GORDON'S BREAKAWAY

Based upon "Gordon Takes a Tumble" by David Mitton and Robin Kingsland

Adapted by Zack Wanzer and Rachel Ravens

The new year had finally arrived on the island, and the engines were swiftly trying to get on top of the extra trains. Diesel was working harder than ever in the yards, but a lot had been on his mind since Christmas.

"Something is definitely up with Emily…" he said to himself. "Just what that could be… I don't know. I haven't said anything to upset her… have I?"

"Hey, Diesel!" called Bear. "It's almost time for the Limited."

"Ah, sorry, Bear!" Diesel cried. He quickly found the coaches and buffered them up behind him.

"You seem distracted," Bear commented. "If you don't mind me saying so, you've been like this for the past fortnight."

"I've been thinking about Emily," said Diesel. "She didn't comment about the idea of Pip and Emma coming to help with the traffic last year, she didn't speak a word to Salty when he first arrived, and last Christmas…"

"She… reminded you of your past?" Bear said, gently.

"That's another way of putting it."

"Oliver told me about that," sighed Bear. "I'm not sure what's going on with Emily either. But there have been a few red flags."

"I hope we find out the truth…" Diesel said, quietly.

Later, Diesel was arranging trucks in the yard. He closed his eyes, thinking back.

"Maybe… some of the trucks have been stirring up trouble for Emily…" he whispered. "Not the first time a truck 'leader' has done that…"

In his thoughts, Diesel had accidentally bumped a line of trucks too hard.

"Watch out! You'll get my paint all sooty!"

Diesel opened his eyes and saw Gordon standing nearby; some coal soot had flown out of the trucks and onto the big blue engine.

"Well, shunting trucks is a sooty job," Diesel snarked back, slightly embarrassed. He cleared his throat. "Gordon, what are you doing in the goods yard? Shouldn't you be at the station by now?"

"I was at the station," grunted Gordon. "But I found my coaches were missing and so were you!"

"Wait, they aren't there?" gasped Diesel. "Ugh, my shunting's out of whack today." Quickly, the black shunter went off to find the express coaches.

"Something tells me you'll need help in the yards," Gordon sighed.

"But why now?" asked Diesel. "Thomas, Percy and Duck have all shunted solo for their tenures as station pilots."

"Less engines were on the railway when they were station pilots," Diesel's driver explained. "Now there's five engines on the main line and six branch lines open."

"That's a lot happening in the past decade," remarked Diesel. "I wouldn't mind having Ali to help me."

"We'll have to ask Sir Topham Hatt about that," said Gordon.

Sir Topham Hatt agreed to the idea, and it wasn't long before Diesel and Ali were shunting together.

"It's great to see you, Ali," grinned Diesel at his sister. "How have things been at Barrow?"

"Busy," she smiled, "but Prisca, Lyla and I have been getting by."

"It would be nice to have a sibling who lives on Sodor that I do get along with," said Diesel. "Too bad we're on opposite ends of the line most of the time."

The two shunters continued to talk and shunt happily, but amongst the trucks, Rickety smirked.

"Hey, look!" he cried. "It's Arry and Bert's evil triplet!"

"I'm surprised she hasn't tried to scrap any of the engines yet!" cried the U.L.P. van, before mockingly calling out, "Don't go after any of us, please! We've done nothing to deserve such a fate!"

The other trucks laughed at the pink van's joke, but Diesel didn't think this was funny.

"That's enough out of you lot!" he snapped, bumping them hard.

"Ooh! Ah! Oh!" the trucks cried.

"If you make jokes like that again, I'll personally make sure you're bringing deliveries to and from Crock's Scrap Yard for a month!" Diesel growled.

The trucks all gulped; none of them enjoyed being part of a train known as "The Scrap".

"Well, just as well for that lot they won't be working for the Ironworks," chuckled Ali. "It was completely burnt to a crisp, with some trucks inside." The trucks all froze with fear at that mention.

Diesel blinked. "Wait, really?"

Ali laughed as they went on with their work. "Nah, just messing with their minds, brother. You really showed them."

The two shunters had no problems after that, for the trucks were unusually well-behaved for several days!

But one day, however, the trucks started to chat amongst themselves.

"Say…" said Rickety. "Do you guys remember what Diesel said a while ago?"

