Grateful acknowledgments to these Tumblr pals: shinygoku and houseboatisland for the beta read, damnea for their "engine insults" post, and angryskarloey for trying to drill some mechanical knowledge into my brain… and inadvertently inspiring the cheeky parts of the Sharpies' songs.

6: Seagulls

It only took about ten minutes after the day's schedule had been posted for 32 to make some excuse about "helping" shunt an extra coach to Coppernob's platform.

Either it were all too obvious that Coppernob's mood had changed from the terrorising fault-finding of the day before… or else the Seagulls' curiosity had outstripped their caution.

"How can they not tell which of us will pull the train?" demanded 32. "The schedule's posted, isn't it? So it must list an engine and crew."

"The crew are Rook and Webb," said Coppernob, with tired patience. He had elected to field this inquiry to spare Poppet, who on inspection looked rather tired that morning. He was only now uncomfortably aware that he'd been sending her back and forth an awful lot, these past few weeks.

Besides, there might be an opportunity here. If only he could see whether Stationmaster was in his office or lurking about behind him! If one of the 'Gulls was to take this train, they needed to somehow be apprised of the situation lest they create problems.

"Oh, they're sending relief-men… that makes sense, I suppose… but the engine?"

"It doesn't say."

"But it must," said 32, with all the self-assurance of his fifteen years… which was surely enough to learn every last trick the world had to throw at an engine.

"It simply reads three question marks—"

"Three?" squeaked the Seagull, eyes wide with the undreamed-of possibilities. "No one suspected that! How long is this train, Nobby?"

"Don't be absurd! It doesn't mean three of you are wanted at once."

"Then why is it not simply one question mark?"

"It is a convention." Coppernob gave 32 a warning look that it would be inadvisable for the young engine to press the point further, not if he wanted to live to see tea-time.

32 was not much cowed. As first in his class, he had clearly been sent over that morning by the rest of his wary clan to sound out whether the new day might find old Nobby more approachable. Coppernob had put up a good front but the truth was that the 'Gulls were pretty good at intuiting moods—when they actually stopped to pay any mind—and the doyen had only beamed when Coppernob had growled a reluctant acknowledgment of 32's existence.

"The marking," Coppernob continued, arch, "simply indicates that the engine is yet to be determined. They only came to terms with the Sodor railway yesterday, you know. As it involves a shed transfer, they likely need approval from the Superintendent."

32 gasped. "Of the Line?"

"No, the District Superintendent of Paddle Steamers."

"Right…" mused the 32, taking the sarcasm in stride. But 126 (who, having an train due south in ten minutes, had some actual reason to be there) groaned.

"Oh, rats," 126 complained. "That's not fair! He favors your lot."

32 winked at Coppernob even when he replied with due solemnity. "We're economical."

"Oi! Me and mine don't have the raging appetites of those new 'Gulls. But everyone's always overlooked us in favor of you Thirties, and once they finally turn their attention elsewhere it will be to the new lot. It's really been most unjust, forever being in your shadow."

"Whose shadow?" 32 now sounded plaintive himself. "You mean 36's shadow—and you're not the only one. You needn't talk like this is your last chance to do something special. You're young yet. There hasn't been anything grand going on since the fighting started, and we'll be quite worn-out and forgotten by the time it's over."

The sigh he gave could have probably powered the entirety of Vickers' munitions factory for a turn or two. Certainly it fogged up Coppernob's glass, and from behind it the old engine rolled his eyes.

"Good heavens… it's a mixed train to a backwater foreign line, nothing more. And after today we'll likely send plenty more. You needn't talk as though if you miss this chance it's the end of the world."

"But today is the first," 126 explained, with great emphasis. As if Coppernob were fresh from the shop, and none too bright by nature, either.

"They're opening the bridge to rail traffic," chimed in 32. "Wartime or not, the No-Where directors will at least have a ribbon, and champagne—all that sort of thing."

Coppernob reviewed everything he had heard or seen of the No-Where Railway and its catch-as-catch-can proceedings so far, and blinked slowly.

