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mean-scarlet-deceiver · 3 years

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Fic: QLIR ‘Careless’ Outtake (Henry, Gordon, the Three Not-So-Unnamed Tender Engines)

The ‘Stack Alone’ storyline heavily involves ‘The Red Engine’ from the first RWS installment.

So perhaps it’s time to share my take on the ‘three unnamed tender engines’ from Book 1.

In ficcy form!

Unlike most fanon, I have ‘The Red Engine’ as the leader and not remotely an okay guy at all. Without him, 98462 would just be your typical big engine with the patented attitude, but the Red Engine is a charismatic sociopath. 87546 is a straight-up reckless and selfish idiot, but, again, made considerably worse by these enterprising friends he makes on Sodor. ‘The Red Engine’ escapes censure in The Official History Books because he totally had FC1 wrapped around his buffers... much to the en-maddenment of our three railway engines.

Samuel: ‘The Red Engine’ (there’s only one, in this story; the author’s and illustrators’ Issues are not my problem to fix) Ipswich: 98462 Lloyd (full name ‘Lloyd George’): 87546

Here is an outtake (carefully avoiding... major spoilers) from QLIR ‘Season 2: Careless.’

Summary: February 1924. The loaners ascend to dizzying heights of malice. Henry sticks his funnel out (spoiler alert: for all we don’t really explore it in this snippet, making an enemy of these three, obviously not good not good not good and Henry definitely will have fallout to deal with). Gordon also finds that he’s hit a limit, and is much better at enforcing it.

Henry heard the three of them cackling long before he actually arrived, which he did with the greatest reluctance. Of all the places he hadn’t wanted to go in his short life, the sheds, on that particular night, were right up there.

Each turn of his rods and pistons was an alternation between terror and fury, terror and fury…

“Such carelessness!” Samuel was laughing merrily as Henry came into sight, enjoying his act of affected surprise. “Considering that it’s all the little tank engine does, you’d think he’d know his business better than that.”

“I wonder if that controller is even going to bother with his repairs?” asked Ipswich.

“Oh, he’d better. And put a rush on it, too. Didn’t you hear, he really thinks we’re going to fetch our own stock now!”

“What!” burst out Lloyd.

“That’s no way to run a yard,” said Ipswich, who was still grinning broadly, as if this were merely the next game, which he intended they should win.

“Don’t we have a spare engine for just this sort of thing?” said Lloyd. “Steam him up and have him do it.”

Closed up in the furthest berth, Edward was oblivious to all of this. Weeks ago he had finally gone silent, numb, and unconscious.

And, although Henry knew all too well, that, no matter how deeply you retreated, there was no place where one could quite escape the unbroken winter cold… Henry still envied him.

He did?

He realized that yes, it was just so.

The tug-of-war between terror and fury abruptly snapped. Henry was abruptly buried in a avalanche of loneliness, and horror, and shame.

He’d thought, briefly, that these evil tossers were his friends.

“Shut up!”

He heard his own voice—fierce and shaking—with as much surprise as the rest. And with perhaps more than one of them: Samuel raised his eyebrows but, as usual, didn’t seem too thrown off by anything at all. “What’s that, Harry m’boy?”

“I said shut up!” The fury was still there. So was the terror. So was everything. Henry couldn’t see straight. “What was the point of that? He could have been hurt! He was hurt! His fireman was hurt! And why? Why? What did Thomas ever do to you?”

They were chuckling.

“Annoys the hell out of us all, don’t he?” asked Ipswich.

“And instead of annoying him back you nearly get him exploded?!”

“Fixed the problem, didn’t it?” asked Lloyd. “You’re welcome.”

“Just making one little improvement around here at a time,” said Samuel.

“You lot are—are—”

“Ooh,” said Lloyd. “We’re waiting.”

“Go on, then.”

“Make it worth our while, Harry!”

“—are—sociopathic!”

They stared briefly. Then laughed long and hard.

“Did it sneeze?” asked Samuel, looking, as usual, good-humored and cherubic.

“It's just making up words, isn’t it?” asked Ipswich.

“I didn't think a sham could have a vocabulary like that!” said Lloyd.

“It’s a real word, you ignoramuses,” grumbled a new voice. “And he’s right.”

Gordon had come up, and the loaners had been cackling too loudly for anyone to notice...

... until he burst on through the turntable far too swiftly.

He screeched to a sudden, sharp stop, only directly in front of Samuel’s buffers.

