The Sudrians: Tales from the Engines

The Station (1925)

James was fed up; he had recently returned from the works after his accident. Even though he was quite embarrassed by the whole ordeal, the works did wonders for him. They had given him a much bigger tender, new, modern brakes, and to top it all off, he was given a brand-new paintwork. But unlike all the other engines under full ownership by the North Western Railway, he was given a rich red paint job, with black lining and golden stripes on his boiler and firebox. With a bright brass dome to top it all off. He looked immaculate and James was hoping to show off his paintwork to the passengers at the station when he returned. Unfortunately, the Fat Controller, who had recently changed his name, had ordered him to stay in the yard and shunt until further notice.

"It will let you get use to your brakes and how we work around," he said to the red engine, "it will also give you more experience with shunting."

Shunting was not James' sort of work, he was used to pulling goods trains, shunting was for the tank engines that scurry around the big yards in Yorkshire. To James' confusion, there weren't many tank engines at the station and yards. There were two tank engines, a small, black, saddle tank engine who shunted in the yards and sometimes took trips down the mainline with a small goods train, whilst there was this funny, small-looking engine with a vertical boiler, trying her best to shunt trucks, but only being able to move about a few at a time. James on the other hand, can couple up to loads and still not show an ache in his frames. He was mainly allocated with shunting the coaches at the station though, going to the coach sheds, collecting some coaches, and then scurrying across the junction to the platforms, then helping the engines with their trains by pushing them out of the station gently. Then head back to the coach sheds and rinse and repeat. James just found it boring and longed to be let out.

There was this odd, blue engine who was basically the same size as the red engine, but had four, bigger driving wheels and seemed to be a lot older than he was, this engine would come to the station or yards, either pulling goods or passenger trains, in all fairness he did shunt his own trains allowing James to rest, but the red engine couldn't help but feel jealous, why was that old, outdated engine allowed to go out, but not him? It made no sense.

James and the blue engine were usually at different parts of the station or yard when the blue engine arrived and departed, so they didn't get a good introduction to each other until three later after James came back to service. It was a damp day, and the rails were wet, James was founding it hard to move the coaches around and slipped rapidly when collecting a selective few for Henry's stopping service.

"Put some sand on the rails, it will help!" called a voice.

James stopped and looked over to see the blue engine, who was shunting his own rake of coaches into one of the births. He smiled kindly at the red engine. "You must be James," he replied, "I've heard a lot about you from Gordon and Henry."

"Did you now," said James hesitantly.

"Yes," smiled the blue engine, "I'm Edward, I work the Brendam branch, at Wellsworth, that was where you met Thomas I believe."

"Oh... yes..." James couldn't forget, it was the station he raced through with his runaway and later would crash before Knapford. He would rather forget that day but for some reason, everyone liked to hang onto that day like it was some valuable treasure. He preferred if they just dropped it in the ocean, to never be heard of again. Edward could see the red engine's troubled face and smiled.

"I've seen you working here and Henry and Gordon have said that you've been rather reliable," Edward said, "it's been a few weeks and everyone knows that you aren't meant to be shunting engine... solely."

James raised an eyebrow. "I know," he mumbled, "but I don't think you will be able to convince the Fat Controller of this."

A pause came between the two engines, and Edward smiled kindly at James. "I can at least try," he said, "it might not be everything you will be asking for, but I think I can get something to help you get out of the yards."