Tracks to Nowhere
Hello, hello, hello!
For those of you who are unfamiliar with my work, I am an experienced writer of Phineas and Ferb fanfiction. This is my first Gravity Falls fic. For those of you who have read my other works, you may have figured out that I am a fan of railroading as trains have played a part in at least three of my Phineas and Ferb stories. When I saw the truss-arch railroad bridge in "Gideon Rises," I knew there was an awesome story just begging to be written. And, as per usual in my train-based stories, there will be ties to a little bit of true history. (Just a little bit, mostly in the first chapter here, and just for some real-world tie-ins, nothing that affects the plot.)
This story basically takes place the day after the last scene of "Gideon Rises," and since of course we don't yet know what happens with Grunkle Stan in that scene, this story is not at all related to it. I hope you enjoy it!
Chapter 1: Lookin' For Adventure
Dipper yawned and rubbed his sleepy eyes as he walked into the kitchen.
"Good morning, sleepyhead!" Mabel said cheerfully.
"Morning Mabel. What's for breakfast?"
"I don't know. I haven't seen Grunkle Stan this morning."
"Really?" Dipper asked. "Huh. That's strange. He's always up before us. Did you check his bedroom?"
"Yup. Empty."
"Weird."
The sound of a bell tinkling came from the gift shop. "Hello?" a voice called.
"We're in the kitchen, Soos!" Dipper yelled.
Soos's head poked in through the doorway. "Hey, dudes. Did Stan decide not to open today? The sign in the window still stays 'Closed.'"
"We don't know. We haven't seen him today," Dipper said.
"Huh. Weird."
"Welllllll…" Mabel started slyly. "Since we don't know where Grunkle Stan is, I'd say that means we have the day off."
"Hey, yeah!" Dipper said excitedly. "We can go exploring! Investigate some things from the journal-" His face fell. "Oh. Yeah. Grunkle Stan has the journal."
"Ah, you don't need that old thing to find adventure," Soos said encouragingly. "There's plenty of stuff to do in Gravity Falls. Mystery lies around every corner. All you have to do is keep turning corners until you find it."
"You're right, Soos!" Mabel exclaimed. "Let's go turn some corners!"
"Okay! Let's do it!" Dipper agreed. The three of them high-fived.
A loud grumbling sound filled room.
"Right after we have breakfast!"
"Hey, you guys wanna go to the Diner?" Soos asked.
"Yeah!" Mabel jumped off her chair. "Pancakes!"
Mabel didn't even wait for Soos to shift the truck into park before jumping out the passenger door and bolting for the stairs that led into Greasy's Diner. "Pancakes!"
Soos and Dipper followed.
"I have a good feeling about today, Soos," Dipper said. "I just know we can find some adventure somewhere!"
"That's the spirit, dude!"
"I mean, maybe even right here," Dipper continued, gesturing toward the Diner. The "building" wasn't so much a building as it was a flatbed car perched on a few feet of disconnected railroad track. A massive hollowed out log sat on the flatcar, and the diner had been built inside. "I mean, a huge log on a railroad car? That's not something you see everyday."
Soos put a hand under his chin and looked hard at the Diner. "I have wondered how this got here. Sounds like a good place to start." He held open the door for Dipper and they rejoined Mabel at a table inside.
"Pancakes! Pancakes! Pancakes!" Mabel chanted.
It was only a few minutes before Lazy Susan brought their menus.
"Say, Lazy Susan," Dipper asked, "Do you know anything interesting about this Diner?"
"Whatdya mean, Hun?" she asked.
Dipper shrugged. "I don't know. Like, how did it get here?"
"Oh, that's easy! The piece of track the Diner is sitting on was part of the old Gravity Falls Railroad branch line, the railroad that served the town back in the day, when it was a logging town. But it shut down years ago."
"When the logging industry dried up?"
"No, when the track mysteriously disappeared."
Dipper, Mabel and Soos looked at each other, excited, intrigued, and very surprised.
"The track disappeared?" Mabel exclaimed.
