THUMPER KEEPS UP

It was the start of a very busy morning in the Blue Mountain Quarry. Engines and trucks scurried about, racing through tunnels and up hills.

"Going down! Next stop, quarry floor!" Owen the Incline Engine called down as he moved some trucks down the incline, so that the stone could be filled into the waiting standard gauge trucks at the bottom.

"I've never seen the quarry so busy!" Rheneas exclaimed as he shunted some empty trucks next to Skarloey.

"We have a very important order of slate and stone to do!" replied Skarloey, in the middle of pushing a long line of trucks filled with slate, "We must all keep working hard. And we need to do it fast!"

"Oh dear..." Luke sighed, "I sure hope this doesn't affect Thumper…"

Thumper is a special drilling machine who also works at the Blue Mountain Quarry. They are very strong and powerful, though they prefer to work slowly and safely. Long ago, they accidentally caused a boulder to fall down from a hill and smash into some sheds. Now, they wanted to make sure to be slow, and very cautious about their work.

Unfortunately, something was bound to go wrong.

Thumper was busy drilling slowly and carefully into the side of a mountain to loosen some rock, so it could be loaded into Duncan's trucks. Though, Duncan was being very impatient and was wheeshing steam from his cylinders angrily.

"Losh sakes, Thumper! Hurry up! We have an important job to do!" he snapped crossly.

"Calm down, Duncan dude." Thumper replied, "Just go with the flow, I can only work so fast. Just learn to have some patience."

"I cannae wait!" Duncan burst out, "We have a very important job to get done!"

Duncan gritted his teeth as he watched Thumper slowly and carefully loosen more rock. He tutted loudly and blew his whistle, racing off with empty trucks.

"I'll come back later!" he shouted and hurried off through a tunnel.

"Ah.. um.. Alright then, bro…" Thumper sighed and continued to work.

Duncan raced round the bend and slammed his brakes on when he nearly ran into-

"Peter Sam! Watch where you're going!" Duncan huffed.

"I thought you were still having your trucks loaded up, Duncan." Peter Sam asked puzzled. "Why are they all empty?"

"Thumper is taking far too long for my liking!" Duncan replied. "If they cannae keep to the deadline, I suggest they don't bother trying!"

And with that, he blew his whistle and huffed away, looking for more stone and slate.

As Thumper continued to work, Sir Handel rumbled in with some trucks. He was very cross.

"I can't believe that Mr. Percival is making me pull awful trucks around here!" he fumed as he began to slowly pull up alongside Thumper. "I was having a fantastic sleep in the sheds, but no! I have to pull trucks! It's degrading…"

He glanced over on his left side and scowled.

"And now I have to work with go-slow Thumper…"

Thumper looked back at Sir Handel and turned slowly to face him.

"Sorry, did you say something?" they asked.

"Just get my trucks loaded and be quick about it!" he barked at Thumper.

"Easy, Sir Handel, chill."

Sir Handel's eye twitched.

"I would be chill if you got my trucks loaded up quickly…" he hissed.

"Listen dude, I know that we have an important order to get done and you don't like this job. But, I just don't wanna see another boulder incident." they sighed and went back to drilling.

"You're going far too slow! You're wasting my precious time!" Sir Handel growled in frustration.

He gave several sharp blasts on his whistle.

"Dude, calm down. I just want the job done safely is all. I don't wanna see anybody get hur-"

"RIGHT! I'm gonna make sure that you go faster!" Sir Handel screamed with rage as he hurried off.

With empty trucks.

Sadly, for Thumper, all the narrow gauge engines seemed to be rushing them, and making things worse for them.

It continued throughout the morning.

Engines raced around the quarry and crowded round Thumper, constantly bombarding him with requests for their trucks to be filled quickly with lots of stone.

"Hurry up please, Thumper! I can't sit around waiting!" Peter Sam called.

"Slate trucks needed right now, Thumper!" Rusty shouted over to them.

"Thumper! You're going too slow!" Rheneas tutted.

Sir Handel and Duncan were the most cross, bashing trucks against each other and the back of Thumper's cab. However, one or two small pieces of stone flew from a truck that they were bashing and hit Thumper's gears.

"I want to go back and have a rest; you're wasting my time!" He snapped.

"Speed up, Thumper! We need this job done now!" Duncan growled.

Thumper was now at their breaking point.

"Ok! That does it! You want me to go fast?! Fine! I will!" And with that, they began to drill faster and faster into the mountainside. Unfortunately, all the pressure that had been put upon Thumper that day and with how fast they were going, caused them to start drilling out of control. The stone getting their gears stuck didn't help either.

"Oh crumbs!" they yelped.

Their drilling arms bounced rapidly against the side of the hill, stone and slate flying off, hitting both Thumper and several buildings. Thumper turned around quickly, their drills going back and forth way too fast. They bumped back and forth on the ground, their big treads crushed the stone and caused some bits of stone to end up getting lodged in their wheels.

Thumper was now racing out of control. They smashed trucks to splinters, knocked tiling off roofs, demolished buildings, and even sent poor Luke flying off the rails.

"AHHHH!" Luke screamed as he fell completely off the rails, landing on his side against a pile of stone.

"HELPPPPP MEEEEEEE!" Thumper cried out in horror.

Merrick looked down at the carnage ensuing and groaned.

"Mr. Percival won't like this…" he sighed before falling back to sleep.

