It was a perfect spring day.
Birds sang in the trees; the rails sang harmony, that strange humming, almost twittering sound that nobody who has ever heard it can quite forget.
It was, in fact, a Saturday in May, one of the finest Mays Sodor had ever seen. The sea all around the island was bright blue, with just enough wind to amuse the waterskiiers and the few people who still ran sailing dinghies out of the harbour. Mostly it was sightseers these days: the tourist trade ran well, with the old-fashioned railway a very noticeable attraction. People came from all over Britain to see the old engines, and to ride in their trains, and hear again the sounds—and smell again the scents—of their own childhoods.
Sir Topham Hatt ran the line extremely well, everyone had to admit. While the man looked like the worst sort of Dickensian portly villain, he had a real feeling for steam, and he was careful, for the most part, of his engines and their well-being.
What was particularly wonderful for the inhabitants of Sodor—and for the railway employees, and for their tourist passengers—was that Hatt's engines were alive. They had personalities—hell, they had names. They felt and saw and existed.
Most of the tourists, dazzled by the brass and gleaming paint and the constant activity and bustle of a running steam railway, didn't realize this. But the people who interacted with the engines, those lucky enough to drive them and fire their fireboxes, oh, you better believe they knew. They were particularly fortunate. All over the country old railways were being refurbished and run as tourist traps, but none of those engineers, firemen, conductors, or repairmen had an actual conscious being to deal with: when something went wrong on other railways, they had to repair a vast and complicated machine, but on Sodor they had someone who could tell them exactly where it hurt, and who could comply with their requests. As a result, for the most part, Sodor's engines were in the absolute pink of health.
Except one.
On that particular Saturday, Henry was moderately well-pleased with the universe. He'd been allowed to pull the Arrow passenger train, not as fast or as famous as Gordon's express, but still important—and it was very full this afternoon. Just about two hundred tourists had crowded into the carriages, as the steel Arrow plaque was affixed just under Henry's smokestack and his driver and fireman made their final checks.
He was never really well. Built from stolen and misdrawn plans, mocked by his fellow engines for his inability to raise and keep steam, Henry had never been one of Hatt's finest. Still the Fat Controller didn't take him off the lines, didn't retire him, or have him scrapped; Henry thought he was pretty lucky, all things considered. This morning some of his boiler tubes had hurt sharply as he began to raise steam, but he'd thought nothing of it; he'd had much worse pains before. It was doubtless just the change in temperature making him ache.
They had come out of the big station right on time, gleeful puffs of coalsmoke following one another out of Henry's funnel, his driver keeping a gentle hand on the throttle as his fireman shoveled coal into the roaring confines of his firebox. His waterglasses stood at full: his press gauge showed high normal. Nothing at all was wrong, and, for once feeling decently well and high-powered, Henry really enjoyed the ride up the Long Hill.
They passed the tunnels where once he had refused to come out into the rain and had been blocked up there for a month or so before he'd been needed—the same tunnel where, a year or so later, he'd been menaced by a circus elephant—and crested the long hill, Henry's fire burning bright and hot and clean. All systems were green across the board.
Except that nagging ache in a few of his boiler tubes, just where they touched the crownsheet. Only a few of them, and they were just under the waterline, where water sloshed back and forth as he climbed hills, forcing the metal to expand and contract as it heated and cooled. They ached like….Henry had no simile, really, but his driver had had a bad tooth extracted some months before, and he could liken this ache to that low unbearable pain in his driver's jaw. It hadn't hurt before, and it hurt now, and yet he was so close, so very close, to the next station: perhaps he could hang on till then and let them know while the passengers got off, and apologize, and be shunted to a sidetrack and wait for…oh, lord, Gordon, sneering all the way…to shove him back down the hill and home.
He was just ruminating on the best way to tell his driver he hurt when the pain suddenly went from a low sick ache to a bright hot drilling agony—and he cried out, unable to stop the cry, just as six of the gauges in his cabin went FUBAR and the powertrain lost forward momentum. It wasn't just a moment of agony, either—he could feel the tubes where they had broken, spilling superheated flue gases into his boiler, and each rivet tightening as it took the strain, and the driver's yelled command: open main safeties, dump, dump, dump before he blows us all to kingdom come….
Henry was still crying out, a low strengthless little cry, as they coasted to a stop on the line and his men scrambled out to lock open the safeties and clear out his firebox before any more heat could be shunted into his wounded boiler. Clouds of steam rose around them, and he could barely see the rails: all he knew was that something inside him was broken, badly broken, and it hurt so badly…and then he could just about hear the driver yelling to the conductor, and the conductor announcing a breakdown and reaching for his walkie to alert the stations ahead and behind: train incapacitated, brokedown train, request assistance, caution flag the whole damn stretch of track.
The pain throbbed and suddenly burst in a red flower inside Henry's mind, and he drifted away.
"I don't have to tell you," said Sir Topham Hatt, "how disappointed I am. You know perfectly well this was supposed to be a spring outing for hundreds of high-paying tourists and you let this happen."
Henry's driver, a man named James Hudson, nodded. "I know, sir. But we had absolutely no warning the tubes were about to blow. Henry would have told us if he'd felt anything. I know him, I've driven him for years. None of us had a clue, sir."
Hatt paced, slamming a fist down to the desk. "I can't keep having this happen. I thought the new coal would sort him out. I thought the damn rebuild would have sorted him out. What more am I supposed to do, Hudson? What the hell else is there? He's a lemon."
Hudson kept his face straight, with an effort. "Sir, uh, with respect, his innards haven't been rebuilt as well as they might. It's still not easy to raise steam even on a morning as mild as this, and he has trouble on steep grades. What he needs is a brand new set of tubes and sheets. Set him properly right."
"And I can afford that?" Hatt stared at him, two pink spots burning on his cheeks. "Damn it. All right, Hudson, you're running with the regular commuter lines this week. You did decently well in the emergency."
"Sir," said James Hudson, and nodded, and put his ticking cap back on his head. You didn't stick around when the boss was in one of these moods.
He left Hatt's office and crossed to Shed B, where Henry had been pushed by Diesel. It was probably a good thing that he'd been unconscious while this happened. His beautiful green boiler was flayed open along its rivets for half its length, and workmen crawled and scampered over the rustbrown innards. The broken flue pipes had been taken out, and examined, and the break was determined to be due to heatstress crystallization. At that point, it had been necessary to examine the rest of his pipes, every square inch, and replace any that seemed to have any kind of weakness.
Hudson knew that Henry was hurting. He'd driven the green engine for three years now, just as he'd told Hatt, and he knew him as an old friend. He climbed up into the cab, and ran his hands over the familiar controls. "You'll be all right, Henry. You'll be fine. They're checking you over now to see if anything else is apt to break. You'll be fine."
Henry didn't reply: but the whole multi-ton frame of the engine shuddered on its wheels.
Some time later, in a different darkness, voices spoke to one another.
"That was excellent."
"You think? I mean, it totally just looked like an old boiler break. No sign of anything else."
"Perfect. Just what I wanted. We took that one, the lemon, out first: nobody'll suspect. Now go after the others. First the, what's it called, the red one. Little bastard, but fast. Corrosion in the tubes, or, hmm, or buildup of foul gases in the smokebox that could explode. You know how to do it."
"I know, boss. It'll be done by tomorrow morning."
"God, that was perfect, having the diesel drag the hulk away. Absolutely perfect. You're doing a very special job, my friend."
"Good to hear, boss. Good to hear."