And then he chose to say nothing. He had after all been wondering how he was to impress upon the flighty 'Gulls the seriousness of the job. With Smotes hovering around on high alert, he had not been able to think of anything he could say that was cryptic enough to avoid detection, yet able to convey the stakes of the matter.

If this was what they had in mind, their expectations were unrealistic beyond belief—given what the stout engineer had said, it seemed that it would take a good stroke of luck for the bridge to remain in working order long enough for the train to cross it.

But, the longer they were left with their glamorous illusions, the better a humour the chosen engine would be when it came time to organise their contraband on the train from right under Stationmaster's nose.

"Clear out, 32," Coppernob said mildly, closing his eyes. "They'll be needing this track, and you're smack dab in the middle of it."

It was true enough that there was a special buzz of activity around Barrow Central that morning. Even the electric trams noticed that something was about, and they peered on the morning's odd proceedings with evident bemusement. The Sharpies couldn't even properly grumble due to the sheer suspense of the thing, and of course the Seagulls were all but haunting the station. Any of them with three quarters of an hour to spare anywhere within ten miles of Barrow homed in, nosing about for news. Stationmaster only tolerated about two such interruptions before barring all of them from the station with a roar of rage, and soon there was a lump growing in the yard. Rather, however, then stationing themselves near shelter, water, or coal, the flock congregated on some of the most inconvenient sidings in the yard, within earshot of the sheds and right at the border of Stationmaster's off-limits territory. It was the perfect position to wait for news, until one or the other was driven off to their next turn of duty, while sooner or later another arrived in a great rush… and none of them cared one whit about the nuisance they were making of themselves to the shunters.

The shunters had cause enough to grumble. Poppet—sizzling with secrets—had ordered that three sidings be reserved for the arrangement of the No-Where train, and they could not fathom why. They complained mightily, and the engines they had to shoo (and sometimes to bodily shunt) from their resting places objected too, but Poppet took no notice.

"Mental," muttered her sister, the most recent 24. "She's bin dossin with owd Coppernob for too long and she's garn mental …"

Amid the thick comings-and-goings of the morning commute and the workmen's trains, number 70 of the Coniston branch wheezed in, with a train twice its usual length. Poppet detached the second half almost at once and bore away three wheeled coaches who were asking querulous, confused questions about whether their rumoured destination was true. 70 was too puffed to say a word, but a weary wink at Coppernob suggested with great eloquence that the coaches had been arguing about their orders all morning and that the old passenger tank had been over it before they'd even reached Haverthwaite.

Coppernob got the distinct impression that the choice of branch line coaches to offload to No-Where had been left to the Coniston and Lakeside management, who had accordingly taken the opportunity to rid themselves of their greatest pains in the bunker.

For all the engines' little worries and preoccupations, the atmosphere among people at the station was very different. It started with just a nod of significance here, a twisting of the lips there, the odd exchanged wink as those who were in the know found out their fellow conspirators. It turned out to be a goodish number. Poppet's crew, of course, had to know; so did the master of the sheds, and his most trusted assistant, and therefore his most trusted assistant; so too did the guard for the No-Where train have to be apprised, midway through the afternoon; so did any number of men associated with the steelworks. So, it seemed, did a lady—a well-dressed woman, with a satchel emblazoned with the Red Cross; clearly a lady of some status, but going about her war work. Like the rest, her face crinkled into a particular knowing smile as she passed Coppernob's glass house. Still in the dark about the distraction planned by Poppet and the yardmaster, he had no idea where she fit in.

He kept a wary eye on Mr Smotes. The stationmaster seemed his usual level of preoccupied, attending to special parcels, checking in on the clerks unseen but hard at work in his office, perhaps smoking a bit oftener than his wont. He only looked over at Coppernob once, indicating with some irritation the flock of Seagulls. Coppernob pretended not to notice the stationmaster's demand that he do something about the situation. They didn't annoy him.

Well, they did; but if they irritated the stationmaster more than he was well reconciled to their presence.

