Letters to a Friend

Chapter 2 A Letter and a Goods Train

 Since that day at the docks, nothing much has changed in James's life. His day would usually consist of regular goods trains, the occasional passenger train, shunting and so on.

No matter the weather, work went on and the red engine would tell you that the weather has barely improved in these past few months.

Nowadays he has a hard time remembering when he last saw the sun let alone a blue cloudless sky. It was either raining, storming or it was just damp, cold and grey.

Today was colder than most days however. Most of the engines on this island recognise the changing of seasons when they wake up with their boilers colder than usual.

Winter was rolling in.

A layer of frost covered the land in the mornings and a light fog hung low over the fields.

On this particular day, James was at the water tower refilling his tender with ice cold water. To say the feeling was uncomfortable would be an understatement. He shivered in his frame while one of the workmen turned the water off.

One workman refilled James's sand for the journey ahead and another kept watch over his fire.

He was told he had to take another slow goods train with Edward. On a siding on the other side of the yard he could see the train he would be taking today. It was a quite the train too, it barely fit in the siding and it was not even the full consist.

He saw Edward, already hard at work as usual, shunting the last few trucks to the front of the train. Workmen scrambled around the train, covering some with tarps, locking the last few doors and so on.

The train would be ready to leave soon.

The red engine could hear the trucks talking amongst themselves. Though they had a reputation of causing mischief, most of the time they were actually quite... well quiet. They rarely ever talked to the engines unless the engine was one of their favourites and one that they respected, like Edward for example.

On most journeys they would talk amongst themselves, on night runs they liked to sleep but mostly they were quiet.

When they decided to be troublesome however, they didn't just inconvenience engine and staff.

When they decided on their next victim for whatever reason, everyone including the trucks themselves would feel it.

Another phantom pain shot through his form when he remembered back to his own accident. It faded as quickly as it came. It was another reminder James thought.

James lowly hissed steam and he looked over the line of trucks he was supposed to take. His face morphed into an unreadable expression as he looked over at them.

The other engines had their own reasons of disliking trucks. Be it for image reasons like a certain pompous blue express engine often proclaims or for being their favourite engine to tease and pick on, what James felt for this railway's particular rolling stock ran a bit deeper.

The other engines knew this, and the trucks knew it too. Incidents with James and trucks since then have been very few. Nowadays they have what seems as an uneasy truce. They do their jobs and then that is the end of it.

After the accident James did his best at keeping away from the trucks. He took a few passenger trains accompanied by another engine and he did shunting at the station for a while.

At first the trucks teased him relentlessly. They called him rusty red scrap iron, and because of the freshly welded gash on his face they called him an ugly red monster as well. Every time the trucks saw him they would mock and sing about his accident and the scar he wore because of it.