"Yup. Except for the fifty feet or so that's under this here Diner, the whole line just vanished."
"Why?"
Lazy Susan shrugged. "I don't know, Hun. Some people say it has to do with the ghost train."
"Ghost train?" Dipper and Mabel cried together. They nearly jumped out of their seats.
"Yup. Few days before the tracks vanished, 'ol Train 54 disappeared without a trace on it's way up into the mountains, along with everyone on board. Then the tracks vanished." Lazy Susan said with a flourish of her arms.
"Wow. That's really something."
When they'd ordered their breakfast and Lazy Susan walked away, Mabel leaned over the table, smiling excitedly. "Guys, I think we found an adventure!"
Dipper nodded. "Right after breakfast, we're heading to the library. Without the journal, we'll have to research this ourselves."
"Alright! Adventure!" Soos cried, pumping his fist in the air. They heard the unmistakable growl of hungry stomachs again. "But first, you know, breakfast. Can't be adventuring on an empty stomach."
Being rather small, it did not take the three adventure-seekers long to scour the Gravity Falls Library for information.
Dipper placed a few books on a table, Mabel and Soos right behind him. "Okay, this is all the information I could find about the history of the logging industry in Gravity Falls. There's got to be something in one of them about the Gravity Falls Railroad, or G.F.R.R., for short. Everybody take a book and start searching."
"Okay, Mister Bossy," Mabel said with a laugh.
Soos saluted and grabbed a book. "Aye, aye, Cap'n!"
They all took a seat and dove into the stack of books, scouring the literature for anything pertaining to the railroad.
Dipper opened the first book, A Complete History Of Gravity Falls, Oregon, and paged through the introduction to the first chapter. It started off with the story of Nathaniel Northwest and the founding of Gravity Falls, a story Dipper knew was actually fake. He skimmed past it and picked up about mid-chapter.
After being founded, the town of Gravity Falls struggled through its first few years. Little land was useful for farming, and harsh winters brought famine. Without connection to the rest of the world, the tiny town was doomed.
That changed in the spring of 1869. After the Silverton fire of 1865 and Elliot State Forest fire of 1868, over a million acres of timber were lost and the future of the Oregon logging industry became uncertain. In an effort to save his company from bankruptcy, Paul Easley of the Swift Lumber Co. scouted around previously unexplored territories for a new forest of Douglas-Fir. The location he discovered was just west of the recently founded town of Gravity Falls, Oregon.
There was only problem. Gravity Falls was remote.
Most early logging relied on rivers and lakes to float the cut timber down to the saw mill. Gravity falls had a river, yes, but it was much too shallow, and a waterfall near the town made its current too swift to be useful. The forest was also high on a mountain plateau, and the town far below it.
Paul Easley could see only one option: They would have to build a railroad.
The railroading industry was rapidly expanding in the 1860's. The Transcontinental Railroad was completed in May of 1869 and was quickly spreading throughout the northwestern United States. The final rails of the Oregon & California Railroad were also completed in 1869, and, after some negotiation with Railroad officials, Easley organized the construction of the Gravity Falls branch line. Construction was started that same year and was completed in the spring of 1871.
The railroad was a godsend for the struggling town. Not only did its construction provide work for the town's residents, as soon as the tracks reached the town, supply trains immediately brought food, building supplies, and later, pioneers and their families, looking for work in the logging camp.
Once the rails stretched beyond the town, the landscape became difficult to surpass. In order to reach the plateau, the line had to loop back around the town to make the grade shallow enough for the locomotives to climb. Surveyors and engineers quickly realized that the only way the tracks could reach the intended logging camp was by tunneling through the back of the mountain peak that surrounded Gravity Falls. Even worse was the pass, the gap in the mountain range, which would have to be spanned by a bridge.
Something about that struck a chord in Dipper's memory. "Guys, didn't Susan say that all the track disappeared except that little bit under the Diner?"
Mabel looked up from her book. "Yeah, why?"
"Remember when we were up on the bridge fighting Gideon? There were tracks on that bridge!"
