#she was acquired in ’39 after a trial where she helped fill in during Gordon’s overhaul

[mean-scarlet-deceiver]

Hey if you had to put some tvs characters into the rws who would you pick? I can see emily and salty working well in rws but what about other characters? Also do you have any headcanons about how they would fit into rws canon?

Haven’t thought it through extensively yet. I’d like to integrate them into a full headcanon timeline a la @feigeroman, but I also know a lot less about rail than he does so I’m a long ways away. 

Emily is the easiest, though. My thoughts for her are that she was a modern, optimized new build—the Tornado of Stirling Singles. (I first got this idea from FutureRust and became irrevocably attached after reading a bit of discussion about it on SiF.) 

However, her building (a long process) was completed at a pretty bad time as far as finding much demand for her. The original buyers realized that, with steam ending, and preservationists focused on saving ‘real’ engines at the time, she wasn’t going to serve well in her intended role as an attraction. Several other prospective buyers made the same calculations; also, she is significantly heavier than the original Stirlings, to the point where her axle bearing was too much for the one or two heritage lines at the time that did made inquiries about trialling her. 

She was in real danger of being turned static display before logging scarcely a couple hundred miles before the North Western took an interest. Add some brand-new motive power to their fleet for effectively nothing? Right up their alley. And she made a good impression when scouted, not at all caring that she was not being sought out with much any idea of tourism in mind, and expressing eagerness when the more strenuous demands of being in N.W.R. service were explained to her. So her lease was a no-brainer… for them.

(Emily’s owners were far more ambivalent. But they also knew that a lonely, stored engine is an unhappy engine, so that tipped the scales in favor of giving this arrangement a chance. She was so excited and you would have had a heart of stone to say no.)  

Emily’s past experiences as a ‘new build’ had been plenty discouraging enough to help convince her that on Sodor she had better keep her build date a secret and try to pass for the ‘real thing’. 

On her first day, Emily was sure everyone was staring and glaring at her because THEY. KNEW. (Emily can be more than a bit dramatic.) They didn’t, yet. But she was right that everyone’s reaction was just as much them going ‘wtf’ at seeing such an old-fashioned model as the Annie and Clarabel thing… and in the end rather few Sodor engines were long fooled by her ‘hello, I’ve been around forever and I know everything’ act. 

Though there was bafflement at first, seeing such a model, and then also seeing her handle ‘60s-style main line work! 

Anyway, as her fellow main line engines soon put the pieces together, they definitely had some fun over the years toying with the new arrival a bit. Gordon and Henry were especially good at putting her on the spot, with bland innocent faces, and then watching her efforts to brazen through it with great amusement. 

These games never got too severe, though. For one thing, Donald and Douglas took a big brotherly interest in their fellow Scotsengine almost at once. So their scowls kept a good lid on some of the others' baser instincts. For another thing, entertained though they were when making Emily squirm, she showed such sheer stubbornness and 'resource' in keeping up this ridiculous ruse long past the point anyone had imagined she would. The others had to respect her tenacity. 

Besides, despite her mule-headedness and refusal to acknowledge that she needed help, she *did* somehow learn a lot, very quickly. 

To be sure, when Emily was leaning in hard on her guise, she could be very bossy and high-handed, in those early years. Still, only some engines took her seriously. The rest just found it mildly but-no-more-than-average irritating. 

(Gordon once made the mistake of griping about who ‘that child’ thought she was, telling everyone their business… with Thomas and James in earshot. They opened up the history books to section ‘G’ cross-ref ‘1920s’ and had a field day week.) 

Anyhow, the time finally came when, for Reasons, after years of much guilt and internal agonizing, Emily began to seriously explore the merits of opening up and telling her friends the truth. So she sent out a bit of a ‘test balloon’… only to at once find everyone affectionately rolling their eyes at her. 

Talk of bafflement. 

“Of course you don’t know, flower child,” said Henry, tolerantly. 

??? 

“You weren’t around for that!” 

