#early n.w.r.

[mean-scarlet-deceiver]

Thomas around 1923, probably: ALL RIGHT LISTEN UP EVERYONE, I AM NO LONGER ACCEPTING CRITICISM FROM NAMELESS ENGINES OR COACHES

random truck who somehow has gotten everyone to call him Roberta C. Eddington, piping up from half a mile away: well then i'd just like to say —

Thomas: And NO trucks!!!!

#cheers houseboat #ttte #incorrect ttte #early n.w.r. #ttte thomas

[whumpster-fire]

@joezworld 's headcanons and stories about Pip and Emma breathing fire got me looking up info about the Class 43s/HSTs and I have a couple thoughts.

1: I found out the HSTs all got new engines put in some time around the early 2000s. The old ones, called Paxman Valentas, have a distinctive loud turbocharger whine at high power, which the replacement engines lack. The best I can find out with 5 minutes of googling is that it's due to a change in the turbocharger layout from one big turbo to several smaller ones. The re-engining predates Pip and Emma joining the N.W.R. in canon... but, what are the odds that at some point Crovan's Gate put old-style turbos on them?

2: The HSTs are now being phased out, and while there are plenty of them still in service, it sounds like the last of the ones from London ran in 2021 IRL... meaning Pip and Emma are now the last ones running there. Are they, like, weirded out by how they're suddenly getting so much attention on the mainland now? How are they taking the "we are no longer seeing any of our other siblings around" trauma? How is every other engine on Sodor, with their often pretty bad experiences of their class's withdrawal, taking the thought of them going through this? Are engines like Gordon being very protective of the "babies" of the NWR fleet (who are like 40+ years old and not really that much younger than Bear but whatever)?

3: What are the odds that the "final withdrawal" of HSTs from London happened while Pip and Emma were having an overhaul which gave them larger turbochargers again, and a couple months later the Dragon Sisters just rolled into St. Pancras screaming like a jetliner?

4: ...why does the Wild Nor'Wester go all the way to London anyway? Like I assume it started out that way because the LMS just ran it all the way from Barrow, and the same thing in the British Rail era, but post-privatization, why did the NWR want to go with either "switch engines in Barrow and go hundreds of miles to London" or "run a single train over several times longer distance than the actual NWR main line" instead of the Wild Nor'Wester terminating in Lancaster where people could transfer to the West Coast Main Line? (which if I look up train tickets from London to Barrow-in-Furness IRL is how it's done).

I mean, it's what, like 40-50 miles from Barrow to Lancaster by rail? Could a steam engine get there and back without a water stop if they got permission to run one in revenue service?

Did... did Hatt just keep a once-per-day Tidmouth-to-London direct express service as an excuse to preserve Pip and Emma because they actually get along with his engines? Is the reason there wasn't a big deal made about Gordon's "retirement" in the books because Sodor's express service is now a mix of the Wild Nor'Wester running directly once a day (London to Barrow takes like 4 hours according to Google Maps so I'm assuming the extra 80 miles of NWR main line increases that to 5-6 hours, so probably one round trip per day) and one or more express trains from Tidmouth to either Barrow or Lancaster? (guessing 2-3 hours one way so an engine could theoretically do two round trips without swapping crews, or two engines could get one daily express trip and do other stuff the rest of the day. That fits Gordon doing a stop-at-every-station run for his last train of the day if he does an early express and someone like Henry or Bear gets the late one)

#Railway Series Fandom #Pip and Emma (RWS)

[mean-scarlet-deceiver]

how were engines 87546 and 98462 were sent away beside being spiteful , do you have any headcanons?

Eek, very sorry to respond to this one so late. Hope you see this.

I have several incidents I favor, but the problem is that whenever I come up with another idea I immediately think "oh hey that'll make a really good fic." And I live in the possibly deluded hope that I will actually finish the fics one of these days, ssoooo... I don't want to discuss really specific ideas for the chain of events that led to 87546 and 98462 getting the boot.

But, generally speaking, there are a few angles that I favor:

1.I have doubts that they were both sent away as early as Thomas the Tank Engine/1925. I think they stuck on for a while, perhaps a long while. They just didn't get speaking parts in the books and there was seldom any reason to show them. (In particular, if they stayed on I think the Fat Controller had a specific policy of leaving them "behind" in the boonies Vicarstown to keep them and their bad influence separate from the rest of the fleet.) I also tend to imagine they played a significant role during the strike, but again, there was just no reason to include that in the books.

2. In general, I don't headcanon them as acting with any dramatic evilness. I sometimes write them that way in fic but that's because it's more fun to read. But I reckon they were really mostly just your run-of-the-mill "ill-mannered" engines, as we see later in all the Mean Boastful Diesels who fail their Sodor trials three or four decades later. And they're not even notably more ill-mannered than, like, Gordon was originally. They just never changed.

3. My most idiosyncratic take: I suspect that in some ways FC1 used these two as a scapegoat for his own shortcomings tbh. Like I think he grew remarkably as a human being and as a manager in his early years in the job, but I'm not sure he realized the extent to which he had grown and changed. Which is a very human thing to do.

Like, I headcanon Awdry saying they were "rude" as taken directly from how FC1 himself explained who these two engines were and why they were sent away. (Coz, like? We've seen the engines he didn't send away, lol. They can be very rude to their fellow engines too.) And I imagine FC1 first began to construct this useful little narrative when he realized that, like, Edward and Henry and James in particular were to varying degrees just bundles of anxiety in 1925. And when he noticed this (hey, in fairness to him, he must have been real busy until he signed that agreement with the L.M.S. that same year) he instinctively tried to help.

