And here it is: the tornado. I hope that it's a far more imposing and intimidating one than all the "Hollywood"-style ones commonly appearing in pop culture.
Also, for your information, in case you were wondering, Thomas being an 0-6-4 in this story isn't a typo, as I headcanon him here as being a different class than he is in canon.
3:07 PM, Crovan's Gate Works
At long last, Thomas and Maurice arrived with Duck to the Crovan's Gate Works. There, the manager of the works was waiting for him.
"Hello, there. I see you've brought Montague here for repairs. Leave him in that siding over there and Victor will take things from here."
So Thomas and Maurice did as the manager asked, and shunted Duck onto a nearby siding. Wishing the pannier tank well, they went to a water tower to get Thomas topped up on water, before setting off back to Thomas' Branchline.
"Well, that took a while." Maurice noted. "Kinda wish that someone else was available to get that done at this point."
"You do as you must, Maurice." Thomas replied. "So what if it takes time? Helping another engine is still important."
"I'm aware, bud." Maurice responded. "It's not like I don't take the well-being of others seriously. It's just that it's gonna make for some awkward timetables for the other engines."
"I know." Thomas rolled his eyes.
However, the now-quite-isolated storm had now taken the form of a supercell, dropping hailstones on ships in the bay, beginning to rotate in one particular area. Eventually, a wall cloud formed there. And then...
At 3:33 P.M., a man on the island's southwestern coastline 11 miles to the northwest of Brendam saw a peculiar shape form in the sky above. Assuming the form of a rapidly-lowering point, water swirling around it as it lowered over the sandy shores, the shape touched the ground on dry land, quickly moving into the surrounding forest as a full-blown tornado.
Initially, the tornado was small, weak (by tornado standards) and slow-moving, dealing damage only to trees and shrubbery in its path, ripping off branches and stripping off foliage. But it gradually picked up strength, size, and forward speed, and 9 minutes later, at 3:42, the tornado impacted a rural house while its only inhabitant had been away cutting trees. Needless to say, he was not pleased to come back to his house missing its new roof and all its windows. Nor was he pleased to see his new car upside down and its windows shattered.
"Bloody damn it!" The man grumbled in anger. "I just put that new roof on that thing! And those windows! And the car was new too! And now I have to start all the hell over!"
Unfortunately, the next victims of the tornado could only have hoped that their situations could have been as comical. A middle-aged couple had recently bought a rural two-story home, and had been planning to start a new life away from the hustle and bustle of Tidmouth. However, at 3:44, as they were in the house, they were practically caught napping by the tornado (of which the noise had been initially dismissed as just a particularly strong gale), which ripped through the structure with them in it, tearing off the entire second story and some of the walls of the first. One, the man, had merely been injured by flying and falling debris, but the other, the woman, was impaled by a piece of wood through the chest, soon dying as a result, and so becoming the tornado's first fatality. Their cars were both blown into nearby debarked trees and totaled.
And then the tornado, now far larger and stronger than when it first touched down, and also moving far faster, began heading towards the town of Suddery...
3:47 PM
Edward was pulling a light freight train from Brendam back to Wellsworth. Like many other engines on the island, he was growing concerned with regards to the weather. He'd heard that if it was particularly hot and muggy before an approaching storm line, the storms in question had the potential to be incredibly severe and powerful. He was well and truly hoping that the storms that they'd have today wouldn't be too bad. Unfortunately, he was proven wrong in the worst way possible.
As he was a few miles away from Suddery, he saw an alarming sight. Out of the forests to his left came a huge, dark, spinning shape that was rapidly widening to become wider than it was tall, and throwing up a dark cloud of debris as it tore through everything in its path. To his horror, Edward realized that it was heading right for Suddery.
"Oh, glory! If this is the sort of "Tornado" that Katherine mentioned once..." Edward couldn't finish the sentence. Katherine was an engine who now lived on Sodor but was originally from America, and she had once been driven by the famed Casey Jones before the latter's infamous fatal accident in 1900. In 1925, later on in her career on the Illinois Central Railroad, she had witnessed from a distance the destruction of the small railroad town of De Soto by what became known as the Tri-State Tornado. A third of that little town had been wiped off the map, as well as a tenth of its roughly 700 residents. The description of what he was seeing now was very similar to what Katherine had described to him.
