Amidst the weather and daily activities of a normal day, Vicarstown station was packed with a crowd of people waiting to see Edward and Thomas arrive with their precious cargo of supplies needed to complete the railway. A few relatives of the passengers and city officials waited by platform 1 to provide them with a proper form of hospitality. Some even had cameras to take pictures of these moments and share them with the press. They heard two whistles, and Thomas and Edward, carrying a long train of necessities, finally reached the station. Thomas felt dwarfed by the large size and structure of the station, as if they had been constructed with so much effort to receive the larger type of engines.
Thomas' passengers left the coach and passed through the station to meet the citizens. Wilbert held on to Carol's hand, scared by the tall adults jostling their way to make new friends or reunite with their relatives. One man to greet the passengers was North Western Railway chairman Albert Regaby, 6th Baron and 1st Viscount Harwick whose distant cousin had been currently employed by the Board of Trade to investigate the sinking of the Lusitania and the Thrasher incident. His son Henry was a colonel for the Sodor Regiment, who boarded the train to greet Charles Henry Norramby and Commandant Yates, enlisting the soldiers for the regiment. Sir Topham Hatt was also at the station to meet his new engines.
"Welcome to Sodor," he said. "I am Sir Topham Hatt, your new director."
"Please to meet you, sir," said Thomas. "You must be the man Mr. Billinton, my maker, told me about."
"And I'm very pleased to meet you too," boomed Sir Topham Hatt with dignity. "Now, as you can see, I am a very busy man and this is bound to be a very busy railway. So I expect you to make yourself really useful right away."
He told Edward that he was to begin work the very next day and he wanted Thomas to start work as a station pilot after he was formally introduced to the other engines.
The job tasks assigned to Thomas became difficult following his arrival. The trucks of his special train were added to the NWR's roster of rolling stock. His coach had been used as small refreshment stand for the workmen who were building the line. A tunnel near Ballahoo was being cut through to allow the engines to pass through without going over the hill, but construction was so poor, that the tunnel roof had partially collapsed. And so the tunnel had to be divided and when it was finished, Edward was able to take his first train on the nearly completed line.
At last, Thomas met the three engines of the Wellsworth and Suddery Railway, their names were Colin, Lily and Adam. Colin was the smallest, and when they came to see Thomas, he was the first to ask.
"And who are you?
"I'm Thomas. I'm one of the newer engines."
"I was expecting a bigger engine," said the middle sized one called Lily.
"Well, I was big enough to do my work back home in Brighton," said Thomas insultingly. "I liked my brothers' company better, thank you."
"I hope you will like it here," said Adam the bigger sized tank engine.
Thomas turned his attention to the paint works of the engines, they were all wearing maroon coats with yellow lining and letters.
"Edward's coat of paint looks much like yours," he remarked.
"Thank you," replied the tank engines. "Yours ought to be more like ours."
Thomas did not know what to make of this, he just puffed away to resume work.
"Was it something we said?" asked Colin in a twangy voice.
"He does need a new coat of paint if he is to fit into our railway," replied Adam.
"He may not be as big as you, Adam, but he does seem to be a hard worker," said Lily, and off she steamed to the sheds after a long day of passenger services.
Throughout the week, Thomas spent his time in yard, providing loads and trucks for the completion of the railway. On his first day he collected coal for the depots and water tanks for the station tower. On his second day, he learned about all sidings in Vicarstown yard and nearly bumped into Edward's tender while he was collecting a passenger train for the workmen. Then he backed quickly down and bumped into a line of trucks filled with empty crates.
"OH!" cried the trucks. "Whatever is happening?"
Thomas quickly apologized, and he took the trucks to the station where Lilly was to take them to Ballahoo. On his third day, after accidently pushing some trucks into a pair of buffers, Thomas was prepared for the grand opening of the North Western Railway at Vicarstown station, pushing the coaches into their proper sidings, where he met two sleepy bogie coaches from the Midland Railway.