But—what? A powerful white guy, acknowledging that his shortcomings as a manager directly contributed to his underlings' distress? Hey, it happens sometimes, even a hundred years ago! But is that likely to be his first hypothesis? Nah. That's not how successful business people work—with hard-hitting introspection and shit.

And then there's 87546 and 98462, like, right there. No doubt visibly and audibly being right dicks to his troubled iron children.

I'm not sure if I'm explaining myself well, but I do headcanon FC1 being like "a-ha. now that i'm paying attention i see that they're bullying the other engines. they must be the sole reason some of my other engines are so tense and fearful whenever i see them! and, indeed, now that i've sent them away (or even just arranged that they're kept at a distance), the others are growing more confident. definitely not because i'm making more of an effort to be consistent and fair, and i'm no longer casting engines aside for long periods of time or threatening big punishments for relatively minor infractions. nah. it was all 87546 and 98462. what rotters. so insidiously toxic."

87546 and 98462: *just sitting there, pretty normal jocks whose braggadocio is not otherwise noteworthy*

#fc1 con't: '... and. of course! my masterly handling of gordon has also kept a lid on any problems *he* might cause.' #gordon: *at that very minute a mere half a mile away recruiting other engines for the strike in broad daylight* #chatter #ttte #ttte headcanon #ttte analysis #early n.w.r. #87546 and 98462 #the railway series #the fat controller

[mean-scarlet-deceiver]

If I may ask, what’s the basis for your oc Samuel?

I was a bit muddled on that for a while so my WIP snippets might not be consistent.

With @houseboatisland's help, I think I've settled on Samuel as a 4-6-0 Robinson B2. (They were also called 'Fays' after Sir Sam Fay so, as Housie observes, it all works out!)

They were a classic ambitious but flawed "big engine" design of the early 1900s. Speedy but poor steamers and rough runners. Fire grate too small for its size. They weren't tragic figures like Great Bear but they did get their asses soundly kicked by the Directors (a new class of 4-4-0s).

#thanks for the ask #chatter #ttte oc #ttte oc: samuel #this is all going in the early n.w.r. fic

[mean-scarlet-deceiver]

Hc for Edwards coaches? Its weird to me that we know nothing about them

Oh, there’s a short answer to this: Edward doesn’t have a dedicated set of coaches.

(But I'm gonna make this a long answer, because I can’t help myself)

He’s not in Thomas or Duck’s position for much of canon. The ‘Locals’ we see him taking would have coaches drawn from the main line common pool. There are two push-pull trains for the bulk of Brendam line stopping traffic but, obviously, Edward doesn’t handle them.

He probably could have a dedicated long-term set of coaches for the Tidmouth-Brendam fast but, well, here’s the thing. One, those twice daily trains are not exclusively his because he’s very ready to offer them to a visitor who shows any interest (if they’re capable — Edward did learn something from the affair of Thomas and his trucks lol).

But there’s also the matter that, after a while with a steady rake on the Tidmouth-Brendam route, Edward is awfully prone to arranging for some other set of coaches that he notices is under-utilised getting to take over the job in turn.

Given his own experience out of service, he’s very sensitive to that sort of thing. It makes him great at managing coaching stock on the Wellsworth and Suddery section as a whole. They have a bit of an excess coaches, including a good many survivors from the N.W.R.’s earliest days (some of these survived because Edward discreetly hoarded them during the worst days of the Depression... and then helpfully procured them in good working order when WWII hit... and sometimes hid them again, in the early days of nationalisation, until things settled down...), and they’re kept around to deal with special charters and periods of higher traffic. Edward’s very good at keeping an eye on their maintenance and matchmaking temporary/visiting/new engines with coaches that they will work well with (and mediating, on the rare occasion when it’s a mismatch).

As a result of all this, coaches in his sphere have great affection and respect for Edward — but, over the years, he has at times had a “To know what we want, you do need to sometimes Ask Us and then Actually Listen” problem.

Not everyone wants to wake up early every possible day and push themselves a little behind their limits forever and ever and ever. Most vintage coaches do not actually secretly pine for a turn on the Brendam fast, with its sprint down a fifth of a main line and the sharp turn onto the branch combining to make your vacuum start to really tear into you if you have to do it too often. Thanks for thinking of us, but some of us are perfectly content only working three months out of the year. No, we don’t feel this way because we’re depressed, the problem is not that we’ve been neglected and given up, because we haven’t a problem and this isn’t actually about you, dear. (Edward, with his engine brain: '... impossible!...') Sometimes there is a set of coaches that are actually amenable to being retired (!) and Edward has had to learn to, y’know, accept that, rather than try to “fix” things. (He has so many resources these days to fix these things! It’s never been easier to fix these things! It’s ever so much easier to fix things than coming to grips with others having different ideas about (im)mortality than you do…!)

#chatter #ttte edward #ttte coaches #i could have just invented like 5 names and been done with it but that's not how i roll lol #so i hope this is okay

[mean-scarlet-deceiver]

Any headcanons on the Sodor & Mainland?

Honestly no.

(Unless you count my notion that, despite the complete hash the S. & M. made of it, Sodor is very lucky that it was that company that was given rights to rail up the south and south-east of the island, rather than a more successful mainland company. They were also quite lucky that the S. & M. did not sell themselves out to a bigger network that would have then muscled into Sodor. Its harbours would have been very desirable in that era. I reckon this is actually why the F.R. and the M.R. were oh-so-helpful to the N.W.R. in the early days—anything they lent was a bit of a poisoned apple because, having tried and failed to get their foot in the door in the 19th century, they were trying finally get control of Sodor rail for the 20th! So I like to think that, for all their faults, at least the S. & M. directors were very committed to Sodor being developed by Sudrians and no one else.)