“Ah, Gordon, dear fellow!” Samuel managed to wink. “Heard the news?”

Gordon abruptly reversed, and then surged forward once more.

Samuel squeaked before Gordon came to a stop again… merely tapping him… though with an audible clank.

Aside from the engines’ low steaming, the men's incoherent murmuring, and the hoots of distant owls, there was total silence in the now-still yard.

Everyone stared as the cloud of steam slowly dissipated, leaving only a thunderous-looking Gresley Pacific who loomed over the Fey.

“Next time you’re at loose ends,” Gordon rumbled, “pick on someone your own size.”

Samuel had never been daunted before, and he wasn’t now—having already recovered from his shock.

“Or what?” he smiled.

“Or next time I don’t stop.” Gordon sounded bored.

“Ho!” Samuel laughed, and Lloyd and Ipswich tried to follow, though they were significantly less hearty about the business. “Controller’d know you were the only one who could have dealt such damage. You’d be rumbled!”

Gordon remained calm, to say nothing of supremely dismissive. “If you told on me, then I’d tell too. Wouldn’t go well for you.”

“Aren’t threats a little beneath you, Gresley?”

“Threat? Fact. Don’t believe it’s gotten through your thick smokebox yet, just how much Controller dotes on that little one.”

“And you, too?” Samuel waggled his eyebrows. “Touching, really!”

“Our problems will be kept among ourselves from now on,” Gordon proclaimed. “Disgraceful business, to drag tank engines into it.”

“Oh,” breathed Ipswich. “It’s a matter of honor, then!”

“Quite right. Budge over,” Gordon said aside, to Henry, as he backed again onto the turntable. “Pushing around a simple small fool like that—no honor in it at all. Number one is off-limits, and that’s that.”

“Just an express engine and his station pilot,” Lloyd cooed, once Gordon slowly turned, approaching him. “That’s sweet.”

Gordon eyed Lloyd as if he hadn’t yet noticed him, and was surprised to find that he still existed.

“You really want to go another round, Great Western?”

“We’re told we ought to pick on someone our own size,” said Lloyd. “And I like to pull above my weight!”

Henry and Gordon snorted simultaneously. Lloyd seemed rather shocked at this double bind, and gaped at Henry.

“Oh?” Samuel beamed at the two bigger engines. “Are we picking teams, then?”

“There are no teams, you yammering fools,” said Gordon. He backed roughly into his berth. “There’s only me, and then the rest of you zippy idiots—who, by the way, are going to be arranging my trains too, since I had nothing to do with the shameful affair, and am not about to suffer for it. Now stuff it up your funnel, Fey, and hold your peace. I don’t think you realize,” he forged on, suddenly quick and angry, when Samuel almost spoke again, “what ‘indispensable’ actually means. We have, as you note, a spare engine. The only job he couldn’t manage to sort, if Controller decides he’d rather have a civilized railway again, is mine. So the only one who is ‘indispensable’—is me.” He eyed every single one of them in turn, including Henry, who was as speechless as the rest and rather offended, to have been included in this gallery of rogues. At the end of this disgusted survey, Gordon grunted and closed his eyes. “Good night.”

Henry had to hand it to him. It did indeed turn out, improbably enough, to be the most peaceful night the sheds had seen since Lloyd had arrived to complete the trio from hell.

And it was a shame that he was still far too upset by the news about Thomas to enjoy it in the least.

#ttte fic #fic snippets #ttte #ttte henry #ttte gordon #ttte oc: samuel #ttte oc: ipswich #ttte oc: lloyd #ttte oc #the railway series #qlir #Gordon Briefly Decides That Feigning Chronic Sleep is Not a Sustainable Life Strategy and other stories #jobeywrites

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mean-scarlet-deceiver · 3 years

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Fic Outtake: The Why and the Wherefore (Stack, the Red Engine/’the Fey’)

Stack felt moderately better the next morning. At any rate, while being awake and moving was worse than being asleep, it was still infinitely better than being stranded and sleepless. And he was foolish enough to not half mind seeing his same two idiots when they slogged into the shed at the crack of noon. At least they weren’t morning people, or even any-time-of-the-day people, and didn’t yammer away until an engine wanted to ram them into silence, unlike some shedmates he could mention—but wouldn’t, because he was such a goddamn bloody delight.

The fresh air helped sort him out still further.

