Alright, this should be the final chapter for this story, at least for now.
I consider this a sort of "In Media Res"/"Pilot" work that precedes a fic that I'm going to write on here named "From The Cabs", which is basically about the engines and those working with them. It's mainly going to be set in the second half of the 1980s, but also includes stories and chapters set in much earlier times as well (mainly to flesh out the fic's history and lore, as well as showcase the development of the various characters and also various events involving them). It's admittedly one that is at least partially inspired by some other fanfic writers on this site, but regardless, I hope I'll do well on it.
Anyways, enjoy the chapter if you can. I've also decided to throw in a second tornado, as violent tornadoes basically always happen as part of tornado outbreaks, and I've added a little lead in for that from the end of the previous chapter in an edit to that chapter.
At 4:12 P.M., a family of five was packing up after their attempt to camp out on a bit of coastline 8 miles to the west-southwest of Rolf's Castle was ruined by the weather. As they did so, the father noticed something in the low-hanging clouds that was lowering further still, and seemed to begin going all the way to the ground. Then, he saw a cloud of dust swirling around under that something, which then fully manifested itself on the ground as it began tearing along to their north.
Though initially thin and with a ropy appearance, and compared to the initial slow start of its western cousin, the tornado, as it now was, was powerful and fast-moving from the start, and soon and quickly grew in size as it tore its way through the coastal countryside at a tremendous rate, an average forward speed of over 65 miles per hour, exceeding that of the average limit on a rural American Highway at the time. Violent from the get-go, as some would say, the tornado became a hundred yards wide. Then two hundred yards wide. Then three hundred yards wide. And then four hundred yards wide as it, at 4:14, destroyed its first structure, a large, historic, three story coastal Country House known as Marklin Manor, ripping off its top two stories and tearing away the outer walls on most of the first story, leaving only a few interior walls standing, and scattering what had been all of the building's contents over a wide area as it roared through a nearby forest, erasing the dense thicket and leaving fallen, debarked, defoliated, and uprooted trees and timbers behind. Five hundred yards wide. Six hundred yards wide. Seven hundred yards wide. Eight hundred yards wide. And then nine hundred yards wide, or just over half a mile wide, an impressive size for any tornado, as it bore down on the coastal community of Enterprise, a suburb of Kirk Ronan and a town of about two thousand.
Unlike its western cousin, the tornado was not wrapped up in rain, and so its swirling, reddish-brownish form was relatively easy to spot against the greyish-green storm clouds above and around it. However, this did the inhabitants of Enterprise no good, for the tornado's large size, coupled with the fact that it was rushing at the town at such a high rate of speed, meant that by the time most of them DID see it, it was far too late, giving credence to the old Native Tornado Myth from the other side of the Atlantic about the "Dead Man Walking".
And so, at 4:18, and with an unholy level of violence, the tornado ripped and tore into the town, obliterating homes and businesses left and right and frequently leaving behind bare slabs for foundations as it carved a bloody, debris-studded path right through the center of Enterprise. The town hall was destroyed, as well as the local police station, both fire stations, three local medical centers, and more than a hundred houses and businesses. More than two hundred other structures were left damaged to varying degrees as the tornado roared its way out of town towards the next one in its path: Rolf's Castle.
4:19 P.M.
Sally the GER S69 sighed as she waited with a light goods train at a red signal just a mile to the east of Rolf's Castle. While she loved working on the NWR, having done so since being bought from the LNER during the days of the Second World War, she, like many other engines, was miserable thanks to the weather. All gloomy and stormy...she hated days like this. She hated them a great deal. Especially given that she had to work through them.
"Ugh...days like this are always the worst ones." She muttered to no one in particular. "I'll be glad when I finish the last train for today. My shed's waiting for me."
"Oh, I understand, old girl." Her driver tried to be comforting. "Don't worry, our last train for the day will come soon. Then, once we finish that up, we can hang up our boots and wheels for the day."
"That can't come soon enough." Sally agreed.
The signal turned green, and Sally started off, but she felt like at least one of the trucks was dragging particularly hard and was giving the impression of making the train heavier than it should have been.
"Driver, stop!" Sally got her driver's attention. "Something's wrong with one of the trucks!"
Quickly, they came to a stop, with the brake van at the back having only barely gone past the signal.
"What's wrong?" Her driver asked her. "Did something feel off?"