#chatter #ttte headcanon

[mean-scarlet-deceiver]

Y'know, for literally the majority of my life I assumed the reference to James's accident happening on his "first day" was something the TVS threw in there—that it wasn't RWS canon. After all, I had got my mitts on Thomas the Tank Engine early on and in there it simply says that James is "new," not that it was Day 1 and no one had ever seen him before?? And TVS is weird about James's early chronology.

But nah babe. It's right there in the next book, in black and white. James really did wipe the fuck out on his very first day and they repaired him at their own expense, hell they got him better than he was on arrival, they just went all-in on this rando. They didn't even know him.

A testament to how the N.W.R. rolls, I guess.

#*imagining thomas being all 'sir... he seems nice... 🥹... i vouch for him completely...'* #one year later: #'sir permission to run that bigmouthed red idiot right off the rails again????!!!!!' #*sigh* '... what did he do this time?... ' #sorry for the randomposting these are digressions that i am gonna heroically keep *out* of the upcoming james post

[mean-scarlet-deceiver]

seeing as we only really know about the members of the hatt family that became Fat Controller, what do you think happened to the others? charles hatt has an older sister (barbara), and she's never really been touched on in-universe

I am writing a fic featuring Barbara Hatt, lol. Possibly even two.

I am portraying her as autistic (not that they had access to such a diagnosis at this time). She is sometimes verbal but sometimes not, and her sensory issues are extreme.

During this era (she was born in 1914, I believe?) that would usually mean she was institutionalized at best but Topham Hatt I is not a typical parent. (Well, neither is Jane Hatt! But I mention Topham here because we see in the stories that he's also not a very typical railway director. His loving firmness and willingness to accept his "defective" engines is related to his attitude towards a daughter who is seen as damaged goods by much of the rest of the world at the time—but not by him.

I say related because part of the point of one of these WIPs is that his breakthrough in one area often improves his attitude and approach in the other...)

Anyway. Some features:

She is terrified of loud and sudden noises and of smoke. During her earliest years she spent a lot of time screaming and crying inconsolably because, uhhhh. She lives next to a railway.

She has a series of nannies, governesses, and doctors. Their quality, insight, and basic decency... varies. (Topham and Jane do their very best to vet and oversee them, but they are themselves in uncharted territory at this time. They're doing their best. The eugenics movement is kicking up in a big way and they could have done a LOT worse by her. It's still rough, though.)

It certainly helps her ability to live and be educated in relative safety because Topham is basically master of all and bloody sundry. Especially once he becomes general manager of the N.W.R. You going to talk smack about the Fat Controller's kid? Not very loudly, you're not.

Edward was the one who was able to help her get her comfortable riding trains. She was about seven at this point, and others had spent much wasted time and effort forcing her onto trains (which only made things worse, ofc). Edward persuaded TFC to let him take an afternoon arranging a series of different coaches (this includes the open-topped "special coach" from TVS) and then them all allowing Barbara to take as much time as she needed going in and out and exploring each one of them. Once she decided which one she was willing to ride in, she was taken on a special journey in it. A private ride in her special coach was repeated many times over the course of that year until Barbara was comfortable in it. This also allowed her to at least tolerate taking other trains when needed.

Another big breakthrough with Barbara and trains was when Thomas was transferred away from Wellsworth to his branch line. She had made good friends with Thomas and was upset that he was leaving. So she stowed away all the way to Ffarquhar. This caused Confusion and Panic until she finally revealed herself. (Topham was so proud of her that he got over it quickly. Poor Jane really did have a nervous breakdown, though. She had always feared, with good reason, that Barbara was going to get herself run over by wandering onto the tracks.)

Barbara still cannot tolerate the Wild Nor'wester until well into adulthood, when she’s been known to take it a few times but only in cases of emergency. (She's rather scared of Gordon, though she would die rather than give him the satisfaction of admitting it.)

In her early '20s, she moved into the garden house on the Hatt estate for more independence.

She studied mathematics in a spotty, patchy sort of way, but really excelled when she stumbled across ciphers. She specialized in this. During WWII she moved to the mainland for a spell and served as a codebreaker.

Speaking of the war, it's not that Hatt I wouldn't have been anti-fascist in any case. But definitely his love for his daughter made him extremely sensitive at a very early point to the dangers of Nazism.

After the war, Barbara (only traumatized the normal amount) did marry. She and her husband were reasonably fond of each other, but the biggest draw for marriage was that it allowed them to live independently from the rest of the world and to not be pestered about when they would get married. They're both considered "odd" but you are allowed to be odd if you have money and are respectable, you know?

Barbara still often spent months at a time at her childhood home (her husband travelled internationally for work, and Barbara will never get on an airplane. Nor is she comfortable living entirely alone.)

Not sure you were expecting all that 😅

In general, I also think Stephen and Bridget spent their earliest life living with their grandparents on Sodor while their parents did war work. They finally moved to live with their parents in 1950 and tbh they weren't very comfortable with it at first. It didn't help that on the mainland nearly all the engines had gone faceless at this time! They found it most disorienting and depressing—as you would, if you got to grow up on The Island Where Dreams Come True. When they went on holiday with their grandparents the following year, they had been disappointed not to go back to Sodor and they were delighted when some random tram engine in East Anglia peeked at them immediately. It was like magic had returned to the world again.

Also, though this is only tangentially related, Stephen Hatt got into a fistfight with another boy from the Abbey School to defend the honour of his father and a good third of his engines. He was lucky that the only one at the manor when he returned home was Aunt Barbara, who was pretty matter-of-fact about it ("well of course you had to fight him. did you win?")