Yesterday's eagerness to please had vanished like mist in the sun. The 'Gulls had been so well-behaved the past several weeks, given everyone's bid to be chosen for the transfer. Now, their stock of self-control depleted, they had given themselves over completely to a long-overdue session of idleness, gossip… and preening. Their self-satisfied assurance that no one could help looking at them was very irritating—and it was even more so because they were right. Passengers would point or wave on their way out; the local contractor's lorry stared at the sudden influx of strange engines looming and peering over the brick wall between them and his street; the electric trams looked on with wide eyes the whole while they were at station; the railwaymen scowled whenever the giddy 'Gulls forgot themselves and laughed too loudly.

Their sheer lordliness grated on an engine's nerves—but Coppernob felt that, in all fairness, you couldn't call this disruptive exactly. They could have been a great deal more obnoxious. They could have really put their frames into it, like the times of yore when off-duty Sharpies had congregated in the same sunny spot for racuous choral renditions of "Taen Gun-a-Gun" (complete with cursewords) and "The Dawlish Down" (including the notorious fourth verse about the steam donkey and the rusty winch). Or they could have been as troublesome as the days even before the first Sharpies, when Coppernob and the rest of the old crowd would take it as a matter of honor to whistle shrilly and hiss steam, in a collective effort of harassment, whenever they were at Carnforth and an L.N.W.R. engine was halted at the signal outside their yard…

Those days were long gone, and even the memory was fast vanishing. What little remained of that dwindling old crowd could not often look upon the Seagulls without a bitterness in the boiler. It had been their much-ballyhooed arrival that had spelled the end for so many others, and directly led to the first wave of engine scrapping the F.R. had ever seen…

Coppernob sometimes felt that hollowed-out old hurt when he looked upon them, too. But the condemnation of his friends had been a human decision, and Coppernob had learned long before how little use there was in marking your fellow engines as the enemy. Even though it would be a fine thing, if they were just a little more aware of how much their presence had changed… what they had swept away…

But they weren't. And he couldn't hate them for it. If he had ever hated them, it had been when he was first installed at the station, and they had always crept in, unnaturally silent and decorous, calling him "sir" and stiltedly bidding him good afternoon, and all the while making a poor show of hiding their dismay and pity at the sight of him.

That had been about six months.

After that, they all went back to being themselves: forever loud and laughing and chattering and squabbling. They were clannish—once whichever of them was finally chosen for the tran over-the-bridge, the rest could be counted upon to rejoice, and to close ranks against outsiders—but—until that point! (Lady preserve them all.) Sometimes people asked why their railway's 4-4-0s had that nickname, and the men weren't able to give a coherent answer. Coppernob knew. It had begun with the engines, who had coined the name within two weeks of the first arrivals. If there was a scrap of glory to be found, you could count on that whole flock descending and fighting each other for it, all with the most noisome hoots and squawking!

Coppernob had explained this once to their publicity director… who had coughed, and said that they were going to keep that to themselves.

There were, as of just the past year or two, now four "sets" of 'Gulls. The new chief engineer, in all his madness, kept making them! (Coppernob had never liked the look of that man.) The fourth set had just been made right before the war; no engine comes out of the shop with any sense, and these were quickly stuffed with admiration and taught vanity, to boot. The third set had accordingly been displaced from the most important duties, and should have had their wheels trimmed by the experience, but so far it seemed to have humbled them not . The second set was in their late teens, a perfectly mature age for an engine, yet had only two or three whits of sense between them to show for it. The first set was now twenty-five years of age (a truly appalling number whenever Coppernob, who could remember the great fuss when they first arrived, reckoned it out)—and they had been there for the end of Sir James's era, too! And it shewed in those first four, a little, but all the rest had been designed to be nothing but engines of pleasure and prestige. Even the war had scarcely impacted them. For the most part, they kept their old timetables, and were a bit too gleeful whenever they were given a "hot" train, when the War Office had stuffed powder and explosives in a luggage compartment. Coppernob had blanched the first time he'd seen an ordinary weekday express loaded so. 129 had beamed to beat the band. "Take it steady, son." "Why? The whole point is they want them sent fast!" And 129 had winked.