And then the monster came to the location where Edward knew the town was. The thing grew ever wider, and the cloud of debris surrounding the beast became larger and larger and larger, as brief blue and white flashes of light came from beneath it and more and more of what appeared to be little black specks from afar swirled in the air around it. Edward knew that those specks were most likely pieces of...everything from the town. Trees, bits of buildings, vehicles, rolling stock...it was all being blown about in the skies as the ghastly thing moved over...no, ripped and tore through Suddery, emitting a loud roar that was like that of a jet engine.
In all of his nearly nine decades of existence, Edward had truly never seen something like this for himself. And it was something that he soon wished that he'd never have to see something like it again, as he finally came upon Suddery after the tornado had left it. The southeastern side of the town had been utterly destroyed. What had used to be part of homes, businesses, factories, and also the Lower Suddery Station...it was all in pieces strewn all over the place. Basically nothing was left standing for a good amount of area. In particular, the various Stationary Caravans that had been in the park to the southwest of the station...those things may as well have vanished into thin air with how particularly badly those were destroyed; Edward couldn't recognize a single one of them as having previously been what they were before that thing had come through. There was so much rubble and debris on the rails that Edward couldn't pass through any further, and he could have sworn that he saw a few mangled bodies and pieces of mangled bodies lying about. This was such a terrible sight that Edward thought that he was in a nightmare, but the gale and then the falling rain reminded him that no, it wasn't a dream, but instead something he really was looking at.
This sight likely wouldn't be leaving his sleep alone any time soon. Now he understood why Katherine looked back upon those memories of what happened in De Soto with so much fear and revulsion.
The tornado had dealt its first large spate of widespread major damage in Lower Suddery. Every single Stationary Caravan in the local Stationary Caravan Park more or less vanished into thin air (thanks to them being the British equivalent of mobile homes and so being quite flimsy), as well as many other homes and houses, and many well-built structures were leveled or even swept away altogether, including the Lower Suddery Station, three public schools, a Tesco Supermarket, several historic buildings (including a bishopric and a few well-built 18th-century homes), and numerous businesses and institutions. The local hospital in the area, while not quite initially "leveled" as other structures were due to its building materials and sheer size, suffered critical damage, with all of its windows as well as many of its interior walls and supports blown out by the extreme winds, and the building collapsing not long after the tornado struck it. The local water tower escaped damage for the most part, but at least two cars were thrown into it, with one denting the side and flying for another quarter-mile, and another being left hanging from the tower by its struts. The Suddery Marina was destroyed beyond any level by any typical sea storm, with the wooden docks ripped away, every single dockside structure being utterly destroyed, the lock of the Marina damaged beyond repair, and many yachts capsized or even hurled into the sky before falling back into the sea, with at least one being smashed against the Lantern Room of the historic Suddery Lighthouse, damaging it badly. A great deal of debris was hurled and wind-rowed into the Maura River Estuary, and numerous additional naval craft were struck and either sunk or thrown. Due to the location in which the damage had occurred, many road vehicles, numerous rolling stock, and many smaller naval vessels would never be recovered.
Around the same time as Edward was witnessing this horror first-hand, Thomas and his crew were crossing the bridge over the Ab River again on their return-trip to the Ffarquhar Branchline. Maurice was looking off to the side when he noticed a large, greyish-brown shape to their left. Then, he realized something upon seeing the brownish-black cloud with little specks swirling around that shape, and it came as a shock.
"Wha...what the hell?! Is that a tornado?! On THIS island?!"
"What?! Where?!" Thomas sounded alarmed at his driver's words, given that Maurice had previously described what tornadoes were to him and how deadly and destructive they could be.
"To your left! Look to your left!"
And Thomas clearly did, because... "I...I see it! I see it!"
"It's huge..." The thing seemed to be wider than it was tall, and the fact that it wasn't moving side-to-side in his view told Maurice that it was coming right at him.
"Maurice! Do we warn the signalman up ahead?" Initially, Maurice didn't answer his engine, shocked by the sight of a phenomenon that he thought he'd left behind in his old home in Northeastern Texas. "Maurice? Maurice! Answer me!"
"Yes...YES!" Maurice finally answered, realizing that lives would be in danger if they didn't give a warning to someone who could stop trains from being in the path of this thing.