They didn’t have far to go at all, because they were going to cover one of the four engines who sorted deliveries at the big junction. Stack was pretty surprised by the job, to be honest. He was out of designation, as they called it, for yardwork and shunting. (The new railway had a mania for ‘designation,' a word of which Stack and every engine he knew had been blissfully ignorant two years ago.) But, clearly, he was being allowed the assignment on the oh my God, look at the pitiful sod, it’s not like it’s going to be for long exemption.

He was curious to see how long it would take him to wear out his welcome.

He hadn’t been told who he was spotting for, but he straightaway picked out who it must be: a long, low tank engine with two trailing wheels, not so much resting as looking quite stranded and annoyed, for her crew had left her on a siding that was still well in earshot of the throughway tracks. Some engines from other railways, waiting to be cleared with their trains, were throwing out a great deal of commentary on her missing dome, which had been replaced with cheesecloth, yarn, and tape.

She had not too long ago been repainted in Midland grey, but Stack still knew her. She also bore some new long-tailed L.M.S. number, her latest. Stack didn’t even bother to read it.

“Scram, 45!” Stack yelled over in his old shedmate’s direction. Of course, old shedmate didn’t really ‘designate’ much, anymore. Stack had berthed it up with very nearly every single F.R. engine, at some point or another, and these days was working a pretty fair clip through the old Midland fleet, too. But he and 45 went back.

Far enough back they would never stop using each other’s original name, for they knew how much it mattered, to have someone else who knew it.

She saw him and made a face. “Scram, yourself!”

“Can’t, can I? They sent me to relieve you. Now clear out of my yard, clanky, so I can get it in order.”

“Oh, you bet,” said 45, with feeling. “All yours!”

“Oh, boy.”

“That’s right. You might get somewhere, if it was just the rolling stock. But it’s the locos that keep coming through, and make you ashamed to be one of ‘em!”

“Ooh, let me have a go at them.” Stack said this with his customary fighting grin, though he didn’t feel it. He didn’t know what he still wanted out of the world, but it surely wasn’t more of all this.

“Best of luck, mate! Our old crowd is all right, though rather moany, and seem to fuss for as many last-minute changes as the rest. And I hate, hate, hate 'the rest'. I hate the Midland lot, I hate the Whitehaven lot, I hate the L & Y lot, I hate the Caledonian lot, and I hate the Sodor lot.”

Stack had a bit of a laugh at such outsize indignation tacked on as grand finale. “What, all two of them?”

“They're up to four! Or down to four? Whatever—it’s enough. Haven’t seen our kid, still, and I wonder if the rest’ve them haven't driven him quite round the twist. Those four Sodor main line tossers are as much trouble as forty Caledonians.”

“Oh, the Scots aren't bad,” said Stack, “though I can’t say I understand ‘em.”

“Get out!”

“I didn’t say I don’t understand ‘em. I just say that life is a lot simpler if you pretend you can’t possibly know what they're asking, and do it all your own way.”

Stack’s heart wasn’t really in the conversation, but 45 didn’t seem to notice, and she had a good chuckle. “Yeah, one-two, simpler for you, but that’s ‘cause they forgot to give you any common sense, nor fear of danger. Good luck, anyhow! You tell me where picking fights with the Caley lot gets you. Here’s driver back, so we’re off, and good riddance!”

45 pulled away to sweet freedom. Stack and his own driver looked around their quarter of the vast junction yard. It was… halfway organized, which is exactly the worst amount.

The driver pulled a bottle out of apparent nowhere and took a swig.

“Oy,” said the fireman.

The driver offered it. The fireman looked about, then shrugged, and accepted the bribe.

Stack couldn’t quite see this, as it all happened within his cab, but he wasn’t stupid, either. “You two are going to be no use at all,” he observed.

“Less lip, there. Bloody ungrateful teapot!”

This was arguably a motivational strategy, for Stack was so annoyed at this that the work began to appeal, after all. And, once he got started, things got easier. He was, at least, off that damned deserted iron-ore route, which he had come to be able to run in his sleep—something that was no hyperbole, for he was pretty sure he’d by now done exactly that, several times.

Five hours in, he had reckoned out 45’s organizational method, made some headway on reminding the shunters that he did, in fact, know bloody more than they did, and generally had his wheels under him. The change was nice, and there was a good deal more company, and none of it he had to be the least bit friendly to—an important consideration, for civility, ever a bother, was something that was getting utterly beyond him. His facile wit sharpened right up again—which was handier than ever these past two years, with his patchwork tender a magnet for unwanted attention. It was fun to be able to cut down any cheek thrown his way by, for instance, three ex-southern trucks, a snotty new brakevan, and a pair of double-heading Midland tank engines, and all at once, with only a single well-aimed comment. And dirty as possible, for choice.