"At least one truck feels like it's dragging hard." Sally answered. "I think it's in the middle or towards the back!"
So, her driver and fireman, along with her guard from the brake van, got out and began inspecting the trucks and vans to see what was the matter. Sally sighed at this.
"Oh...today just has to get worse doesn't it?" She grumbled to herself. But as she waited for her crew to inspect the train, something would happen that would make the four of them very glad that this inconvenience had popped up.
For the past two or three minutes, Sally had noticed something a particularly dark shade of grey start to rise up over the town to her left. She'd dismissed such a sight, believing that the gloomy weather combined with her matching mood was just making her see things in the clouds. However, that something persisted in her field of vision, and it had changed color from dark grey to a reddish-brown, and what's more, she was presently starting to hear a peculiar noise that sounded like the distant waves on a seashore. While Rolf's Castle was a town near the coast, it was a few miles inland, too far for that to be the source of the sound, which had lead her to initially think that it was thunder (even though she hadn't seen any lightning flashes yet). But then "thunder" persisted and was constant, and it was steadily growing louder, soon sounding more like either a waterfall, a rocket's thrusters, or some combination of both. Then, she realized that the reddish-brown object was much larger and closer in her field of view than it had been before, and now seemed to be rapidly growing to take up more and more of her field of view, and she could clearly see that it seemed to be spinning counter-clockwise.
This was when she realized two things. One, that whatever this thing was, it was very likely to be the source of what was rapidly becoming a constant, ever-louder roar. And Two, that it was very likely headed right for her, and fast.
On top of that, the wind was picking up, and she was now starting to see black specks and dots flying about around the thing. And she then saw brief but bright blue flashes of light that clearly wasn't lightning, but came from transformers on power lines that were being snapped by this thing. The "specks and dots" revealed themselves to be pieces of structures that the thing had torn apart and were now getting blown about in the cloud of debris surrounding the thing, and she could have sworn she saw the thing ripping an entire house into the sky before disintegrating it as it got ever closer.
"Oh no...that thing is headed for me, isn't it?" Sally couldn't do anything to get out of this thing's way. Her crew wasn't in her cab, and one of her trucks had jammed, so all she could do was hope that it turned at the last minute and missed her.
Which, by some miracle, it did. Indeed, as it was coming right at her, the thing suddenly swerved to her right, beginning to rapidly move left-to-right in her view, and before she knew it, the thing was blowing by right in front of her, showering her with tiny bits of debris, and flattening yet more houses as it did so.
After it had left, she was in shock for a full minute as she tried to comprehend what just happened.
"Uh, Sally, you there?" Her driver's voice finally snapped her to attention.
"Huh? Uh, yeah, yeah, I'm there."
"We did sort out the issue...one of the trucks' brakes had slipped on. Though it seems we won't be going anywhere because the tracks up ahead are likely either blocked or damaged by whatever the bloody hell THAT thing was."
Sally sighed. She didn't know her day could get worse, but here she was. Now, she couldn't get to where she needed to go, and the town beside her looked to be a huge mess.
At 4:20, the tornado, fresh from its destruction of Enterprise, ripped into the town of Rolf's Castle from the southwest side, tearing out the town's heart as it roared right through the center. Its violent, raging core a constant blizzard of debris, the tornado practically pulped many of the homes and businesses it struck like fruit in a blender, and ripped roofs and walls off of those that it didn't utterly destroy. Vehicles were either flung or shredded, with one lorry forcibly embedded into what had been asphalt and at least two buses torn completely off their chasses. The town hall, just as in Enterprise, was practically annihilated, as well as two local churches, the hospital, two nursing homes, the local police and fire stations, and a supermarket. In all, nearly three hundred homes, businesses, and institutions were destroyed, with another six hundred suffering other, varying degrees of damage, ranging from lightly so to beyond repair. While the tornado missed the town's eponymous castle, everything to the northwest of that castle was now in a great state of calamity.
As the tornado ripped through Rolf's Castle, it took a northward turn, missing a freight train pulled by the NWR's #51 Sarah, but now headed right for the town of Kellsthorpe. Kellsthorpe fared little better than Enterprise or Rolf's Castle, as like with those towns, its citizens had no idea that something so powerful and deadly was coming right for them, so when the dead man came walking at 4:27, the town's residents were sitting ducks, with the tornado, now a mile wide and almost wider than the town itself, blending, pulping, and churning its way through hundreds of structures and turning much of the town into a giant pile of wind-rowed rubble, with only those homes and businesses at the town's northwestern and southeastern edges avoiding utter destruction or heavy damage.