So, the two raced off to the nearest signal box, where they went to warn the signalman of the approaching danger, hoping that they could at least save a few lives from this thing.
Meanwhile, the tornado continued its destructive rush across the island, destroying basically everything in its path. Having crossed the estuary not long after hitting Lower Suddery, and soon after mudblasting the southern, coastal branch of the NWR's Main Line while having weakened somewhat, the tornado quickly re-intensified and then came across a small rural community known as Alder Green and utterly leveled several well-built homes as well as many weaker ones, not to mention turning the local funeral home to dust. Vehicles from the community were found up to a mile away, and a great deal of the debris was windrowed in the direction of northeast. After doing such damage, it then took a 60-degree turn to the left and began its destructive dash towards the northern branch of the Main Line.
3:53 PM
"I still don't see why you'd have me abandon my post!" The annoyed signalman grumbled as he pulled a lever to switch Thomas onto a siding two miles east from his signal box, having been reluctantly persuaded to leave it due to the incoming danger after sending the warning to other signal boxes up and down the line and setting all the nearby signals to "danger".
"It's not 'abandoning', it's evacuating!" Thomas replied pointed as he rolled backwards onto the siding. "That monster would blow your signal box to kingdom come with you in it if we didn't do this! You'll thank us soon!" To this, the signalman just grunted a response of 'fine'.
Once Thomas was on the siding, the lever was pulled the other way again, and Maurice set up a battery-powered red danger lamp on the tracks to warn any approaching engines of the danger.
Then, once he did that, Maurice then went to Thomas' cab and pulled out something. Soon, Izzy realized what his fellow crewmate was now carrying.
"Is that...is that a camcorder? What do you need that for, Maurice?"
"Sir Kastrioti would want a good reason as to why we did what we did!" Maurice replied. "In that case, I'mma give him EXACTLY what he wants! You focus on radioin' about this thing movin' through!"
Turning on the handheld advice, Maurice jumped out of the cab and ran to where he'd put the danger lamp, and then steadied the device in the direction that the thing would be coming through and began recording. And 20 seconds into him doing this...
...it happened.
First, only the constant, loud, ominous roar was audible, but then, to the left side of his viewpoint, the cloud above began to seem like they were being sucked down a drain. And then the thing appeared there. It was enormous beyond any of the tornadoes that had ever been pictured or described in the books he read at school, being very wide, wider than it was tall. The roar got louder the more the thing got into view, and louder, and louder, and louder. And the thing then exploded out of the trees with a brownish-black cloud of debris, with ghoulish dark-shaded tendrils of it dancing up and down its outer shape, and with pieces of what had clearly been nearby homes swirling around it as if they were mere dandelion puffs in a breeze. Hurling those as well as entire trees in every direction at a tremendous speed, the thing began to rapidly cross over the northern branch of the NWR Main Line, roaring all the while. Bluish flashes came from powerlines near the rails that were cut, no, ripped apart just as everything else in this thing's path.
As the thing roared over the rails ahead, Maurice could faintly make out what seemed to be goods wagons being blown into the air. Those had been on another siding near the signal box, and them being sent flying like that confirmed that the signal box had been hit as well. Whether the signalman liked it or not, him not abandoning his post would have killed him, given that this thing clearly was more than strong enough to destroy such a box utterly. Regardless, the thing continued its rampage over the rails, eventually fully reaching to the other side of them in just one minute despite its huge size, indicating a high forward speed. As it finally left the tracks, pieces of debris rained down from the skies, some small and some large. Once the tornado was out of view, Maurice ceased recording and ran back to his engine.
"You done yet?" The signalman asked, seeming rather agitated.
"Yeah." Maurice answered. "By the way, looks like your box is toast."
"Damn it! Alright, fine, you win! You saved my life!" The signalman didn't seem too happy that Thomas and his crew were right to have him leave his post with his life.
"Maurice, I've sent the warning over the radio, if you're worried." Izzy interjected.
"Good." After his response to Izzy's statement, Maurice began to wonder and worry about the level of tornado preparedness that the average Sodor citizen had. "In all seriousness...would people know what to do if they knew that somethin' like this was comin' at them? Would they even know this thing was comin' at them? The United Kingdom's got no dedicated tornado warnin's, especially not Sodor. If a town is in the path of this thing, how high would the death toll be?"