But he couldn’t bring himself to sing, and he biffed up a few trucks who tried to start a chorus. He hadn’t been able to sing since the day Patch had left. This wasn’t exactly out of grief. There was just no audience that he cared to sing for.

“Sodor wants their furniture!” called a foreman.

The shunting crew were indignant. “We know. The two private wagons. They’re already on that train!”

“They ain’t, and they’re a rush order, too. Get it together!”

The shunters blamed Stack, Stack blamed the shunters, and, shielded by the commotion, the engine's crew ducked back down out of sight to pass the bottle once more.

They spent ten minutes playing a profanity-laced game of hunt the stock before Stack insisted on going over to the dedicated N.W.R. hault, where he found the red Fey resting on the track next to his train. When Stack looked at the yard from the Fey’s vantage point, he immediately spotted the Knollys Furniture wagons, several tracks deep in the yard, half-hidden behind a breakdown van.

Stack took one look at the engine, and his smugly concerned face, and knew. “He moved ‘em!”

The red Fey managed, somehow, to look still more smug, and still more concerned. “Oh, dear, 10-1-3-3. What seems to be the problem?”

“How do you know, boy?” his driver asked him, and Stack’s firebox sparked dangerously.

“How do I know this son-of-a-bitch is lying? He’s in steam, ain’t he?”

The shunters were on his side, for a change. They knew that they hadn’t left the trucks there. “What’s this, then?!” There was much swearing and scowling at the red engine, who maintained an admirably cool innocence.

“Don’t be so daft!” He sounded nothing but heart, charm, and good will. “I’ve just been waiting here, and some while too. Ask anyone. It would be terrible manners for me to go poking about in your yard.”

“He did it!” Stack insisted.

“How, now?” smiled the Fey. “How could I be there… when everyone knows I’ve been over here?”

The men's outrage was admittedly burning out, just because the thing seemed so improbable. The Fey pressed his advantage. “Perhaps if a sounder engine were managing the thing. I’m afraid we’ll have to request that in future you not have this one handling our stock. He seems in need of some rest and ease.”

“I’m in charge for the rest of the week, minimum,” Stack snapped, feeling quite lively again, and easily taking command of the shunting men, “and, as long as I am, this Fey tomato is to be coupled up immediately whenever he comes in.”

“Oh, sometimes I get in pretty early, you know.” The Fey smiled. “It’s important to make good time!”

“Never fear,” growled Stack. “Your train’ll be started. You’ve earned priority. You might have to wait a while for us to finish, mind, but the important thing is that we’ll know exactly where you're clamped down…”

With a thoroughly irritating amount of track-switching and reversing, he retrieved the furniture trucks, waited for the Fey to remove himself from his way (“Oh! Sorry”), took away the brakevan, shunted the trucks to the rear of the train, and finally reattached the van.

The Fey seemed to think all this delay made for good conversational opportunity.

“Where’s your engine, then?” he called cheerily. “Maybe it’d all be easier on you, if you had one.”

“Ho, that's pretty funny,” said Stack, voice bored. He did have to give the Fey this: He had no idea how the bright red engine had done it without being caught—he wasn’t exactly inconspicuous—and Stack had a grudging sportsman’s appreciation for such a neat trick.

“Who’s funny?” The Fey remained cherubic. “I just always figured you for a load of scrap that the real engine had to haul around everywhere, to air out the smell.” By terrible luck, Stack had to pass him with the trucks exactly during that shot, and the Fey’s eyes widened. “Oh, now! Don’t tell me! He didn’t—? Oh, he did!” His unction slipped for a moment, letting foul delight shine through. Then he reattached the mask. “Oh, dearie me, 10-1-3-3. That's why you're out and about unminded! My condolences. Who would have thought you’d outlast him, eh, Joseph?”

The Fey really thought a crack about Stack's half-finished paint job was going to land immediately after making hay of a twin brother’s death.

“You do go on,” said Stack coolly.

“So do you!” The Fey was triumphant. “Well, I suppose I mustn’t be too hard on you for such a silly little mistake, in the scheme of things. Poor brave engine, it must have come as a terrible shock to you… well, a slight shock, at least. Anyway, never fear! I’ll be sure to pass on word to your baby brother.”