But the tornado was far from done. Six miles to the east of Kellsthorpe lay one of the largest cities on Sodor, and one of the North Western Railway's most important towns.
Crovan's Gate, home of the NWR's Crovan's Gate Works.
After it had gone through Kellsthorpe, the tornado took an abrupt right turn and began heading for what would be the largest city it would impact...
4:33 P.M.
While he didn't know why, Victor had felt all day that something was off about the weather. The works pilot had expected a typical rainstorm or windstorm, but the weather had been oddly hot and sunny most of the day. He'd heard the phrase "calm before the storm" many times ever since he'd come to Sodor from Cuba, but this was more like "humid heat before the storm". It was also supposed to be Halloween today. Why it was so hot and humid in a place of this latitude at this time of year, he didn't know. He felt like he was back in Cuba almost, it was so hot and humid. But it was so strange, since he now live and worked in a location of a different country, and a location that was supposed to be much cooler in comparison-temperature wise. Now the storm clouds finally seemed to be rolling in, and he had no idea what to expect until...
He was waiting for his driver and fireman to come back from a break, having shunted Duck into the works to be repaired about an hour and a half ago, when he suddenly saw what he saw. To his southwest, emphasis on west, there was a very large shape, a shadow, wider than it was tall, of a shade of color somewhere between bluish-indigo and black, that seemed to be getting larger and larger, and also seemed to be...spinning?
"What is that?" Victor asked himself as he stared at the shadow, having no idea what it was. Then, he heard a rumble, which couldn't have been lightning as he saw none and it didn't dissipate. The rumble steadily got louder, and louder, and louder, and then became a roar as bluish-white flashes of light suddenly began appearing around the shadow. This made Victor realize that, whatever this shadow was, it had entered the city and was starting to tear its way through.
The roar grew further and loudness and volume as the shadow grew ever larger in his field of vision. He could now see very clearly the cloud of debris surrounding the shadow as more flashes of light appeared around it. Eventually, the shadow came to its closest proximity to him, perhaps being less than five hundred meters from him as it took up most of his view to the south.
Finally, though, it continued east to the south of him, at last beginning to shrink in his view as it roared away, eventually leaving the town after what had felt like a much longer time than it actually likely had been.
Victor had little idea of what he had just seen. He had never seen something like this before. A shadow that ripped through towns and cities, causing destruction wherever it went? He almost thought he had been dreaming. He wanted to think that he was dreaming. Then, his driver and fireman came running out.
"The bloody hell was that?!" The driver asked, bewildered by what he had apparently just seen.
"No idea!" The fireman was just as stumped. "I've never seen that in my life!"
Now at its largest size and greatest strength, the tornado hit a freight train pulled by a passing diesel before it ripped its way through the south side of Crovan's Gate. While missing the NWR's Crovan's Gate Works, it nonetheless destroyed more than a thousand other structures, many to the point where nothing was left. Hospitals, fire stations, police stations, homes, apartments, stores, supermarkets, the city hall, and even a museum, among others, all felt the hard hand of the tornado's excruciating power, with only the foundation being left in many cases. Even the pavement was torn away in some places, as well as concrete parking stops being ripped out of their places, and manhole covers getting pulled up, never to be found.
After destroying much of Crovan's Gate, the tornado began to occlude northwards, finally entering the last stages of its life. Blowing down yet more trees in the process, the tornado did a loop in a field to the southwest of Norramby before at last dissipating at 4:40 PM. The tornado hadn't even lasted half an hour on the ground, and yet much of four towns lay in ruins.
4:52 P.M.
"Grr...blast this weather!" Gordon grumbled as Thomas, who was now buffered up to him in front, led him and his full coaches down the southern branch of the Main Line at a slow speed. "Of course it has to ruin my day!" He'd been running with a stopping passenger train from Vicarstown back to Tidmouth with he'd been stopped at Cronk because of damage further up the line by an apparent 'large and dangerous' tornado.
"Yours won't be the only one's day ruined, Gordon." Thomas replied. "At least it won't be your life that's ruined."