#HATTS #chatter #ttte headcanon #ttte #the railway series

[mean-scarlet-deceiver]

QLIR #2 teaser for Henry Day

Henry's first evening on Sodor and he has nerves around the other engines!!!! luckily help and comfort are on the way!!!

------

Vicarstown

March 1922

The engine now named Henry hesitated, eyes roaming around the sheds he’d been eased round. The sun was beginning to set, leaving the sky dressed in warm golden hues that might have been very pretty, had he not felt sick to his boiler.

His fire had already been dropped into the pit, but Reginald and Mr Malvern seemed now to regret having moved so smartly to take care of their end of things, with Henry lagging on his end.

“Tell you what,” the new fireman smiled, “let me check in at the office, and pick up your new duds for you—” This, with a nod at Reginald, who acknowledged it with a flash of surprise.

Left alone, he looked more sceptically at his engine.

Henry’s eyes roamed round. He had not realized till this moment, but he would have to sleep with other engines. The teasing little blue engine from the station had wound up in the yard, bringing two empty wagons for the use of the shed staff, and a couple of red engines were already there, barely eying Henry before closing their eyes and resuming the more serious business of rest.

But their dozing seemed light indeed, and Henry was embarrassed beyond measure. He looked again at Reginald—and a tired, dirty, and cross Reginald it was glaring back—and swallowed. Then he swallowed again, and forced himself to cough a few more times.

As a result of these exertions, he spat out just a little black, inky ash onto his bufferbeam and the sleepers beyond.

“Is that all?” asked Reginald. “Honestly, boy, don’t make—”

But the fireman and the office manager called for Reginald, and Henry was left alone to try again. He gazed down miserably at the pitiful patch he’d snuffled out.

The little engine, running backwards with his wagons, puffed alongside Henry.

“All right, mate?” asked the engine, who might be little, and who might seem to lack a tender, but who was bustling about with an air of great authority.

“I—uh…” Henry lowered his voice. “Is this… is this where I clean my smokebox?”

“Y—e—s?” said the little engine, baffled. “Unless you want to sleep all stuffed up.”

Henry considered this. It sounded an uncomfortable but viable option. Too late did he realize, from the little engine’s staring, that this had not been a serious suggestion, and he blushed under the weight of that stare.

“Look, Henry or whatever,” said the little engine, who had certainly made a remarkable recovery from his earlier shyness, “I don’t know what they did back on the alphabet soup of a railway you come from, but you’re not going to get some sort of private shed or anything here. Just get on with it. It’s nothing we haven’t seen before!”

“I just thought… that, that Linda-engine, she might…”

“She might what?”

“Have something to say about it?”

“Mate,” said the little engine, rolling his eyes, “we’d never get anything done, if we were fussed about what Linda might say! Anyway, she’s only a loaner.”

“A—a what?”

“A loaner. Not bought and paid for like you and me. ‘Course, she’s Useful, but there’s no point minding her. Besides, you’re in luck, you won’t have to,” the little engine made an ironic face, “do your business’ with her about tonight, she’s already turned ‘round and left with another train. Some of us have real work to do today. And don’t mind those engines either; they’re not even from our railway, and believe me, they’re keen for you to do well, so that they don’t need to keep coming back here. Take your time,” he added, not unkindly; “find your wheels. Our men here are good as gold, and you’ll settle in soon enough. But don’t go ‘round putting on airs and ordering me about, either,” he tacked on at the last, emphasizing this point with a toot of his whistle, before puffing away with his nose scrunched up.

Henry was speechless.

#i tried to finish the whole installment in time i really did but errrgghh not even close #in my defense it's going to be longer than ex-condor currently is #it's a monster #yeah ig i posted angst for a character appreciation day what of it? #angst is my fictional character love language #hurt no comfort #ttte fic #fic snippets #qlir #this is all going in the early n.w.r. fic #ttte henry #ttte thomas #ttte oc: reginald #ttte oc: malvern #anxiety cw #body shyness #(? ig) #... thomas stole the show didn't he #it's tradition by this point #he did the same in my Redward teaser too #thomas the no-BS mentor is incredibly underrated #jobeywrites

[mean-scarlet-deceiver]

I enjoy when people propose alternate bases for the engines — in fact it's my favorite kind of TTTE AU!

EXCEPT —

Edward as an LSWR T9

(or, in a very similar idea I just saw on twitter, a frickin' Claud Hamilton??!)

Ugh.

Terrible take.

#i see the t9 thing so often and it is cringe every time #edward as an NER Glen: based #edward as a SEC whatever: blessed #edward as any super impressive engine class: wtf #you don't understand #you self-appointed experts with your chad/virgin complexes are literally dumbasses #edward is 'of obscure origins' for a key thematic reason #he is everyengine #the foundation of the whole rws is the sheer magic of #'the random forgotten thing in the back of the shed that has absolutely no right to be as Utterly Clutch as it in fact is' #the true gearhead and techie dream! #also logistically the n.w.r scrambling for shady industrial castoffs and problematic prototypes rejected by their own railways #100% did not have a fucken Greyhound or Claud sittin around in the early days that it just. didn't. use? #they couldn't have afforded that #honestly a Greyhound could have done anything Gordon was being asked to do on Sodor's 60-mile line... #... and done it more reliably too #if they had somehow gotten their grubby early-20s mitts on a Greyhound or a Claud #they wouldn't have been so desperate to recruit a 'big express engine' #because. ummmm. #they would have already HAD one! #not all 4-4-0s were made alike all right there were only about a million of 'em #edward is LITTLE... a smol boy... learn to cope rws modeller 'fans'! #he is not powerful he's not impressive and to give him a Big Name Pedigree is to entirely miss the point of his character #while i'm bitching there is a lot of overlap here with thomas basis discourse #the E2s weren't THAT craptastic that's turned into something of a meme #but even if they were #so what? #stop trying to give him better 'stats' he doesn't need 'em #awdry didn't just ACCIDENTALLY choose mostly obscure classes... the point of sodor's engines was not that they are cool #the point was that they are lovable