Stack gave a hard laugh. “Why bother? Surely you’ve already killed off 121 to him in fifty different tales already.”

“Well… maybe so,” said the Fey, quietly—one sportsman to another—before adding, with great spirit, “but he’s such a sweet, simple soul. A single story gets quite a lot of mileage, with that one!”

“Swindon freak, there’s not an engine left on three islands who trusts you for a weather report.”

At least, they shouldn’t. But the Fey’s claim reminded Stack of how much he’d messed with Patch’s head… Patch, who was nobody’s fool, and who knew that not everything the Fey had reported could be true… but who had wasted precious time, during those last few months when so little was left to him, trying to work it all out, and worrying about 125 despite himself.

Sportsmanship be damned.

Stack hated this engine.

He had never hated anyone half so well.

“And,” added Stack, in a voice that had, over the years, made many a truck and engine quail, and for good reason, “if ever you touch my trucks again, before they’re given over to you, then, I’ll tell you what’ll happen… I’ll let you have them.”

The Fey only took this with a smiling steady gaze. “Now that the mumbley one is resting in pieces,” he said, in the voice of a friend giving helpful advice, “you can’t just talk big, and trust him to prevent you having to follow through.”

Stack gave a bark of true laughter that warmed him from funnel to firebox. “Oho! That’s how you think it is?!”

He was still chuckling and sparking both, when the guard finally cleared the train, and the Fey pulled away. The truth was, he felt genuinely happy. At least, he felt genuine something.

Oh, he was proper alive still. And the world was full of interest once more.

He’d vowed once, quite carelessly, to pay this red tosser out. And in Patch's hearing, too!

Now he was absolutely determined that, when his own time was up, the job would not be left unfinished.

#ttte fic #ttte #the railway series #ttte oc #ttte oc: stack #... all that prepping to introduce samuel and i never actually used his name in stack's PoV #ttte oc: samuel #jobeywrites

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mean-scarlet-deceiver · 3 years

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Do you have OCs?

Do I have OCs? Do I have OCs?

*nervous laughter* Ohh… maybe a few…

(And thank you for asking! Even though I have no idea how to begin organizing this one, eesh.)

They include but are not limited to...

Here are the ones I have shared most about on this blog—you can find material in them related to the “ttte oc” tag or else trust yourself to the tender mercies of tumblr’s search function (which I find actually works pretty okay for unique single words within one blog):

the Ulverston—ancient, crusty Wellsworth and Suddery tank. grumpy old fart, though in fact the most chill of a rather spiteful lot, who he generally keeps from being actively terrible. absolutely loyal. a dick Hufflepuff, basically. oh, he was in charge of training Edward on how to manage trucks. (Edward learned more from Skarloey and Rheneas despite them not even being on the same gauge because the Ulverston was mostly like “yeah… i’m not doing that… *waddles away*”)

Janey the Coffeepot—the “daringly shy” one among her three even shyer brothers. anxious sweetheart with a sense of humor and nerve that surprise only those who haven’t bothered to get to know her. she and Thomas were quite close. (Thomas was the protective little/big brother of all the Coffeepots. there was a reason he was “jealous”—and more!—when Toby first arrived.)

Araby—prior to WWI, he had been a new engine on his small railway’s main line, in theory “mixed traffic” but in practice mostly “preening with passengers and obsessed with football specials!” he is sent to Sodor at the beginning of 1917. his crew comes with him from home and stays with him a whole year, hinting to the fact that he’s actually a lovable vain, shallow, sharp-tongued twit… and war service forces him to grow up in a hurry

“the Single”—everyone fails to get a name *small voice* before it’s too late. but he was also one of the engines the NWR scourged up during the Great War. he’s mind-blowingly ancient but easy-going, perceptive, a great source of advice. does this sound familiar to you? yeah, Edward got at least one of his canonical ghost stories from this source. (the Single also once told an absolute mindscrew of a campfire tale. Edward has—so far—kept that one to himself. equally traumatized, Thomas memoryholed it a.s.a.p., but this one still haunts Edward when the moon is right)

Awdie (the Truck)—a particularly troublesome truck during the WWI era. He had once been an Awdry Industries wagon (hence his name, due to faded paintwork). In my universe, All Engines Are Aromantic—but Awdie isn’t an engine now, he is? Has a hopeless star-crossed crush on [Spoiler Alert].

the ’22 main line loaners—Linda, Angus, and “the hams” (Peter a.k.a. Punch and Niall a.k.a. Goonie) They actually have wonderful chemistry with N.W.R. #1-3, if I do say so myself, but due to [QLIR Spoilers] they didn’t last on Sodor. They have their own tag.