"Oh, do we ever!" exclaimed the U.L.P. van. "He said something along the lines of us being the root of Emily's behavior."

"Well, for once, it wasn't us," grunted Old Bennett. "I have no idea where this behavior of hers came from."

"But…" said Rickety, slyly, "with Emily not acting in a good emotional state…" He whispered his plan to the trucks.

At that moment, the Stirling single came to get her train that had been shunted by Diesel.

Unfortunately, what she and Diesel didn't realize was that one of the couplings was loose. The trucks knew this, of course, but pretended that they hadn't.

"Come along, you lot," Emily called to the trucks. She blew her whistle and began to set off. However, she moved about several yards before coming to a standstill.

"I said, come along!" snapped Emily. "We can't be late!"

"Hold back! Hold back!" giggled the stupid trucks. With a frustrated groan, Emily pulled even harder… and suddenly found herself shooting forwards without the trucks!

"Whoa there, old girl!" cried the emerald engine's driver, and quickly applied the brakes. Emily stopped short of hitting the buffers at the end of the siding. Some of the trucks laughed again, while others groaned with disappointment that Emily hadn't derailed.

"Aw, that was so anticlimactic!" Suncole remarked as Emily backed down again.

"I don't know how Donald and Douglas put up with you lot," she scolded, "but we're going to be even later now thanks to this stunt you pulled!" Her crew had jumped down to inspect the broken coupling.

"Would you look at this?" exclaimed the driver. "We're going to have to get your coupling mended, old girl."

"This is all I needed," sighed the emerald engine. At that moment, who should arrive, but Gordon.

"Emily, are you alright?"

"I wish I was," sighed Emily. "Stupid trucks thought it would be a funny idea to hold back on me, and now my rear coupling's broken clean off!"

"Ah, I see," grunted Gordon. "Well, those trucks won't mess about with me."

"But don't you have the express to take out?"

"I'm sure Henry or Bear wouldn't mind taking it," said Gordon. "No rake of trucks messes with a fellow Great Northern engine and gets away with it."

"Okay, you choosing trucks over the express?" Emily had to giggle. "Who are you and what have you done with Gordon?" Even Gordon had to laugh at that remark.

The engines' crews agreed to this arrangement, as did the yard manager. It wasn't long before Gordon was coupled up to the trucks and set off, hoping to make up for lost time.

"Can you believe it?" cried Suncole. "Gordon, taking trucks like us instead of the express?"

"No matter," said Rickety. "We can still mess with old Galloping Sausage here. One engine's as good as the next!"

"Yeah," said the U.L.P. van. "We'll get him on his hill!"

"Should we make him standstill again?" asked Old Bennett.

"No," said Rickety. "Here's what we'll do instead…"

"I'll show those trucks not to mess around with us engines," Gordon grunted. As he got to the hill that bore his name, the big blue engine began to pick up speed. He started to ponder to himself. "With Emily out of action," he said quietly, "that would mean more work for James and Bear on the Norramby branch. I'm too heavy to go down that way."

"I'm sure there will be another solution, Gordon," said his driver. "Maybe Nicole or Tasha could–"

SNAP!

"Driver, fireman, what was that?!" cried Gordon.

"Oh no!" the fireman exclaimed, glancing back. "Some of the trucks are getting away!"

Indeed they were, gathering speed as they traveled downhill.

"You can't catch us, Gordon!" cried Suncole.

"So much for being the fastest engine on Sodor!" laughed Rickety.

"Get back here!" Gordon gave chase after the runaway trucks. The trucks continued to laugh maniacally as they got further and further away from Gordon.

Further down the line, Diesel was on his way to the Steamworks to take some trucks to be repaired. Suddenly, he saw some trucks rolling right past him, and then Gordon and some more trucks racing towards them, backwards.

"I thought tender engines weren't meant to go backwards!" cried Diesel. Then he saw Rickety's coupling, and remembered what he had just passed. "Oh… uh oh… Gordon, watch out!"

"Watch out for what?! Oh…"

Gordon knew exactly what Diesel had meant, and started to slow down. Unfortunately, the trucks didn't, and they tried to screech their brakes on.

"What's going on?!" cried Rickety. "Stop, boys, stop!"

"We can't!" the U.L.P. van replied. "We've thrown our guard off on the hill!"