Emily noticed everyone starting to grin, and after a moment found her voice. It was in the ‘high-pitched squeak’ locker. 

“You… you all know?” 

“That you were made in the ‘60s—” 

“Nineteen-sixties, mind you.” 

“—right you are, Bear—or that you’re a fraud, or that you’re the funniest liar on the island?” 

The words really rocked Emily, but the mildly teasing tone was the same as yesterday and the day before. “How—how—” 

Everyone present had good fun quoting the highlight reel. 

“ ‘What is a... ‘zep’?’ ” asked James, going in for mimicry of both gender and accent (and making an utter hash of both). 

“ ‘Oh, yes, of course I’ve pulled an evacuation train before,’” said Duck. “ ‘Scores of them!’” 

“ ‘Full to the brim, they were,” agreed Donald, attempting to flutter his eyelashes. “Aye, of, ahhmm… vacs.’”   

This had evidently been her greatest hit, judging by the laughter. Which was straight out of Emily's nightmares... 

... but Percy, grinning next to her, murmured something so sweet and encouraging that she took stock again, and realized that she actually had—nothing to worry about? 

Possibly hadn't for quite some time? 

She managed to gasp How long? Only to get a few more sniggers. 

“Uhhh... summer '71?”

“Th-Th-That’s when I arrived!”

“Aye, Emmy. We recollect. What d'ye think we are, stu—?… ach,” Donald interrupted himself, with a resigned sigh, and looking perhaps too obviously at James and Henry. “Dinna answer that.”   

Realizing that she had already been accepted completely, long ago, Emily wound up both joining in the laughter and crying (on the latter of which the others, with more tact than might have been expected from them, didn’t comment). 

This is one of the best moments of her entire life. 

Another grand day was when her owners finally caved and allowed her to participate in the TV show. Which brings up another point, and one that is perhaps worth getting into, because this is hardly unique to her—it applies to quite a few of the North Western engines, especially some of the lesser-knowns. Emily has never been owned by the N.W.R. She is owned by a trust who has (with more than a little reluctance) leased her to work on Sodor. 

Originally, their reasoning was that they really had no other offers, except for not-particularly-prestigious museums. (There is the occasional engine that has the temperament to spend all their life sitting still. Emily isn’t one of them!) Besides, there was some hope that a) this way they could generate at least a little revenue from her and b) the experience would make her more attractive to future business partners. 

With A, they completely forget—or had heard, but underestimated—what a hard bargain the Hatts can drive. The lease was cheap to begin with, but the North Western also won the right to charge Emily’s maintenance against the account. Emily’s owners never actually had to pay the N.W.R., but overall this turned into a losing business prospect for them as the N.W.R. basically got her services for free. Their immaculate, unique engineering masterpiece of an engine suffered wear and tear, and for years they never really made a cent off their partnership with Sodor, which was something they long regarded as temporary. They were sure that one of these days “the political climate” would change, and the time would be right to deploy a replica Stirling Single on the proper sort of heritage railtours. In the meantime, they were very persnickety about her privacy, and would not give the North Western any rights to use her for publicity purposes… while then also turning around and being almost as reluctant to agree to any other sort of expansion in her duties. It was a very slow process before Emily was officially allowed to do anything but take local passenger trains. (Officially!) 

After a while, FC3 had to start cutting them significantly more generous deals or have them withdraw Emily from his service altogether. (It was very lucky that this wasn’t FC1. He had a bit of a weakness for sucking a good business relationship dry, and lost quite a few engines in his time because pride in his own masterful haggling skills sometimes rendered him stupidly inflexible about such things.)

Nevertheless, although better compensated, the New Stirling Trust was generally quite unhappy about the arrangement… especially with Emily increasingly ‘shunting trucks and hauling freight’… including in scrapyards… on Hallowe’en! (WTF, quoth the Trust.) On one surprise winter visit they found her not only fitted with a snowplough that they hadn’t authorized, but specifically sent out on line-clearing duty. The resulting blow-up was dramatic… not least of all because Emily had stronger feelings about this than her owners and the Fat Controller combined. Being literally a teenager, she had a massive shouting match with her designer about his overprotectiveness that was heard by everyone in the yard. (Yes, this was still during Emily’s “I’m keeping my origins a secret” years, and yes, she completely missed the fact that she had given up her own game during the course of that very public strop.)