[mean-scarlet-deceiver]

Thomas: I’ll tell you what I want to know, right now, before we go any further. Thomas: Will I get out of this stupid yard this year? Gordon: Heh. Gordon: Oh, you’re serious. Gordon: No. Thomas: Will I ever get out of this yard?! Gordon: Little Thomas, I can’t predict the future. Gordon: But no.

#incorrect ttte #source: the good place #basically #this is all going in the early n.w.r. fic #ttte #ttte thomas #ttte gordon

[mean-scarlet-deceiver]

Why is early Thomas such a smol emotional and kinda socially-feral little engine?

@princeluckybug13 I saw your tags... all your tags... and after your compliment there’s probably not a damn thing I wouldn’t do for you. ♥ 

So... early N.W.R.!Thomas...

Biggest thing that needs explaining: it looks like Thomas has been in service for about nine years (potentially even more? the dates are wriggly) before we see him getting to take his first passenger train, and then what is implied to be his first goods train. 

On a bigger railway? Makes sense. He’s designed for shunting and light goods. Such is his fate. 

But on Sodor? Their locomotive fleet is small, and especially in these early years we see the railway demand a super high degree of flexibility from its engines... except Thomas. (Who is more than willing!) 

It’s weird to me that, despite all the years of “locomotive crisis” that our old friend Topham struggled through, Thomas had never been called in to cover duties beyond construction work and station pilot before.

It almost seems like it would have to be a conscious policy. Like, one of the Fat Controller’s priorities (in between spending dollar zero, expanding his railway, and quelling the ever-present threat of passenger riots) is “protect this little one... fuck Gordon, make an invaluable high-speed flagship play with heavy freight on steep hills even though it’s definitely not what his wheel/axle system was designed for, and we’ll literally drive Henry to madness... but Thomas is not to be overtaxed or in any way risked.” 

So, basically, tl;dr I think he’s just overprotective helicopter parent. And this is why early years!Thomas seems so childish... /tl;dr

To explain the Fat Controller’s very tender spot for Thomas, I further headcanon that:

1) an engine’s first steaming is when they first become “alive,” and is a pretty big deal, and is usually presided over by their designing engineer, who knows how to orient confused new machine creations into the world

2) due to the chaos at the beginning of WWI, Thomas was shipped out to Sodor in a rush without ever having been steamed before

3) Topham Hatt I is a lot of bloody things, but he does have a real heart for engines somewhere under all his narcissism and “financial necessity” and thought it was not at all on to basically have this unprotected lil orphan engine rattling around the war-crazy world and put straight to work without guidance 

4) Hatt, himself a trained designing engineer, insisted on being present before Thomas was first steamed (even though this caused confusion and delay... during a period of construction where it couldn’t really be afforded... but Hatt thought anything less than having an engineer around to do his best to take care of the new engine would have been just indecent...) 

5) it helps that small engines are his “type” anyway (there’s a whole lot of evidence for this, including some of his comments in the stories and that one of his biggest early career moves was designing the tiny “Coffee Pot” engines) 

6) so yeah, Hatt just got very attached as he guided Thomas into existence

7) I headcanon him, despite his busy schedule, taking care to visit and check up on Thomas frequently during the railway construction, and further all the employees totally notice the boss’s preference and make a lot of jokes about it because holy crap is this a mirage or does the Fat Bastard have a heart? either way let’s mock the hell out of him behind his back

8) Hatt’s a more doting father to Thomas than he is to his own son

9) mainly due to that narcissism thing. engines are more malleable than human children... the latter of whom grow into fully-fledged equals at some point. 

10) (as a sort of bonus in this realm of “Thomas is not forced to grow up any too fast in the usual Locomotive School of Hard Knocks,” he also gets looked after by big brother/de facto early railway leader Edward, who is of course absurdly sweet by what we see of engine standards... which in this universe seems to just mean he would never have abusively told young Thomas made-up stories about being turned into goddamn generators or spare parts but that’s another essay...) 

11) I think Hatt might have relaxed a little on keeping Thomas in the Knapford ivory tower under normal circumstances, but the stresses of keeping the troubled early N.W.R. afloat distracted him, and also made him all the more determined to protect his wee baby loco from the crazy instability of those years

12) as a result of all the above, Thomas has a very long “childhood,” and I think by the time we get to the canon stories he’s in a state of artificially arrested development 

13) (sidenote: I think being Thomas’s driver at this time would have been hell; I’m sure the Fat Controller was micromanaging him like a bastard...) 

14) I honestly give Hatt a lot of credit for finally realizing that this situation was untenable at the end of “Thomas and the Trucks” and shifting to supporting Thomas’s growth... he could have slammed Thomas back into place, sabotaging him the way a lot of helicopter parents do... instead (while still being all disciplinarian) he gives Thomas a path forward and I think he did real good there, proving in this one case at least to be wise and loving... honestly I still don’t think he’s usually like that, but Thomas has and will always bring out the best side of him 

#this... has been a post #chatter #ttte analysis #ttte commentary #ttte thomas #the fat controller #sir topham hatt #thomas and friends #ttte #the railway series #and yeah #This is ALL Going In the Early N.W.R. Fic #actually i have a scene that i think will wind up scrapped but the engines kind of reminisce about these years #and i got to explore what thomas does and doesn't remember about all this #he doesn't remember much of the pre-branchline stuff #and he has shut out all of the really bad 'three railway engines' trauma completely

[mean-scarlet-deceiver]

were none of you smart train brains going to mention this? i had to find out for myself? ? ?