The answer to Maurice's questions would come in the next 20 minutes.
After moving past the north branch of the Main Line, the large, powerful, fast-moving tornado rapidly became wrapped up in rain, making it hard to spot for those in its path (who would initially see what seemed to just be a rain shaft at first before realizing otherwise too late). It began to move northward along a relatively busy road that ran alongside the Ab River, with the business of the road being thanks to the town of Peel Godred, which the road ran to and from, and also the fact that it was currently rush our.
Anyone who knows well enough about tornadoes understands that vehicles on the road are death traps in such phenomena. And it was no different here; many vehicles large and small, either driving right into what they thought was just incoming rain, or being enveloped by the fast moving mass due to them not driving fast enough away from it, were thrown hard, often great distances, either far off to the side or high into the sky, killing or severely injuring their occupants.
Then, it began nearing Warrick, a small town of roughly 3,000 situated half-way between Peel Godred and Maron...
4:03 PM
Miranda, commonly nicknamed Mandy, was an electric engine on the Killdane-Peel Godred Electric Branchline, which ran from Killdane to, well, Peel Godred, with a stop at Kirk Machan and a branching stop at Warrick. Miranda in particular was an NWR GG1, the NWR's resized and regauged equivalent of an American class of engine known as the Pennsylvania GG1. Having been built only four years ago to run the Branchline's new passenger train, the Peel Godred Counciliary, Miranda loved the Branchline and working on it, and she loved pulling the new passenger train whenever her twin brother Miles wasn't pulling it.
She wasn't loving the weather today, though.
"Ugh...when will this storm pass?" Miranda muttered to no one in particular as they waited at Warrick Station for the passengers to board her train. It had started raining two or three minutes ago, and she didn't like it one bit.
"Hopefully soon, Mandy." Her driver responded, hearing her muttering. "I understand, I don't like this weather either. But you know what they say about our weather. At least we're not between Maron and Cronk, where a powerful tornado was reported crossing the northern branch of the Main Line there."
"I know. I hope this thing passes soon..."
However, as the passengers finished boarding the train and the guard was just about to give the go ahead, Miranda, her driver, and everyone at the station heard what sounded like a rumbling noise over the rain and the purr of her electric motors. At first, everyone dismissed it as mere thunder, and the guard gave the go-ahead for Miranda to depart. But then, right as Miranda was leaving the station, the power suddenly went out, causing the train to come to a stop with its rear coach just outside the station. And then, above the confusion of those at the station and those in the train, the rumble got louder. And louder. And louder. Soon, the wind changed direction and began to pick up, and the rumble gradually became a roar. A roar that sounded like a cross between a jet engine's and a waterfall's.
"D-Driver, wha-what's happening?!" Miranda spluttered, having never heard something like this before.
"I...I don't know!" Her driver, just as confused, didn't know where the roar and the wind came from either.
And then, it happened. The roar kept getting louder and louder until it was impossible to hear anything else, and the wind picked up so much speed that it felt like she was going backwards at record speed despite the fact that she wasn't moving, and fearing the worst, she shut her eyes tight. Suddenly, she felt an extremely powerful WALL of wind hit her right side, and felt the couplings between her and the coaches snap. The wind was nothing like she'd ever felt in her short life, and before she knew it, she felt herself get tipped over and fall on her left side on the earthen embankment, the wind howling and blasting against her exposed bogies. Mud and debris were sprayed all over her, and she felt the wind then blast squarely against her body from behind, shattering all her windows in what was her rear cab, and then against her roof and front cab, shattering most of the windows there as well.
By the time the wind died down and the roar started to die down with it, Miranda was badly battered and damaged. She didn't know what had happened to her coaches until she heard the wailing and screaming coming from what had to have been to her left...or, given that she was on her side, effectively above her, and she couldn't hear her driver, which meant that he was either dead or out cold.
"...someone...help..." Miranda moaned pitifully, in pain and horrified to hear the sounds of agony from what had been her passenger train.