"Hey, you're right! And the tunnels on either end were boarded up!"
Dipper looked at the book again. "According to this, the East tunnel should start at the base of the mountain behind Gravity Falls." He set the book down. "Hold on."
He hurried off to the map section and returned a minute later with an old yellowed parchment. Mabel and Soos stood behind him, looking at the map over his shoulder.
"Okay, this map is from 1882. Here's the rail line," Dipper said tracing it out with his finger. "Here's the bridge, and the line should come out of the mountain right here!" He jabbed his finger at the spot on the map.
"Hey, I know that spot," Soos said.
"You do?" Mabel asked.
"Sure. I know this town and the surrounding area like the back of my head."
Dipper raised an eyebrow. "Don't you mean the back of your hand?"
"No. Anyway, I've been there before, and I can tell you there is absolutely no tunnel entrance there."
"I think tunnel entrances are called 'portals,'" Dipper said.
"I think you're a know-it-all," Mabel joked.
Dipper ignored her. "You're sure there's no tunnel back there?"
"Positive."
"But there's still tracks on the bridge…"
"So were does that tunnel go?" Mabel wondered aloud.
They all looked at each other.
"We need to keep researching," Dipper said, narrowing his eyes in determination.
"Okay, now I wish we still had the journal," Mabel sighed. "Research is boring."
Dipper ignored her and returned to his book. He scanned through the rest of the chapter, but it was just more about the construction and operation of the Gravity Falls Railroad, it's eventual acquisition as a subsidiary by the Southern Pacific Railroad, and then that expanded into a history of the logging industry. Near the end of the chapter, there was one more mention of the railroad.
In 1892, the Gravity Falls Railroad vanished from the map and logging industry mostly dried up when the Swift Lumber Co. went bankrupt. Today, the modern day Union Pacific Railroad still serves the town, and while small private companies still produce small amounts of high-quality lumber, "Gravity Falls, Oregon" is no longer found stamped on mass quantities of lumber in the United States.
Dipper quickly flipped through the rest of the book, but there were no more mentions of the Gravity Falls Railroad.
For the next hour, they paged through book after book, but only managed to find the same information Dipper had already come across in the first book.
"Okay, let's try something different," Dipper said. "Let's try to find something specifically about the 'ghost train.' Try for books about mysteries of Gravity Falls."
A quick check of the card catalogue yielded only one book: Unsolved Mysteries of Gravity Falls, Oregon. Mabel quickly retrieved it. "Some adventure this is," she said, tossing the book on the table. "Exploring the Gravity Falls Library. Yippie."
"As soon as we find something to go on, we can start exploring. I just want to see if we can find anything about the train that disappeared," Dipper told her as he flipped through the book. "Here we go. 'Train 54: The Phantom Train.'"
They resumed their seats around the table and Dipper read aloud from the book. "'September 18th, 1892. With 32 lumberjacks crammed into a single passenger car and a dozen empty flatcars, Train 54 departed from Gravity Falls Depot, heading for the Swift Lumber Co. camp at the end of the line.
"'But it never reached its destination. Somewhere between the Depot and the end of the line, the train disappeared, along with everyone on board. Several of the townsfolk recalled seeing the train as it crossed over the bridge that loomed over the outskirts of town, and that was the last time it was seen.
"'How does an 85 ton locomotive and its train just disappear? No one knows. A search was conducted, but there was no sign of any derailments. Train 54 quickly became known as 'The Phantom Train.'
"'Two days later, the entire rail line vanished. From the connection point with the main line all the way to the logging camp, every rail, crosstie, and spike disappeared. Even the ballast roadbed disappeared. But, instead of leaving a ribbon of bare earth where the track had been, the ground appeared completely untouched, as if the track had never been there in the first place. All that remained was the steel truss-arch bridge that spanned the pass above the town.'
"'To this day, the disappearance of Train 54 and the Gravity Falls Rail Road remains a mystery, likely one that will never be solved."