"Hmph, fair enough. But regardless, given that you and your crew apparently saw this 'tornado', then perhaps you could elaborate on what sort it was." Gordon did seem skeptical of this warning. "If they said 'large and dangerous tornado' as their reasoning for something like this, then I would at least like to know if it was actually so. So then, enlighten me."
"Alright then, Gordon!" Maurice met this challenge, having to raise his voice over the now-falling rain and the sound of the two engines rolling down the line. "Thomas and I saw that thing about five or six minutes or so before it crossed the northern branch, and we saw that thing cross also! It was at least a mile or so wide, and was movin' with a forward speed of probably sixty or seventy miles an hour, given the whole thing crossed the rails fully in only a minute or so! That damn thing was violent, Gordon! We sent that warnin' out for a reason! I think I saw rolling stock get flung into the air by it! That could have been you and your coaches if you weren't warned!"
"Alright, very well." Gordon conceded. "But you know why I'm not amused with having my day interrupted like this...it does not..."
But Gordon's voice trailed off when he and the others looked to the right of the rails ahead and noticed something that hadn't been there before. Usually, the area between the rails and the forests to the northeast was all grass and some trees. Now, though, starting less than 20 yards from the rails, there was a large brown patch of bare earth that seemed to widen as it went further away from the rails and into the forests, with noticeable craters where some of those trees had once been. Others, while not uprooted, had been snapped or debarked.
"The bloody hell is that?" Gordon wondered aloud. "That's not something I've seen there before. And why are there uprooted trees all the way over there? It's like someone or something scraped up the ground and pulled those trees like they were mere weeds...and it looks like it leads to that little town up there..."
Then, Thomas got the attention of his driver. "Uh, Maurice, what is that thing up ahead? It looks like a little ball or pile of...something? I don't know what it is?"
Maurice looked forward, and saw, just to the left of the rails, a crumpled ball of what was now basically scrap metal. At first, he could tell what sort of thing it was, but as he got closer, he saw the remains of a roof and a doorway...which made him realize something. "Hey wait...that thing...THAT THING'S A CAR!"
"A Car?!" Thomas and Gordon gasped in unison.
"Yeah, a car! Well, what used to be one, anyways!" Then, though, he thought about it. "Something could only end up like THAT if it got thrown a long distance...and all those uprooted and thrown trees, and the patch of bare dirt..."
"Erm...well, it's an...interesting sight," Gordon spoke again after a few seconds in admittal, "though I must ask how it got there and like that, and whether it has anything to do with those trees that were uprooted and the patch of earth where the grass seemed to be scraped and scoured off the ground..."
"Scoured off the ground...ground scoured...ground scouring." Maurice muttered to himself as he continued thinking, before coming to a realization. "Ground scouring! Hey wait, guys! We just passed through an area of TORNADO damage! The tornado came through here!"
"It did?" Thomas sounded shocked to hear this.
"Yeah! Just before I moved here from the states, I heard about the tornado that hit Smithfield in Alabama in 1977! It destroyed even the sturdiest and most well-built of houses, ripped up trees, turned cars into crumpled balls of scrap metal like the one we saw, and was so powerful it even ripped the damn grass off peoples' lawns and the land around Smithfield!"
"So that 'ground scouring' was tornado damage?" Gordon then had a horrifying realization. "Wait, that trail of ripped-up ground led to a town named Alder Green! If this one was powerful as the 'Smithfield' Tornado you mentioned, then..."
"...shit. People are dead from this thing." Maurice put two and two together. He didn't even know how much of an understatement that was.
On the evening of what was supposed to be an admittedly-not-well-liked-in-the-United-Kingdom holiday, Sodor lay in a state of utter calamity. Eight towns had been struck by two powerful, violent tornadoes, and now lay in varying degrees of ruin. In total, over three thousand deaths and five thousand further injuries had resulted from these two tornadoes, things that were thought to never happen on the island, let alone with such intensity.
Soon after the towns had been struck, rescue and recovery efforts began. Lower Suddery, Peel Godred, Rolf's Castle, and Crovan's Gate began receiving these efforts quickly due to being major cities and being close to the NWR and its branch lines. Others, like Alder Green, Warrick, Enterprise, and Kellsthorpe took longer to receive such efforts due to distance from major arteries of the NWR as well as the sheer severity of the damage making approaching them difficult. Some survivors took several days to be rescued, and some of the dead were never found.