When Mr. Percival arrived at the Blue Mountain Quarry later that morning, he was in complete shock.

Trucks were either completely destroyed or derailed off the tracks, most structures or buildings were crushed, rails were bent and buckled, and stone and slate lay everywhere, blocking most lines.

"I-I…" Mr. Percival stammered; he was at a complete loss for words.

His attention then turned to the still out of control Thumper, his drilling arms rocking them backwards and forwards, he was inching closely towards a terrified Peter Sam.

"Help me!" cried Peter Sam.

Mr. Percival raced towards Thumper as fast as he could. He lept up to their cab, opened the door, and pulled a red lever as hard as he could.

Thumper slowed down to a crawl until their drill arms were just gently poking against Peter Sam's saddle tank.

And with that, they stopped.

"Phew!" Peter Sam let out a sigh of relief.

Mr. Percival stepped out of Thumper's cab and wiped his brow.

"Can someone please explain to me what on Sodor has just happened?!"

"Well..." Thumper replied sadly, "Since there was a very important order for stone and slate today, everyone was rushing me and telling me to hurry up, but I can only work so fast, and I don't want anyone to get hurt… but…" Thumper looked around the quarry and began to cry, tears trickling down his face.

Rheneas puffed up alongside them.

"We really wanted to get this job done quickly, Sir." he said, "That's why we rushed Thumper…"

Mr. Percival sighed.

"All right, listen up everyone!" he called out to the engines. Everyone except Luke gathered round.

"I'm very disappointed in all of you! Yes, I am aware that there is a big order that must be met, and we need to get the job done quickly. But everyone has their own method of working, and Thumper here likes to get the job done safely and with patience. Rushing them about and causing them stress will not get the job done! If you all learned to have a bit of patience and learned to get things done in an orderly fashion, then I'm absolutely sure we wouldn't have a single problem!"

The engines looked down sadly and sighed with shame.

"Sorry Thumper…" said Rheneas.

"Really sorry, Thumper…" said Peter Sam.

Sir Handel and Duncan looked at each other, then at Mr. Percival and then at Thumper.

"I'm sorry, Thumper…" Sir Handel said, "I shouldn't have been so impatient. I just wanted the job done quickly, I didn't think about anyone else but myself…" he looked down with embarrassment.

"I'm sorry too…" Duncan added, "I was very rude to you, and I shouldn't have rushed you..."

The two of them looked at Mr. Percival.

"It was us that started this." explained Duncan.

"We caused Thumper to go haywire by bashing our trucks into them, some bits of stone hit Thumper's gears and caused them to go out of control." Sir Handel added.

Mr. Percival sighed.

"Well, I'm very happy that you all apologised to Thumper, and I'm also happy that you two owned up. However, since you two were the cause of this, you two will be repairing the damage you did, as well as pulling stone and slate trucks for a whole month."

Sir Handel looked as though he was about to object, but he quickly shut himself up, and sadly looked down again.

"Yes, Sir…" Sir Handel and Duncan said in unison.

"Oh, and can someone go and fetch the breakdown crane for poor Luke over there?" Mr. Percival added.

For the next few days, Sir Handel and Duncan pushed trucks of rubble and broken trucks out of the quarry and brought new building parts and trucks in their place. It took a long time to fix the damage that Thumper had caused, and it wore them out but eventually, the job was done.

Everyone agreed that, even when the pressure is on to do an important and big job, everyone must keep calm, be patient and considerate and work together in an orderly manner.

'

They also agreed to be considerate about Thumper, and to not rush them.

Duncan and Sir Handel puffed up alongside Thumper, who was busy drilling the side of a hill again; the two engines were double-heading a line of empty trucks.

"Hello, Thumper!" Duncan called cheerfully, "D'ya think you could fill up our trucks please?"

"Take your time!" Sir Handel added.

"No problem at all, dudes." Thumper replied happily.

Thumper was very happy about finally being able to work at their own pace alongside his narrow gauge friends. And they were also very happy about becoming good friends with Sir Handel and Duncan.

THE END

Thumper is a character created only for merchandise. They only appeared once and never spoke. Oh yes, I forgot to mention. I decided to make Thumper non-binary in my series. Just a cute little idea that I think makes sense since Thumper was never referred to as he or she in Rusty and the Boulder. Their whole bro-y, laid-back persona while a tad odd in my opinion, is rather nice to see and fits well with the story. Bringing back Sir Handel's old personality of grumpy, lazy, doesn't want to work was great too, a real shame it was never utilised more often. In fact, you might see another episode with Sir Handel as the lead in the future.

As always, here's what's coming up in the future:

Scrapyard Stakeout - Reg enjoys working at Cronk's Scrapyard but doesn't enjoy scrapping perfectly good machines or engines. One day, he comes across a scared little tank engine named Nelly, and does his best to hide her from 'Arry and Bert, who have reported a missing scrap engine.

Nelly and BoCo - Having been rescued from scrap, Nelly is sent to work at Wellsworth Yards to do some shunting. However, she gets very scared when she meets BoCo as she has a big fear of diesel engines. Can Edward help her out?

Gordon Goes Foreign - After getting into a heated argument with Flying Scotsman about what London Station is called, Gordon sets off to London to prove that it is named King's Cross.

Tea-Rex - Rex gets rather overconfident when he gets chosen to pull a special dining coach. Although, an angry stray goose manages to bring his ego down.