"Oh, why did we think that was a good idea?!" another truck exclaimed. Before any more could be said, the trucks found themselves leaning to one side, and then they flew right off the rails and into a cow field.

Gordon had managed to come to a safe stop before slowly reversing to see the aftermath of the accident.

"That was a close one," panted the express engine.

"I'll go call for someone to bring Judy and Jerome," said the driver. Before Gordon and his crew could say any more, there was a horrifying crunch.

"What was— By Gresley's name!"

Back at Knapford yards, Emily's crew had just finished refitting her rear tender coupling. Suddenly, the yard manager came running up to them.

"Part of Gordon's train has broken away and crashed into a field," the manager reported. Emily wasted no time in finding Judy and Jerome.

"Wake up! It's an emergency!" she cried, before repeating what she'd been informed.

"Right! We're ready!" called Judy.

"Everyone, crew up!" called Jerome.

Down at the field, the trucks were slowly recovered and put back on the rails. Gordon was looking very pale.

"G-Gordon?" stammered Emily. "A-are you hurt?"

"…Rickety's been crushed…"

Emily gasped quietly. "I… I guess his remains are going to Crock's Scrap Yard then…" she gulped.

The trucks were also badly shaken by this accident, as well as what had happened to their leader. Rickety was no longer among them all because they'd agreed to go along with his trick.

"That's five leaders we've been through already," shuddered Suncole. "How many more of us will end up going next?"

"I… I don't know…" the U.L.P. van said quietly. "But… a new leader will have to be decided at some point…"

"I… think I need some therapy from Mrs. Kyndley," Gordon admitted as he and Emily started to take the trucks away.

"Mrs. Kyndley?" asked Emily. "Thomas has mentioned her before but… I didn't know she was a therapist."

"She's been a friend of the railway for a long time," said Gordon, "and has taken up a job of a therapist. Mostly retired these days, she still uses her knowledge to help us with our own mental health. Her daughter, Sophia, has followed in her footsteps."

"She sounds like she's really good at what she does," remarked Emily.

Down at the yards, once Diesel got wind of what had happened, he felt rattled to the core.

"Rickety's scrapped?!" he panted. "Oh… oh no! It must have been when I bumped him the other day. The coupling broke and…!"

"Jasper, please," Ali said, quietly. "You didn't realize that coupling was loose."

"I'm… I'm as bad as…" he gulped. "Oh… Hailey, what have I done…"

"Don't compare yourself to those two," scolded Ali. "My dear brother, that was a genuine accident."

"Ali's right," said another voice. Diesel glanced over to see Oliver and Douglas nearby; the Western tank engine had spoken. "You didn't mean to damage Rickey's coupling."

"Besides, ye didnae convince Rickety tae break awa' fae Gordon's train," Douglas added. "He did that oan his ain."

"Not to mention not paying attention to others telling him to slow down," added Oliver.

"I… I suppose you're both right," said Diesel.

"And what am I?" chuckled Ali. "An International Engine?"

"You're right too," smiled Diesel. He sighed. "But… a life of a truck had ended today… and I was partially responsible. How did… er…?"

"We move thro' it?" asked Douglas. "Time, Diesel. Time 'n' support fae oor friends."

"And we're all here for you, Diesel," added Oliver. "If you need to turn to us for support, we're always ready."

"Thank you."

Indeed, it did take Diesel and Gordon quite a while to move on from Rickey's demise. But seeking out professional help on Gordon's end and Diesel talking to Oliver and Douglas certainly helped matters. Unfortunately, no one could quite figure out what was going on with Emily… but that's a story for another day.

THE END

Author's Comments

Happy New Year, people! To start off 2023 with a bit of a bang, it's this rewrite of Gordon Takes a Tumble. Not a bad episode by any means, but it was one of those episodes during Series 5-7 where Gordon's more hammed up pompous character was in play. I know people aren't too fond of how he was characterized in the CGI era, but, as I'm sure you can tell, I'm not one who will turn a blind eye to any problems the classic series had despite growing up with them. That little rant aside, this was a very simple rewrite to do, although this is another step in Emily's arc that leads to her eventual downfall in Series 8-10.

Upcoming stories:

- Alfie Has Kittens

- Harvey to the Rescue

- Oliver Takes the Road

- No Sleep for Cranky

- Edward and the Brass Band