Dorothea and Penelope—the N.W.R's top-link coaches when Henry arrives. Dorothea is an absolute trip, out-of-date and at this point is held together mostly by pride, yet still the terror of most engines she works with, whom she will criticize and boss around to the point of rendering them a shivering bundle of nerves. Penelope, the more grounded of the two alpha females, knows her cousin Dorothea is a bit ridiculous but still won’t allow anyone else to cheek her off.

Samuel, Ipswich, and Lloyd (George)—These guys are my take on the Unnamed Tender Engines from TTRE. They appear in snippets and sneak “QLIR” previews in my ficlets.

Myron—Very nervous, selectively mute tank engine who works on the Brendam line starting in WWII. He’s still there when BoCo arrives and I won’t say more than that because [Spoilers].

Araby

Here are a sampling of OCs that I don’t think I've posted about on this blog:

Mesmer Line—He was the Pacific that the North Western was sent during the ’48 Engine Exchange Trials while Gordon was abroad. He’s a real-life SR Merchant Navy 4-6-2, and… a bit of a proto-Spencer in attitude. However, he’s more sympathetic in that there’s a case to be made for his complaints about the way he’s treated on Sodor. (Topham Hatt I, being cheap? There’s no way…) However, his snobbery and carping don’t exactly endear him to the others. Percy (whom, mind you, Mesmer treats like crap) does God’s work in keeping peace at the Big Station despite Mesmer positively baiting the others (who more and more often Snap Back).

Laura—Another guest engine on Sodor during the Exchange Trials. She is a Midland 8F and she’s a delight (especially in contrast to Mesmer). Eager, conscientious, helpful, curious, and optimistic to the point of foolishness… in fact, she does something rather stupid out of excitement on her last day, but by that point the rest of the engines are so charmed that they only rib her about it for about six hours or so before coming together to see her off properly! She treats Henry with great respect, her very own celebrity mentor. This attitude surprises Henry but agrees with him very much so she gets his absolute best side.

Bernice—A Nasmyth Wilson 0-6-0 (formerly of the North Straffordshire Railway—“ah, yes, the old ‘Knotty’!”) and diverted to Sodor by Stanier as a “temporary” replacement engine for Henry. After his return she “got lost en route to totally doing my best to report back to Crewe" helped work Vicarstown and served as the eastern side of the network’s utility/rescue engine. She’s a good-natured, hard-working thing, but she does crack a lot of sarcastic jokes that can rub other engines the wrong way! She never means malice, but she is impatient with the notion that she should think before she speaks… On the other rail, after the war, in a bid to not be sent away, she transformed herself into a pattern-perfect, prunes-and-prisms, butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-her-mouth paragon of politeness. The engines she worked with quickly realized that she was very boring this way and wound up caving and positively begging her to act “natural” again. Bernice hasn’t looked back since (though she has mellowed, over the decades. She’s since been shifted to one of the newer branch lines, in any case.) I get rid of most of my OCs by the 80s at latest to make way for TVS characters but I’m keeping Bernice coz there should be a lot more 0-6-0s on Sodor, dammit.

Diana—A brisk, busy beaver of a GER J15… yup, another 0-6-0! In fact she’s the one who historically set a record by being built in like nine hours flat and who ran from her photoshoot straight to her first coal trains still in her Works undercoat. Similarly, like fifty years later, she kind of… never noticed that she had ever been withdrawn? She barely ever visits the Works anyway? She was sent to an out-of-use siding once, got bored, and coached two random young vandals on how to drive her away so that they could “go and do something”? She kept knocking about west-wards doing odd jobs and briskly shaping up clueless young diesels and nimbly taking advantage of the fact that God loves an innocent idiot? In 1966, a signalman finally just diverted her over the bridge to Sodor coz, you know. Come on. Bernice and the other engines at Vicarstown promptly got her “adopted” which was easy because on paper she had already been scrapped. Way to go, BR. Way to go.