All of my headcanons for Edward’s backstory assumed that he was mixed-traffic from the start? 

Even primarily goods? As from what I’ve read the F.R. was heavily goods-oriented even by the standards of the day... 

And he was brought to Sodor precisely because, as they rushed to build up the N.W.R., almost from scratch, they needed at least one experienced, adaptable, jack-of-all-trades engine who wouldn’t have a steep learning curve...? The Wikipedia article on Larger Seagulls certainly didn’t give any other hints... ? 

But it turns out Larger Seagulls were the 19th-century version of express engines: 

(F.R. #36, one of Edward’s real-life identical brothers. Note the inscription.) 

?!?!?!?!

I’m down the rabbithole, but, if I’m understanding correctly: 

1) 4-4-0s are not designed for mixed traffic. You don’t put four leading wheels on an engine unless you’re planning on having them run at high speeds. (more wheels = more maintenance). 

2) In the early 1900s, engineers figured out how to make reliable 4-6-0 engines, so they began slowly replacing the previous high-speed 4-4-0s in the south. Although the small, northern Furness Railway (much like our favorite fictional railway, probably?) did not even begin to acquire the bigger kind until 1920, sooooo...

You guys Edward literally had Gordon’s job for the first 20-odd years of his life. The exact. same. job. On the F.R. and probably even for a while on Sodor.

Okay, I now need fic of Edward arriving on the island in 1915 having never even touched a truck before and making adorable, hilarious, plot-powering mistakes as he learns. Just four wee little stories? A bootlace equivalent. Hubris and humiliation. Redemption. 

It would be just like James’s intro arc only the trucks/coaches are inverted. 

I don’t wanna write it, I just want it to exist. 

I want it to be a Railway Series book. 

#dear santa #i understood most of Fact No. 2 but the piece i've been missing completely is Fact No. 1 #like i knew the seagulls COULD have done this but i did not think it was LITERALLY THEIR PRIMARY PURPOSE #corrections welcome #Y'ALL #i'm actually bizarrely upset because this upsets ALL the edward headcanons i have underpinning The Big One #so i don't even know if this falls under the category of: #this is all going in the early n.w.r. fic #maybe i'll just pretend i didn't know this long enough to finish the fic #by the way princeluckybug13 i blame you for this rabbithole <3 #the railway series #ttte edward #ttte #thomas and friends #okay other possible new headcanon that this info suggests #and it seems a little less likely to me than the one in the post but still quite possible: #edward hadn't ever done ANY shunting until the story when he gets out of that shed #like 'okay you want to come back to work? well you'll be getting a whole lot of this from now on like it or lump it' #(edward god bless him is just like: FUN!)

[mean-scarlet-deceiver]

Traintober: “Whistling” (Henry, Thomas, Edward, OCs Linda & “hams”)

Summary: The “ham engines” come back to Vicarstown from the Works, and Thomas reacts with his usual open-minded attitude, total lack of burning acid-spotted jealousy, and general grace. Also, absolutely everyone is guilty of whistling for no good reason at station.   

(In my fic-verse, this is about September 1922, and yes, there have been complaints that discipline among the main line fleet is getting lax; that’s a whole thing. See, when your railway is in a desperate “locomotive crisis,” you can’t just shut up a misbehaving engine in the shed for a day or two… and the controller is usually away for weeks at a time in the political fight of his life to keep the N.W.R. from being re-grouped…) 

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

“Why, what’s that?” exclaimed Henry, quite forgetting not to whistle at station. “Look!”   

On the stretch of track coming down the hillside, the two tank engines due home could be briefly seen, but they looked very different.   

“Nnnnnoooooooooooooooo!”   

Thomas’s own absurdly piercing blast of dismay was probably heard clear over the other end of the line at Tidmouth.   

The stationmaster and passengers were most annoyed. Linda laughed appreciatively; Henry rolled his eyes, not entirely unsympathetic to this reaction; Edward frowned at the tank engine and cut him off. “That’s enough!”   

“No, no, no, no, no.” Thomas closed his eyes, and when he opened them the two distant engines could no longer be seen, but he seemed bitterly aware that he had not merely imagined it… probably from the way that Linda was still snickering. “Them! Why them? Who put those horrid lunatics in our blue?”   

“Get a grip, Thomas!”   

“They can’t possibly be staying, can they?”   

“We’ll be lucky if they do,” said Edward firmly. “Come on, don’t you remember how pleased we were, the day you and I got our colors? Don’t spoil this for them.”  

Thomas snorted. “I s’pose I’ll have to remind you that we were teased, too!”   

“Teased, yes, but no one threw a tantrum! And some of them would have had rather better reason. What do you have to be jealous of?”   

“I won’t know, until I ask them what this means! If I get a sensible answer out of either!”   

“Oh, I heard the men talking at the signalbox,” Linda called back. She was facing the opposite direction, but Henry could hear her expression of wicked enjoyment. She probably looked exactly like Eris, before the demigoddess threw the apple that started a decade of war. “They were talking about numbers four and five…”   

“NOOO!”   

“Ugh,” put in Henry, though he couldn’t be heard over Thomas’s overdramatic shout and whistle, and perhaps for that reason escaped the storm. The other two were fast approaching, and Edward had evidently decided drastic measures were called for.   