"I say!" exclaimed the front coach as she opened one eye. "Where are you taking us?"
"To the station," said Thomas. "It's time for the grand opening!"
"But if the grand opening is a holiday," the coaches replied in unison. "You won't need us!"
"I'm Annie."
"And I'm Clarabel," said the coach behind the front. "If you are looking for the express coaches, they are on the other side."
She darted her eyes to a pair of three amber colored suburban coaches on the next track.
"I'm terribly sorry, your ladyships, I'm new around here. My name is Thomas."
He puffed slowly away.
"Such a sweet little engine," Annie chuckled.
At last on Monday, May 17th, the North Western Railway was completed. It spanned for over 80 miles westward from Barrow to Tidmouth on the other side of the island with six branch lines in-between. As the festivities of the official opening took place at the big station, Sir Topham Hatt sent a marconigram to the office of Sir Guy Granet, Director General of Movements and Railways from the wireless shack, which read:
"Great news! First major railway on Sodor completed this very day! Full details on the festivities later -Topham Hatt."
But the news was sadly overshadowed by the events of a more democratic happening on the mainland. The last Liberal Party had fallen and Prime Minister Herbert Asquith was forming an all-party coalition government in response to zealous supporters and Cabinet ministers who saw Asquith as a poor leader of the war. Even when Granet did reply to Hatt's message, he could only share his complements with a simple: "Good for you."
The next day, Thomas was allowed to learn the route of the newly completed main line and he wanted to say hello to the other engines on the island. On his way to Crovan's Gate, he passed the station of Ballahoo where a crowd was lined up at the newspaper office for any news of their relatives who had gone to serve the Gallipoli Campaign. None of them knew who was alive or dead, but the rumbling of Thomas' wheels drowned out all sounds of hope and fear of casualties and survivors. A similar occurrence was happening at Crovan's Gate when he arrived at the station, and it was there that he met a red narrow gauge engine named Skarloey, who was the namesake of the Skarloey Railway.
After a formal introduction, Thomas asked, "What do you think of this railway?"
"As beautiful as the day I first came here," said Skarloey. "But in this time of war and everything, I am absolutely unlucky to have a passenger who has lost a relative or a friend."
Then Thomas noticed the number 1 in gold on Skarloey's cab.
"You must be lucky to have the number one," he said.
"That number," Skarloey told him, "is why this railway is named after me. My friend Rheneas came here shortly afterwards and if there's one thing I've learned from him, it's that friends always stick together."
Thomas pondered over Skarloey's words as he went to see the Culdee Fell Railway at Kirk Machan, where he met Godred, the railway's own number 1 engine. Godred had been shut in the back of the shed after a serious accident where he slid off the rails and fell down a ravine. After a formal greeting, Godred embellished his thoughts of the war with a sensational tone.
"I have seen many families remain intact on this side of the island, but a few that I have seen, have had their relatives die in an ambush. Even the breadwinner has gone to war. After the accident, my crew left for the war, and so far I haven't heard anything from them."
Culdee, the number 4 engine and namesake of the Culdee Fell Railway, only got to see Thomas briefly as he was coming down from a run with his coach Catherine. Thomas meanwhile, went to the harbor of Kirk Ronan and met Clive, the number 1 of the Sodor and Mainland Railway and the first engine on the island to carry that number.
"The other number one was a 'Coffee Pot'," he said in a Scottish accent. "But he's far from here on the other side of the island."
"What's a 'Coffee Pot?'" asked Thomas.
"It's an engine with a boiler that points up into the air," replied Clive.
"Like those things people make coffee, tea and milk from. Those wee four engines look after one of the branch lines, taking trucks from Anopha Quarry, coughing up ditchwater as they go about, and now they're starting to get all worn out. Pretty soon in about five or ten years, we won't be using 'em anymore."
Arriving safely back to his new home of Vicarstown sheds, Thomas saw to it that the Coffee Pots' memory would be preserved. Edward remained asleep, and with only two engines in the shed, it was a very quiet night.