Dumpling—A trusty old brakevan, repaired so many times that he’s the Sodor exemplar of “who can even tell where this thing came from, how old it is, or who actually, hahaha, ‘owns’ it.” He got his name due to some of his warped wood giving him a “dumpy” shape… but his brakes remain absolutely clutch, and even James scrambles to get Dumpling on his trains whenever possible. (Gordon is the only engine who really sniffs and “won’t have that rotting log trailing at the end of my trains.” James will snap Dumpling questions along the lines of Can’t you do anything about your paneling/peeling paint/roof/[whatever James’s bugbear is that month]?!?… but he won’t actually leave Dumpling behind because, unlike Gordon, he is a goods engine by training, he knows all too well the importance of braking power, and he is smart enough to know that a reliable brakevan is worth its weight in gold.) Dumpling, however, complains very much if he is ever stuck in “the big yards” or “the old harbor,” and prefers to stick as close to the Brendam line as the high demand for his services will actually permit. It’s not uncommon after the second war for Edward to find an excuse to make a special trip to Tidmouth and rescue Dumpling from one of his dreaded overnight stays.

Tild—A mysterious, inscrutable, odd-looking brakevan who arrived at Wellsworth one day in 1948 with no explanation. No one has yet owned up to even being the one who brought her train in. She can tell the future, but she will not tell her backstory (which is that she used to be an engine!)

A preserved sister of Tild's

Aaand here are some OCs that I want to write about one day who don’t actually have anything to do with Sodor. They work a fairly southern depot and they are kinda LMS and also kinda LNER and also screw you, if this level of vagueness was good enough for Wilbert Awdry then it’s good enough for me!

Joscelyn—Her friends call her “Joycie” or “Joz”… which means you can call her Joscelyn, thank you. A proud, exuberant, rough-riding 2-6-0 who is totally not a Gresley K2, but only because committing to that would cause continuity issues. She is our headstrong protagonist, full of determination, loyalty… and spite. She loves her latest assignment, but a new class of engines have been allocated to her depot and she bitterly expects to be forced off her beloved flying kipper duties. Then her faithful crew unearths a secret weapon…

Skimmer—Totally not a Hull and Barnsley Railway survivor. A dispassionate charmer, he proves the perfect partner for Joscelyn, who at first was unimpressed with the notion of needing help from some pre-grouping 4-4-0 passenger engine. She thawed, though, because he proved jut as petty and proud as she was! Together they snark the night long, snigger as they twit anyone in their way, oh… and they run the fastest flyers on the whole route. Bonus: For reasons no one can understand, Skimmer is freakishly coal-efficient on lengthy journeys, keeping the bean-counters off their tenders as they continue to double-head Joscelyn’s old trains for a couple years.

Dot—A hardworking, tightly-wound 0-6-0T who is in charge of the depot’s shunting operations. She is always on the verge of a tizzy, which both the train engines and her subordinates roll their eyes at—but, if you are the one to tip her over the edge and make her cry, everyone will in fact despise you for it. She keeps the whole place from falling apart and deep down everyone knows this. Especially among the rival train engines, everybody gangster until Dot’s had enough. (I should remind you here that dear Joscelyn is a dumbass, so she has to learn this the hard way. Very lucky for her, Skimmer’s been flattering and flirting with Dot since his arrival… and poor Dot doesn't get that treatment often so he's in her graces but good.)

Delphie—An absolutely ancient and hopelessly nearsighted 2-4-0T (Beattie LSWR well tank) who should have been scrapped ages ago, but she’s been hidden away in the deepest recesses of the sheds. By now she is now a multigenerational secret among the workers, who steal away to consult her as both agony aunt and fortune teller for all their deepest troubles. Dot also applies to Delphie whenever she’s absolutely had it… but then again, Dot also frets a lot about what is to be done with her old mentor, too.

Hogan—One of the bigger new 2–6-0s who were sent to replace Joscelyn and her lot. Unlucky for him, he and his lot have more than their share of teething troubles. As they are sorted out, he is uncertain, polite, clueless, and deferential to a fault. (Joscelyn despises him for it.)

Grady—Another of the new Moguls. Joscelyn can’t be bothered, and refers to them both as “Grogan.” Grady is much more confident than his brother, and will push back against Joscelyn and Skimmer and anyone else who tries to make fun of his clan. Less admirably, he is also suspicious of any perfectly good advice…

Delphie, back when she was in *better* shape

#this does not get into human OCs because fml #but i have a Lot #ttte #thomas the tank engine #the railway series #ttte oc #original characters #chatter #ttte headcanon #long post #i've been tooling with this for three weeks now and i gotta post it before i think up a new one

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