“Make yourself scarce,” he ordered Thomas, “until you can be civil to them.”   

“If you think—!”   

“I do. Scram.”   

“I—!” 

“Now.”   

“You—!”   

“Go or be dragged, Thomas!”

With a final furious whistle and a glare of temporary loathing, Thomas did.   

Henry made as if to pull away, just to deepen Edward’s scowl.   

“Where are you going?”   

“Well, if the requisite for staying here is being civil to a pair of hams…”   

(Thomas overheard as he puffed off, and laughed. Well, he was far too upset to laugh, so he literally shouted, in murderous tones: “HA!”)   

“You,” Edward paused between each word, “are, attached, to, a, train.” 

Henry smiled angelically. “Oh, I’m sure the passengers won’t mind avoiding the hams, either.”   

“Someone’s frisky this morning!” Linda sang, still rather cackling over her bombshell about the hams’ new numbers. To be frank, neither of the other engines was entirely certain that she hadn’t simply made that up to cause a stir, until they saw for themselves.   

The platform did erupt into applause and waves, despite Henry’s comment, when the hams, double-heading a load of empties, slowed to pass through the station into the yard.   

It may have been because the engines whistled in welcome—all three of them. 

Henry found the instinct indeed came all too naturally, when he saw the little engines gleaming and beaming with infectious delight (though, Henry was sure, Thomas would have proved admirably immune).   

Or perhaps the passengers were simply pleased at the sign of progress. The hams were not that much more popular with the passengers than with the engines, but their apparent purchase was a hopeful sign that their little railway was not about to expire over the coming winter, after all.   

“I never understood the whole idea of ‘food’!” Linda called to them. “But a blue ham does sound terribly unappetizing!”   

“Missed you too, eggplant!”   

“Looks as if you're actually adding some power to that train, second ham?” Linda was amiable. “Nice change of pace for us all!” 

“That’s ham number five to you, loaner!” said the normally shy little engine, and Linda had to chuckle appreciation.   

“Too big for your wheels—as usual…” As the hams disappeared, Linda whistled at Henry. He knew it was for him, somehow, because there was always something rather patronizing in her whistle, when it was meant for him. Just as there was usually some sort of challenge in it when it was meant for Edward, something frankly baffled when it was meant for the hams (and it seldom was), and something as close to affection as she ever got, when it was meant for Thomas. “So, my green sham! Seems it happens in pairs, ‘round here, and you and I are dance partners!”   

“I’m already owned!” Henry added, to himself, in a rebellious mutter: “And I’ll never let them paint me blue.”   

“Doesn’t mean you still can’t be sent away,” said Linda sweetly. “Exchanged, you know, to help to defray the cost—of a real express engine—” 

“You may clear out next, Linda,” hissed Edward, whose stern mood seemed to have withstood the hams’ interruption. But she was unawed.   

“Ha! You just try’n ‘drag’ me, coastal pigeon!”

#i always wanted to write this scene but it seemed self-indulgent until today's #traintober #prompt #turns out it's really hard to write whistles? #i wish they felt as naturally incorporated into these exchanges as they do in the tv show/my imagination #this is all going in the early n.w.r. fic #—actually probably not #it all depends really #i haven't decided yet if this fic-verse will follow RWS and paint Henry blue #i'm leaning towards No #but if Yes then... well then this scene WILL have to be inserted of course #traintober2020 #ttte henry #ttte oc #ttte thomas #ttte edward #ttte fanfic #ttte fic #yep the hams have lines now? #it's the first time i've ever written them saying anything coherent #now that they. erm. think they're staying forever... they have much more incentive to communicate #jobeywrites

[mean-scarlet-deceiver]

'The gondola, Thomas? Why on *earth* would he need a gondola? Colly? Canuck?' Edward’s eyes narrowed. '*The brass-buffered one?*'  Thomas attempted to shrink out of sight, and didn’t succeed. He also tried not to smirk with pride the more of his achievements were named, and failed almost as spectacularly.  'Why, you’ve gone and assembled every stinking, miserable, contrary, misbehaving truck on the island!—*That is not a compliment, Thomas!*'

snippet from the chapter whose summary is Thomas fucks with Henry’s first goods train, because of course he does

#oh my god i'm having so much fun with this chapter though #maybe it's funnier when there's italics and also when you're living on eight cups of coffee instead of eight hours of sleep i dunno #trying not to spoil too much but uhhhh too late #edward is noticing this AFTER the train not before and ummmm #yeah it went well #*nods vigorously* #very well indeed #thomas is a trickster god #ttte fic #fic snippets #ttte thomas #ttte edward #i don't know why the formatting is screwy i'm just glad tumblr preserved the paragraph breaks #that 'brass-buffered truck' is just my recurring plot point on bogies btw #he's got a faulty brake and i get so much mileage out of that lil bastard #this is all going in the early n.w.r. fic #jobeywrites

[mean-scarlet-deceiver]

OC ‘loaners’ working the N.W.R. main line at beginning of 1922 (when Henry arrives on Sodor) 2/3: the “ham engines”

So the whole point of the “ham engines” is that these two look nothing alike: 

Pretty different, right? Also, as of the beginning of ‘22, ham #1 (above) is painted in umber-brown, and ham #2 is painted black. 

And yet, almost no one bothers to learn to tell them apart. 

They are basically locomotive nerds who have bonded over their obsession with the ‘20s radio shows that their Sodor drivers introduce them to. Soon they cannot function without hearing at least one of their ‘stories’ every day.   

This is their defining trait. They speak in nothing but quotations from their shows and in-jokes/homemade memes, and the other engines can’t understand them (the humans have some difficulty too). So none of the other engines get close to them.   