They were all pert that way. Great charmers; could talk their way out of—well, not anything—even in this soft modern era, management weren't such fools as that. But the 'Gulls still avoided well-deserved censure a little too often. Even Coppernob, who knew, who knew this about them, somehow was still not fully immune to their nonsense. He'd have one or the other or a whole set of them marked for reprimand, he'd have it ready and rehearsed for when they were due, and they would puff in cheerfully, putting on a show of mild embarrassment leavened by dozens of explanations as to why they could not be blamed. "You see, Nobby, it was like this… "

And, their faces angelic and innocent, they would proceed to "exonerate" themselves by telling the most shameless narratives, not one detail of which mitigated their foolishness. Yet, somehow, it still worked. By the time one of them was done casting his spell, his victim might well have the hazy idea that he ought to apologise. Even the wilest Sharpies sometimes had to give up and own that, even for them, there was no outwitting engines who just somehow smiled trouble away.

For today, Coppernob trusted that that their sangfroid would last until whichever-of-them had seen the Brighton tank was squirrelled safely away in some obscure yard on nowhere isle.

When the transfer order finally came in, the flock present in the yard consisted of 122 (more or less keeping order, as the only elder), 33, 34, and 35 (from the second set—there were more of them than any other type of 'Gull, and you could not in those days go anywhere along the main line without tripping over a few of them), 128 (from the third set, with their absurdly large six-foot-six drivers), and 131 (by far the youngest there), with an undaunted 15 in their midst as sole representative of the 'Sharpies,' shamelessly curious.

Coppernob did not overhear more than a few chance words or exclamations, himself. But he was aware, a little after midday, that something was going on over in the yard, and he wound up watching pretty sharply.

It would turn out to be quite a significant happening, one that shook the clan that had replaced the original Furness engines to their fireboxes. And so, in the end, Coppernob heard so much about what had been said (and not said) during that half-hour that over time it felt as if he had indeed heard it all himself.

The phone rang at five to twelve, and a leisurely forty minutes later (she had plenty of other business to attend to!) Poppet bustled over, rather glad to know that she could at last make a start on clearing out the pests. "Oy, you lot! Word's come in."

The congregation of engines affected a certain nonchalance, as if they could thereby erase the memory of how much eagerness they had shewn over the course of the past month.

"Oh?" said old 122, with a grand indifference.

"I haven't seen the foreman come out," observed the Sharpie, throwing a glance at his small office building beneath the signalbox that controlled access in and out of the yard.

"How would you know, anyway?" Big new 131 put on his lordliest air.

This was not even the full extent of the scoffing—but it would take more than that to cow Poppet. "Bully for Foreman! But Mr Smotes knows, and he's told it me."

"And he should know, should he?"

" Yes, he heard it from Superintendent directly. Honestly, you tender engines! A solid month you pester the steam out of me for news, and then once I have it you don't want it? Fine then!" She began to move her wheels.

That changed their tune!

"Wait, Pilot, wait!" "Don't be so touchy, there's a good lass." "If you won't tell the 'Gulls, at least whisper it to me," added 15, with a wink.

That made her grin, even if she tried to conceal it by wrinkling her nose. "Oh, very well. I s'pose I must; I'm to pass on orders for the engine tonight to report here at 18 hours, ready for inspection. Your men are to be put up over-the-bridge at the No-Where Railway's digs; they have crews for you over there—"

"WHO? "

"Just tell us, Pilot!"

"Ah, right…" She began to chunter away, throwing the long-awaited intelligence behind her with a killing casualness. "It's 34! Now, some of us have work to do, good-bye."

"Hurrah!" shouted 34, thoroughly surprised. Albeit a Seagull and therefore built to the purple, he was within his clan the sort of engine who was never singled out for anything special, and he whistled celebration.

But a hush had fallen over his fellow 'Gulls, their brows furrowing as they absorbed this news. And 15 laughed loudly.

"Rude!" cried 35.

"Shut your face," snapped 128, in the same moment… while 34 looked on in some confusion.

"Shan't, then," chuckled the Sharpie. "Oh, if it isn't a grand joke—everyone's had to listen to you 'Gulls snip and snipe at each other for a month, each trying to outboast the other, all you lot scrambling to take on extra work to prove yourselves to Management, and in the end," he added, more loudly, for the Seagulls were scolding and hissing him, to little avail, "in the end, after all that—it's a bad job! "

"Get on with you!" retorted 34. "What are you on about. No, really"—fighting to drown out 15, who was still sniggering—"get on, then; you're not wanted here!"