"Until today!" Mabel cried excitedly, jumping to her feet. "The Mystery Twins-"
"And Soos."
"-And Soos," she quickly added, "are going to find that train and find out what happened to the Gravity Falls Railroad!"
Dipper leaned his head on his hand. "Are you making this grand proclamation in the hopes that we're done in the library?"
"Yes I am!"
Dipper closed the book and stood up. "I've had enough of this, too. Let's go do some exploring!"
"Yeah!"
"But first I'm going to make a copy of this map!"
Mabel stopped in her tracks. "No!"
"It'll just take a second."
After a ten minute fight with the library's copy machine, they ran outside, heading for Soos's pickup, but stopped short when they were unexpectedly met by Old Man McGucket.
"You kids headin' up the mountain?" he asked in his screechy voice.
"Uh…maybe," Dipper replied hesitantly.
Mabel was not feeling the same skeptically as her brother. "How'd you know?"
McGucket laughed. "I'll never tell. But if you're a-headin' up to explore them there tunnels, I got somethin' that might come in handy. C'mon! Follow me!" He took off down the street at an unsteady run.
"Should we follow him?" Dipper asked.
Mabel shrugged.
"Sure, why not?" Soos replied.
They piled into Soos's truck again and followed the old man down the street. They soon reached the junkyard, which McGucket called home.
They found McGucket struggling to move the hulk of a car. "It's around here somewhere. Should be right under this here car."
Mabel squinted at Soos. "What is he doing?" she whispered. Soos just shrugged.
"Here it is!" McGucket exclaimed. "I know'd it was here somewheres."
McGucket was proudly motioning at what could only be described as a piece of junk…which is probably why it was in the junk yard. It was essentially a large wooden platform on wheels. In the center was a dual-ended handle, connected at the middle like a see-saw, to a pump. The pump connected to one axle. The four wheels were flanged, making it obvious that this was some sort of railcar. "My old handcar," McGucket exclaimed. "Still a lot of work, but its faster than walkin'. And more fun, too!"
"Hmm…I guess that would be a handy thing to have," Dipper admitted. "Thanks, McGucket."
The crazy old man chuckled again. "Yer welcome to it, kids. If'n you can get it out of here." Still laughing, he did a swan dive into the piles of old cars and garbage and disappeared.
"He's so thoughtful," Mabel said, her usual smile totally sincere.
"Yeah, thoughtful and kinda creepy," Dipper agreed.
After some struggling, the three of them managed to lift the handcar into the bed of Soos's pickup.
"Okay! Now we're ready for an adventure!" Soos said.
"Let's go!"
On their way up to the top of the mountain, the gang briefly detoured into the woods. The pickup truck bounced over the uneven ground, Soos maneuvering through the trees, following Dipper's instructions as they followed the path of the rail line on the map. When they reached the spot where the mountain rose up sharply from the ground and the rock-outlined tunnel portal should have been in the hillside, Soos stopped the truck.
"Okay," Dipper said, "This is the spot. And sure enough, no tunnel."
He was right. The hillside was unblemished, just as natural as was when it had first formed.
"Well, nothing to see here. Let's head up to the top."
Soos turned the truck around so that the tailgate faced the cliff side. They strolled to the edge of the cliff, looking down at the railroad bridge below.
"It's a lot further down than I remember," Dipper observed.
"Ah, it's not that bad," Mabel said, always the optimist.
Soos dropped the tailgate on the truck and Mabel climbed up. She rolled the handcart out over the tailgate, where Dipper and Soos caught it and lowered it carefully to the ground.
Dipper removed his hat and wiped the sweat from his brow. "Now how are we going to get this thing down there?"
Mabel hopped out of the truck bed and closed the tailgate. "I got this." She produced her grappling hook and shot it straight up into the air.
"Ow!" Dipper yelped as the hook fell back to earth and struck the top of his head.
The cable now unspooled, Mabel slid one prong of the hook through the hole in the bumper of the truck where a ball-hitch could be attached, then wrapped the gun around one end of the pump handle on the handcar. "There we go!"