Also, I don’t know any ’20 radio shows, so I have given them no lines of dialogue whatsoever. *shrug* Yep, even the narrative itself can’t be arsed.

I won’t give you their names here, because to even know their names is to miss the whole point of their characters. 

Though they actually each have two names: official names given to them by the N.W.R.—but which literally no one except perhaps Topham Hatt himself ever uses—and rather silly names that the two engines gave each other as a seal of their friendship—their crews and cleaners actually use these names, too. (So, apparently, does Edward. In-story, he will refer to each of them by name on two separate occasions. And both times the other engines are just like “… who?”)

Thomas works with them the most closely, and he loathes them. He is not at all a radio show nerd, and finds them unbearable. He would love some friends at the station, but these two nutters... aren’t ever gonna be that for him. And being on the outside of their inseparable bond makes him lonelier than ever. (There’s also a LOT of jealousy, because they are allowed to take trains, and he isn’t.) He almost certainly was the one to coin the dismissive ‘ham’ moniker (... which is based off of someone’s confusion as to what a ‘ham radio’ and ‘being a ham’ actually are, and that sounds 150% like Thomas to me!) 

Thomas at least can tell them apart (which is more than Henry can). He mocks one of them for being weak, and the other for being (and especially for looking like) a ‘Yankee.’ Henry’s just like… I don’t know what you are talking about? Thomas: C’mon, look! Right over there. Ridiculous spectacle. Total Yank. Henry: … (I relate to Henry because I also cannot tell what looks so American about the ‘Yankee tank.’ Apparently the tells are really obvious, though.)   

Henry vaguely tries to learn their names but fails. Later they are both painted in N.W.R. blue, and that is the absolute end of Henry’s half-hearted efforts to distinguish them.   

As can probably be told by their repainting, the ‘hams’ do give satisfactory service and the Fat Controller buys them (it helps that they are dirt cheap), but not too long after they are then sold to raise funds to bring in Gordon. Thanks to significant improvements that have been made at Crovan’s Gate over their time on Sodor, they turn a nice profit for the N.W.R.

Hatt makes sure they are both sold to the same buyer. Because at this point to separate the two would be cruel. Like an amputation.

Ham #1

painted in umber brown with gold lining at the beginning of 1922

—this was actually an unauthorized job done “off the clock” by the old Wellsworth and Suddery crowd (there’s a whole livery-based power struggle between the N.W.R. and the former W. and S. until at least the mid-‘20s... but that’s another story... )—

Built 1891 by Dübs and Company (Glasgow). Not himself Highland Railway, but identical to the H.R. Class P ‘Yankee tank.’ 

Historically, the first five engines of this design were ordered by the Uruguay Eastern Railway. But then the customer couldn’t pay for them after building. Dübs and Co. then scrambled to find other buyers. Two of these engines became the first of the H.R. Class P. I can’t find info on the other three (didn’t try that hard, either), so, guess what! Ham #1 and, later, one of his brothers get purchased by a small Manx railway. 

Ham #1 is another engine (seems to have been a few, eh, N.W.R. No.s 1 and 2?) who got sent to another railway for war service and... has never really made it back; instead he has made a second career of being sent to other places. It helps that their owners are starting to eye their two Yankee tanks for withdrawal, so ham #1 (full of life just now, having thoroughly enjoyed his war work and now the wonders of pop culture/mass broadcasting) is well-motivated to just stay on the road and be nothing but an invisible revenue source for as long as possible. 

He actually first arrived on Sodor “way back” in 1919, borrowed to help on the old Wellsworth and Suddery line while two of their four engines were in repairs. By 1921, the North Western switched him to the main line, and it was shortly after this that ham #2 arrived. Ham #1 had not gotten on all that well with the W. and S. engines (not quite his fault; no one does), but he and ham #2 fell into instant platonic love. 

Ham #2

painted in black with yellow and white lining at beginning of 1922

—which was ordered by private owner when ham #2 was adapted back to rail service after his ever-so-slightly very terrifying stint as a paper mill generator—

Built 1903 by Henry Hoy of the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway as Class 26. 

This class had a troubled history. They were designed to handle heavy passenger trains and steep gradients, and they… didn’t. Not for very long. Their side tanks often leaked and they didn’t stop well. Also, they were too hard on the rails. They had their original flanges removed to make them lighter and easier on the track, but that only led to a good deal of derailment issues.  

Eventually they were given up on as passenger engines. They had some of their water and coal pickup equipment removed to increase visibility, and were put on shunting and banking duties… at which they also did not perform well. Their wheels were rather large for this assignment, and, if they still had their center flanges, that would have helped, but, oh well.   

Given all these problems, someone picked up ‘ham engine’ #2 on the cheap and loaned him out several times, including an eighteen-month stint as a stationary boiler for a paper mill. (This was actually where he got initiated into the joys of radio. Later, he would get ham #1 hooked.) 

The N.W.R. struck a bargain with ham #2′s owner to lease him two years for free with a nominal purchase option in exchange for restoring the stationary boiler to running order at their Works. Some of Crovan’s Gate’s journeyman engineers achieved master status by making some clever modifications to ham #2 (notably re-insertion of the flanges and a change in cylinders and valve gears). With these improvements, ham #2 did just fine on Sodor with shunting, banking (but then there was an incident where his brakes failed and his crew still hasn’t recovered from the fright so nahhhhh), post train, and double-heading trains with ham engine #1... who is quite protective of his new adopted brother. 

#ttte oc #ttte headcanon #real true railway stuff #this is all going in the early n.w.r. fic #'23 loaners