15 grinned as he surveyed the rest of them, whose faces had hardened similarly. "Fair enough. Driver's back, anyway. And I 'm far too busy to waste daylight idling about the yard."

"Fifteen, you're heading to the fitters," said 122, witheringly.

The Sharpie was unaffected, and whistled in almost friendly fashion."So long, 'Gulls—'tis a hard blow, but buck up—you must be used to that sort of thing by now!"

"Of all the nerve!" huffed 34, as 15 sauntered out of the yard. "So that's the story they're going to try to tell themselves, is it?"

But, rather pile on all their exclamations in the usual way, his fellow 'Gulls were profoundly quiet.

"Never mind, 34," said 35, after a long moment, registering his brother's expression, and realizing that something must be said. "No useful job is a bad one."

"Right." 122 confirmed the younger engine's lead without enthusiasm. "And it ought to be very interesting, seeing their outfit over there."

No one else chimed in, and the effort would have fallen rather flat… even if 33, the third 'Larger' 'Gull, had kept his mouth closed.

Which he didn't.

"He's not wrong, though," he mused aloud. "Management must not think much of the thing, after all…"

34 flushed bright red. "What rubbish! All of us wanted the assignment, until ten minutes ago. You're just jealous!"

35 glared at 33, but there was now little help but to have it out. "We got rather ahead of ourselves, this time… be reasonable, 34; you must see it's true, and everyone else will see it too. If it were any sort of honor, they should have sent 36, or one of the third set, or…"

"... or anyone but you," said 131.

There was a grumbling mutter against the new-minted idiot who didn't know how to choose his words… but no outrage. 34 looked like he'd been slammed smokebox-first by a runaway train.

"Hold your tongue, 131!" scolded 122.

"I'd never say it outside the family," the new engine objected. "I didn't mean any harm by it."

"Then don't talk about things that happened ages before you were ever drawn or thought of!" cried 34, voice cracking.

"Calm down, brother," said 33, "none of us blame you, nor will let anyone else say a word against you. But you are the most unreliable at raising steam—that's just a fact."

So vociferously had the 'Gulls denied this fact to outsiders that, it appeared, this was all news to the unfortunate 34.

"That was sorted out long ago!" he protested, voice still alarmingly high. "By the time 124 and 125 came, I was able to work quite steadily!"

"It was a big improvement," said 122 cautiously. "But you still have those bad days, you know…"

"We all fall ill sometimes!" 34 was flushed in the face, and everyone's gentle hisses did little to quiet him. "I've helped cover trains for many of you on days you can't keep up steam, without keeping count nor casting it up to you later! Sometimes it just happens!"

"And it still happens to you more than anyone else," said 33, this time more firmly. "Don't make a scene, 34."

34 took in each of their expressions in turn, and his face fell into a gloomy pout. "Does it matter if I do?..."

They were all too relieved to have avoided a "scene" and a disgrace before the other engines to dare address 34 further. The silence dragged on quite an interminable time, before 33's crew appeared to ready him for a "hot" commute to Carnforth.

34 irritably insisted on taking it off his buffers, and no one bothered to argue with him for very long.

"Oh, dear," said 33, after 34 had fussed away with his crew.

"You clanking little shed-stirrer," 128 snapped to 131.

This didn't feel like a normal quarrel; it had been relatively mild, but somehow there was now a crack in the foundations of their world. Indeed they had always made their own world and it had been airtight until that moment. They would brazen out the coming mockery, they would soothe 34's feelings, yet they were uneasily aware that things would not quite be the same again.

"Never mind," said 122, affecting a calm that perhaps he didn't feel. Then again letting 33 and 131 take the lead had not proved very wise. He let off steam with a sigh. "Just let it rest from here… least said, soonest mended, Driver always says."

Next chapter will conclude the "Thomas rescue" arc! Check in next time for... "Stationmaster's Plan."

*dramatic chords*