister.”
Dignified even in her waking death, Velocity was equally stony. “Farewell, Blue Peter. May we meet again.”
She set off into the distance, vanishing from Blue Peter’s sight for the last time. The junction was not far ahead, and she signalled her final departure from Dundee with a haunting blast from her whistle that seemed to penetrate into Blue Peter’s very soul.
And then she was gone.
For the rest of his life, he regretted not crying.
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January 1967
They paraded him around for years, making use of his recently-overhauled state to haul around hundreds of tourists who wished to see the end of an era occur before their very eyes. Privately, he wondered if any of them cared that it was him specifically pulling their train, or if any steam engine could have filled in for him without their notice.
Judging from the number of snapped photos and produced notebooks, he almost felt as if they’d rather have any other engine but him, after the first time, just to fill another page in their books.
When they finally retired him, it was a relief. Long had he been alone, one of just three left, and now he would shuffle off this mortal coil to a railway in the sky.
They dropped his fire for the last time in October, and pushed him into a storage line late in November. As the bells of New Years tolled, in the city around him, the cold winter wind whipped through the lines of soon-dead rolling stock. It curled through broken windows and out open doors, howling in strange ways. As it whistled through the spokes of his wheels, he swore that it changed tune, and for a moment it howled like a steam whistle - one he’d not heard in almost 6 years.
I am found
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1971 - Doncaster
I am lost
They dragged him from his line barely a year after they put him there. His dreams of a reunion in the sky were dashed, as a glowering diesel - furious at being told it could not belittle an inferior - dragged him into the works of his creation.
He thought that they were to return him to his metal in the reverse of his creation, but lo, he was restored.
Made whole.
Made to live on.
A television show for children discovered that it shared a name with him, and multiple vapid hosts were dispatched to document his unwillingly renewed life. They smiled for their cameras, and wouldn’t leave until his cheeks ached from forced cheer.
With great fanfare, they “renamed” him, with the same name he’d known all his life. They cheered and they caroused, not needing to play up their emotions for the camera. Someone asked him how he was feeling, and all he could bring himself to say was “Overwhelmed.”
He wanted to go back to his line, and await the time when his family would join him.
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1985 - Dinting
His wish was granted, but not by a genie, but the proverbial monkey’s paw. Huge sums had been spent on his restoration, and then he was never allowed to run for more than a few days a year. “The economy” was the excuse. He didn’t care.
He was surrounded, on his storage road, not by the quiet almost-dead, but by the unquiet living. Engines from across the country were stored by their new owners - societies, rich men, etc. - in this place, the former home of the great electric line that charged over and through the Pennines. Electric lines stood, deactivated, surrounded by steam engines that were also.
Some were cared for, others were like he was. One of the former was left near him. She was sunny and bright, fitting of her name: Bahamas.
Cheer up! She’d say whenever the rest of the group seemed to be stuck in their own personal doldrums. We’re still here, aren’t we? No use moping around!
Many engines seemed strangely buoyed by that, but he was not.
“What is the use of joy?” He asked. “When you are all that is left? Every day I live, the fainter their memories get.”
She spoke to him, one day. You don’t have to be alone, you know. She said, gently. Life is worth living when you’ve got friends along the way.
“And when they leave me too? Taken by cruel men who care not for us?”
You cry because it’s over. Then you smile because it happened. She intoned solemnly, her nameplates shining bright in the sun.
“And what then? Do I keep smiling in my solitude?”
The two engines looked at each other.
You find something to live for. Bahamas said after a moment. I don’t act like this for myself. She paused, looking around at the other engines that surrounded them. I do it for them. I live so that others find a reason to keep going. You need to look inside yourself, and find something that keeps you alive.
He didn’t believe her, but he tried his best to help make the others smile - to help Bahamas in her altruistic goals. It felt freeing somehow.
He smiled again.
I am found.
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1994 - Durham
I am lost
His owner had come to see him in 1987. He acknowledged that he hadn’t cared for Blue Peter in the way that he should, and instead loaned him to a new organization. Within two years he was away from his storage lines, once again in front of the insipid TV cameras. More money was spent bringing him up to operating condition.