"Uh, Mabel, I don't think that cable is going to be strong enough to-"
"Sure it is! Watch!" She put her foot against the handcar's deck.
"Mabel! No!"
She gave a hard shove. The handcar rolled backwards off the end of the cliff and fell. A second later, there was a "Twang!" as the cable ran out of slack. The pickup jerked backwards, the bumper slamming into Dipper, Mabel and Soos and knocking them over the edge.
"AHHHHHHHH!" they screamed as they fell. Soos crashed down onto the deck of the handcar, which had landed on the bridge, and Dipper and Mabel landed on top of him.
After a few seconds of silence, Dipper said, "Okay, I was wrong. That little cable is stronger than I thought."
"See? I told you!"
Soos groaned. "Alright! We're on the bridge! I'm just gonna lay here a minute until I regain feeling in my back…and my front…and my sides."
Dipper and Mabel climbed off of him and helped Soos sit up. He immediately put a hand to his head. He groaned again. "It feels like there a gnome inside my head, hitting my brain with a hammer."
"Let me check!" Mabel said. She looked into his ear.
"See anything?"
"Just wax and hair. Ooh, I think I see I superball!"
"So that's what happened to that thing."
They hopped down from the handcar and made their way to the closer of the two tunnels, the one at the east end of the bridge just below where they'd parked the truck. This was one that should have emptied out to the back of the mountain where they'd been earlier.
"Watch your step guys," Dipper cautioned. The crossties beneath the rails were the only walkway they had, and there were gaps between every one. The bridge creaked and moaned, weakened by the strain Gideon's robot had placed on it. The old steel arches had completely sheered in half during the fight, which meant each side of the bridge was now cantilevered out from the mountain, supported only by the brackets bolted to the cliff face.
They reached the tunnel at the end. It was boarded up, with the warning "DEAD END" stenciled into the wood. Peering around the boards, they could see only inky blackness.
"Come on, let's get these boards off," Dipper said.
Without a crowbar, they all grabbed a hold of the same board and pulled, finally managing to snap off the ends of the rotten wood. They repeated the process until the tunnel portal was clear.
"Helloooooooo!" Mabel yelled into the tunnel. Helloooooooo came the echo.
"I am really glad that nobody answered back," Dipper said.
"Ooh, I wanna try!" Soos stepped forward and took a deep breath. "The mailman is a werewolf!" The mailman is a werewolf.
Dipper laughed. "Come on, guys."
They returned to the handcar. Mabel unwrapped her grappling hook from the handle, but was unable to free it. "Oh, well. I'll just leave it here so we can get back up later."
They lifted the handcar and set the wheels on the rails, then all climbed on.
"Okay, Mabel. Soos and I will pump, and you sit on the front and watch the tracks."
"Okee-dokee!" She removed a glowstick from her pocket and snapped it.
"Do you always carry one of those around with you?"
"Yup!"
Dipper and Soos took their positions on either side of the pump. One of them would have to face backwards to work the pump facing front, so Soos volunteered to go backwards so Dipper could at least sort of see ahead.
"Ready to find out where these tracks lead?" Dipper asked.
"Ready!" Mabel called.
"Let's do this thing!" Soos replied.
"Let's go!"
The mechanical pump was a bit rusty from years of being exposed to the elements, but Dipper and Soos were able to get it freed in just a few pumps. The handcar rolled into the tunnel, the squeaky pump echoing off the walls, and the soft green light from Mabel's glowstick giving off just enough light to see about five feet ahead.
"Onward! To adventure!" she called.
The light from the tunnel entrance faded away and the three adventurers were left in the dark.
I think I had more fun writing the fake history books and tying Gravity Falls to real events and time periods than I did writing the actual story. And I'm not sure whether or not I'm proud of that.
Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed this first chapter. I am really bad at predicting how many chapters a story will have, so I'm not going to post a number on this. Let's just say, I think it's going to be pretty long. Leave me a review to let me know what you think (I love reviews!) and I will see you all again…at some point in the near future.