It’s important to note that, for all their fussiness, Emily’s owners were the last thing in the world from hard-hearted. Emily’s pleas to not be withdrawn from Sodor were usually the only reason that they didn’t do just that… for decades. This concession was particularly pronounced by the ‘90s, when the “political climate” really had changed, and they were starting to find other venues for her. But by that point, it would have broken Emily’s heart to leave (and she indeed spent much of the decade quite afraid it was inevitable). 

She had also been begging for years to be allowed to participate in the TV series publicity, with its associated Sodor events. When they finally caved, it was largely for financial reasons. The Trust found this business very distasteful… but the licensing allowed them to finally make some serious revenue from their charge. (Emily was ecstatic, and to this day is probably the engine who is the biggest fan of the show. Incidentally, while this ‘new-build’ idea allows Emily to actually be of some use on Sodor’s main line, ‘As Good As Gordon’ and plenty of other improbable episodes are still complete fiction.) 

However, in exchange Emily also had to agree to occasionally leave Sodor and do some preservation circuit work. This led to a bit of a double life, as the New Stirling Trust’s strategy was that she was Emily, Just One of the Guys, while on Sodor, and Patricia, ‘No. 1010’ Stirling-Merriweather Single while on tour, and never the twain must meet. The Trust really thought that most people would never make the connection. To be fair, the family/tourist casual crowd generally did not. The real question is why they were so convinced that this was their best play. It came down mostly to a good deal of snobbery on their part—they remained ashamed that they had ’sold out’ and ‘commercialized’ engineer Merriweather’s masterpiece. Anyway, Emily of course had plenty of practice in this sort of charade and was by that point the consummate actor. Although she would have rather been at home with her friends, she sportingly made the most of it and had as much fun with it as she could (though the double life only exacerbated some of her insecurities). 

Only in 2019 did the N.W.R. and the Trust (both being led by some fresh blood) come to an agreement where Emily and Patricia could be publicly acknowledged as one and the same, and the N.W.R. had rights to have Emily’s real history publicized, have her run railtours, and carry a North Western number. (A third ‘best day ever,’ in her books.) 

Yes, that’s right. The Trust finally fully caved and acknowledged that ‘Patricia’ was a real true total Sodor engine… long after RWS had puttered to a slow death, and right in time for the TV reboot. 

These people are so bloody smart.

#... naturally Emily is forced to deal with being called 'Granny' for the rest of her life whenever someone wants to annoy her #chatter #ttte #ttte headcanon #ttte emily #thomas the tank engine #the railway series #sorry for slow posting (physical) health problems continue #sorry also to those waiting on other asks #Salty is a darling i agree w/ you Sodor can’t get along without him #i don’t know i think most of the TV characters are fine in theory #it’s the crap storytelling and typical lack of backstory that is the problem #(admittedly when the show DOES provide a backstory i hate it) #… Hiro i can’t make any goddamn sense of. i think i would memory-hole him if i chose just one to leave out of my HCs. #Molly incidentally was on Sodor long before Emily #she was acquired in ’39 after a trial where she helped fill in during Gordon’s overhaul #(she thought she was being sent to cover Gordon but was surprised and abashed to find that) #(she was REALLY there to cover *James and Henry’s* duties when they were filling in on the Express) #(she is not haughty or proud but her lowly assignments were still a shock to her) #(it made her very concerned that she had become even more irrelevant than her worst fears) #then she was purchased and around for WWII #following the NWR’s usual pattern of #‘we don’t acquire the engines when the class is withdrawn’ #‘somehow we have an unerring sense that allows us to do it *approximately 5-10 years before that starts to happen*’