He found it harder and harder to smile, as he left those few friends he made behind, but one day he did not have to fake it was the day that BR shattered into a thousand pieces. That was a happy day.
The new organization had promised to run him often, and kept their word. As the nineties churned on, he ran on tour after tour. Unlike the old days, people came from all corners of the country specifically to see him. They brought with themselves gifts of the highest order - memories of his family, and he found these journeys almost fun.
Then he slipped, and fell from grace.
Inexperienced drivers and an icy hill do a catastrophe make, and as his wheels slipped and struggled up the hill outside of Durham, he felt the water in his boiler slosh into places it should not be.
His throttle jammed wide open, and his own body turned against him, running out of control in a demonic howl of shrieking metal. His wheels turned and spun until all he could feel was speed, and then his motion ripped itself apart with a horrible multi-part bang that echoed through the valley like a bomb blast.
The moment was over, and all that was left was pain and loss.
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1996 - Sodor
For his repairs, he was dragged off to an Island out of time. They repaired him with a level of skill and care that even his birthplace could scarcely match, restoring him to running condition ahead of schedule and under budget.
They offered his owners a way of reducing the costs, and he found himself running trains alongside other engines of his own era, and those who replaced him and had been replaced in turn. They were kind, and understood his pain in ways he hadn’t thought possible.
I lost my entire family, save one. A green diesel confided to him.
They called us non-standard, said another. And then they cut my brothers up in the same yards that built them. They’d less time than some of yours when they went.
Gordon, the leader of the Gresleys, spoke to him like an equal. What happened to you and yours is beyond the pale. You will always have a place amongst mine - I promise you that.
They offered him trains that were rightfully theirs - crack expresses, fast mails, even the legendary Kipper. He did not feel right taking what was theirs, but felt even worse refusing a gift given in earnest.
One late night he buffered against a crack mail train - eight cars of high priority mail from the Emerald Isles behind him. The rails were empty - the Kipper was late, the express long gone. His driver had a steady hand, knowledgeable in his boiler. As they whipped past a yard dotted with electric catenary poles, the regulator opened up one notch at a time.
Once again, his wheels began to spin, faster and faster, but this time each turn put more rails behind them. He focused on the feeling, on the power, on the speed.
He flew down the line, fast enough to trigger alarms in the signal boxes. The fireman shoveled like a man possessed, and each chuff sounded like a gunshot. For one everlasting moment that he had only ever felt once before, on a bridge in Durham, he was an intoxicated being of pure speed.
In that moment, he felt reborn. It was a high that he wanted to ride forever - to charge into space at a thousand miles per hour, or even more.
He was exactly where he wanted to be.
I am found.
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2002 - Darlington
I am lost
His working career was cut short by the end of his boiler ticket - for all the good that his owners had let the Sudrians do, the government still distrusted them. He’d been limited to seventy-five miles per hour, or less, and when the time had come, he’d been stripped of first his mainline certificate and then his boiler ticket.
In less than two years he’d gone from a functioning engine to a metal ornament, suitable for only museums and lawns. They dragged him to Darlington, where he would sit in both.
Men often stopped to take his picture, but seemed strangely disinterested in him. They often made comments about another engine, and left before he could ask questions. His long-suppressed curiosity finally made an appearance, and he was soon dubbed “mouthy”, and banished to a position in the museum where he was visible to tourists, but they could not hear him.
Left alone, his mind soon wandered down dark rails, and every so often, he thought he could hear a whistle from engines long scrapped.
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2008 - Darlington
They woke him up one morning with the sound of banging. The old carriage shed next to the station/museum was having an interior wall demolished. While this was occurring, a small diesel shunter came and pulled him from the museum. The diesel was grinning wildly, and spoke in hushed tones about a “new build”, whatever that was.
He was left next to the shed, and waited for someone to tell him what was going on.
He jumped when a whistle sounded from inside the building. No-one else reacted, and he calmed himself, assuming the sound had come from inside his mind.
Then came the plumes of smoke and steam.
Then a tender, ghostly grey and obscured by smoke.
It was followed by an engine.
It was an engine, right?
It looked at him. It looked like him.
That was impossible.
“Hi!” It - she - spoke. “I’m Tornado! Who are you?”
He was Blue Peter.
And at that moment, he was found.
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