No building in Warrick escaped damage, and most homes and structures were destroyed to some extent, with many, even well-built ones, being completely leveled, including a Sainsbury's Supermarket, a fair-sized manufactory plant for work clothes, a church, a car dealership, and the town hall. In some cases, even the foundations of well-built homes were badly damaged, with a few being ripped up altogether and hurled several yards. The station that Miranda had attempted to leave, while not leveled due to it being on the outer edge of the tornado's winds, was still destroyed, with it's roof, windows, and most of its walls ripped away. The coaches of the passenger train stopped in Warrick had been blasted with winds consistent with those from the Eyewall of Hurricane Allen in 1980 at their most intense, and thrown more than 50 yards from the rails by the winds, with some dead, and others injured (some badly on the latter). Debris was blown into the river, and again, some vehicles would never be recovered.
After its havoc in Warrick, the Tornado advanced further along the road, killing and injuring more motorists caught up in it and turning electric poles into giant javelins, and only narrowly missing the town of Kirk Machan, before coming across its final target; the city of Peel Godred.
4:10 PM
Miles was pulling up to Peel Godred's East Station 10 minutes late to load passengers to begin his afternoon run to Killdane with a passenger train that wasn't the Peel Godred Counciliary...though he didn't mind that. What he was minding right now was the weather, which was horrendous, with rain falling over him and his coaches.
"Oh for...this stupid weather..." Miles grumbled as he heard what he thought was thunder.
"Sorry, mate, we'll have to run this train regardless." His driver reminded him.
"I know...but still...no wonder people joke about it so often. I'd rather it not try and joke back like this..."
Then, Miles and his driver realized that the 'thunder' wasn't going away. Instead, it sounded constant, and it felt like it was getting louder, and louder, and louder.
"Driver, what is that noise?" Miles asked his equally confused driver.
"No bloody idea. Sounds like thunder, but it's not going away." Then, his driver looked ahead along the rails heading out of the city, and saw unevenly-shaped-and-sized objects in the air. "What are those things ahead?"
Soon, his question was answered. Up to his right, a huge brownish mass seemed to suddenly appear out of the rain and start rushing at the city from the south. Whether it was coming straight at him, Miles didn't know. But the rumble, now a roar, got louder and louder as the mass came closer.
"Wha...what is that thing?!" Miles' question was soon answered as it veered off to his right. The roar got so loud as to a ridiculous point, and then he felt the electricity in the wires that his pantographs were connected to give out, and then objects other than, well, rain began falling on him as the wind picked up. Wood splinters. Bits of metal. Pieces of cladding. Clods of mud and dirt. Those still on the station platform started panicking as they saw bits and pieces of everything get ripped up and become airborne beyond the buildings on the other side of the rails. Roofs. Cars. Whole homes. Even whole business. And even rolling stock.
The latter of which was proven when a flung well-wagon hit one of the nearby buildings, causing even more panic among those at the station. Miles hoped that he wasn't next to get smashed as the winds around him gusted to a strong gale.
The loud roaring and the blowing wind persisted like this for what felt like hours (though it was likely just a minute or so in reality). Then, the winds started to die down, and the roar got quieter and more distant. And then, as soon as whatever had hit the city came, it went.
Once the noise and the wind died down, the panicking resumed, with many of those at the station frantically worrying about the status of their homes, their friends, their loved ones.
"Well...if this is the weather joking back at us, I suppose whatever the hell just came through was the punchline." The driver muttered.
"And not a funny one at all." Miles agreed, worrying about his fellow engines who had been in the sheds on the city's western half, and also about his sister, who as far as he knew, was still out there down south.
Peel Godred had taken a direct hit to its center. Many homes, businesses, and institutions were struck and destroyed, including the City Hall, a museum, four public schools, two supermarkets, a hospital, three churches, and notably a well-built engine shed for the local Branchline, with all five engines within being badly damaged (three beyond repair). Debris from the city rained down for miles, cars and rolling stock were thrown in every direction, and a water tower was blown over, with its contents disappearing into the great whirlwind.
After this destruction, the tornado inflicted its last bit of violent damage at the site of the Peel Godred Aluminum Works, before finally starting to dissipate, doing so fully at 4:13, after having carved a roughly 40 mile path of destruction in 40 minutes.
Now, the island's residents were left to realize what had just happened and how lucky many of them had been. As well as how unlucky many others had been. If the usual rainstorm was the weather was telling standard jokes, then what happened was clearly "The Aristocrats".
And it wasn't even the last "joke" of the day, for another large and powerful tornado had formed on the island's southern coast and was heading right for Rolf's Castle...
So, it may take a while for me to put the next chapter up, just a warning.