The events became headlines around the world at record speed, particularly in other European countries due to such a momentous event having destroyed utterly the notion that tornadoes of such power only happened in the United States of America. Aid poured in from every direction; the aforementioned United States of America, other European Countries, Japan, Mongolia, India, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, Australia...people literally from all six continents came to Sodor to aid in the cleanup and recovery efforts, and top American scientists, including the famed Dr. Tetsuya Theodore "Ted" Fujita, came to assess the damage, with both tornadoes being rated F5's on the American "Fujita" Scale, and T11's on the British "TORRO" Scale. Dr. Fujita himself, having studied hundreds, if not thousands, of tornadoes, to the degree where his nickname was now "Doctor Tornado", and now an old man of 68, stated that these two tornadoes were among the most, if not the most, powerful tornadoes that he had ever studied, remarking that he had never seen so much topsoil ripped out of the ground like with the first one, nor had he seen concrete parking stops and manhole covers torn up and away like with the second one. These would be among the last that he would directly assess the damage of, for he would retire in 1990 before dying at home at age 78 in 1998.
As for the footage that Maurice JagielloĊski-Giray took, such would become some of the most famous footage ever taken of a violent tornado, as well as the only such footage of a violent tornado in Europe. Droves of "Storm Chasers", as they'd be known as in the United States of America, were inspired by this footage, wanting to get similarly impressive video of tornadoes in their own country.
Eventually, with time and all of this aid, Sodor rebuilt itself, stronger than ever. But even though what had happened would likely never happen again, this event nonetheless made the British public weary of tornadoes, and as a result, American tornado events, particularly the infamous ones such as the 1925 Tri-State Tornado, the 1936 Tupelo and Gainesville Tornadoes, the 1953 Waco Tornado, and the 1974 Super Outbreak, soon became common knowledge among the populace as networks aired specials about them there. Efforts for an accurate Tornado Warning System as good as or better than the one in the States would ultimately bear fruit, giving the United Kingdom a Tornado Warning System second only to that in the States.
Nearly 23 years later, May 23, 2011,
"Good lord..."
Now 44, having just turned so two days ago, Maurice was astounded by the sheer brutality of what he was seeing. It was an extremely powerful tornado that had swept its way through Joplin, Missouri in the United States the previous day. It was giving him reminders of what had happened on Halloween of 1988. He'd already read and watched about an incredibly destructive tornado outbreak back in late April, but this single tornado seemed worse than even the Hackleburg or Tuscaloosa tornado, death-toll wise.
Though, of course, nothing could compare with the 1988 "Tornadoween". But even then, this was the closest one had ever been to that, in his mind. As he got ready for work, he reminded himself that the United States of America, his former home country, was effectively the Tornado Capital of the world because more than a thousand tornadoes happened there each year, on average.
When he got to his engine, Thomas was already awake and waiting for him. He'd been working as his engine's driver for 26 years now, and wasn't exactly set on retiring yet, even though the pay was still good as ever.
"Good morning, Maurice." Thomas greeted, but then noticed the somewhat grim look on his driver's face. "Something wrong?"
"Ah, well...you heard of a place called 'Joplin, Missouri'?"
"Uh, no?"
"Well, it got nailed a big ol' tornado yesterday. Death toll's apparently pretty high."
"Oh." Thomas soon shared his driver's grim look. The both of them had personally seen the aftermath of a violent tornado themselves, them having had to assist in the cleanup and recovery efforts in Peel Godred and Warrick. Thomas had nearly rolled over a mangled corpse in Peel Godred, and in Warrick, Maurice found a few fingers that had once been on someone's hand. So they knew full well how bad such tornadoes could be.
"Probably people got over-warned for things that either didn't happen or didn't hit them." Maurice remarked. "And then it finally hit them. I mean, most areas in a tornado-warned county won't get hit BY the thing, but even then..."
"...all it takes is one bad day." Thomas finished.
"Indeed." Maurice agreed. "It's better to be prepared for things like this and then have them not happen than to not be prepared for them and then have them happen."
Such was a lesson that all could do to learn.
So, that's kinda the end for this fic. I kinda wish I could end it more gracefully and neatly, but writer's block is my worst enemy, so I ended up writing this chapter over the course of roughly a month or so, and I just wanted to get this thing out of the way. I've made some final changes to the chapter before this one before I complete this story so that it flows better in my eyes.
