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Bye, George!

Written by Britt Allcroft and David Mitton

Adapted by BNSF1995

Proofread and Corrected by the "Sodor: True Stories" Team

The Isle of Sodor, 1996

Ever since his arrival on Sodor in the early 1960s, George had been a nightmare for the four railways. His anti-rail diatribes of "railways are no good! Pull 'em up, turn 'em into roads!" had become a familiar sound, one that always preceded trouble.

George was one of the few Sentient vehicles on Sodor with a criminal record, having intentionally crashed into Falcon's goods train during a one-sided race in 1962 and being sentenced to local confinement.

Nobody knew where George's prejudice originated from. Some say he was a workaholic who wanted the railways torn up so he could build roads 24/7. Others say he had an accident with the railways that, although a misunderstanding, warped George's views.

Whatever the cause, there's a very, very good reason George hasn't had a speaking role in the television series since the fifth season…

It was a hot day at Boulder Quarry. George had been helping to build a new access road to the recently opened quarry, a joint venture between the North Western Railway and Skarloey Railway. His work done; George was now needed elsewhere. Since his new worksite was too far for him to travel under his own power, he was loaded onto a flatbed to be taken by a utility engine.

As he sat waiting for the engine, he was reading the riot act to Skarloey and Rheneas.

"You're just worn-out wheels on worn-out rails!"

"You need rocks for your roads," replied Skarloey, "and we're helping you!"

"I don't need help from a mode of transportation that's past it! Buses and lorries could do your work much more efficiently!"

"What about tourists?" said Rheneas, "People love riding our passenger services to the lake."

"Who needs to take a train to the lake when people can just drive their own cars? Much cheaper, I say!"

"All those cars, buses, and lorries are gonna wreck the environment!" said Skarloey.

"Ha!" laughed George, "Have you been listening to that nut job Al Gore over in the States again? There's no such thing as global warming! And even if there was, you choo-choos would be the ones wrecking the environment!"

"Oh, goodie," muttered Rheneas sarcastically, "a climate change denialist."

At last, Blake arrived. Not only would she be taking George, but stone to assist in building new roads around Hawin Lake. After going to the turntable, she marshalled her train and put George at the front. As she pulled away, George was still rebelling.

"Railways are no good! Turn 'em into roads!"

The little engines were glad to see George go.

"Rollers are bullshit! So good fucking riddance!" they called, their patience all but drained.

After heading down the Ulfstead Branchline to Maron, Blake had to pick up tar wagons from B. Rother Tar Distillers, meaning she had to do some shunting. George was STILL grumbling, especially since Blake was taking him and his flatbed along while doing so.

At last, they reached their destination: Hawin Lake along the Peel Godred Branchline.

"Bumpy ride on rotten rails! I'm glad it's over!" George growled.

"So am I!" retorted Blake, "If it means getting away from you!"

"Ha!" huffed George. Blake was uncoupled from her train and returned to Peel Godred tender-first.

She was still fuming when she met Yang at the junction. She was taking empty trucks to Blue Mountain Quarry in the Shane Dooiney foothills.

"What's bitten you, Blake?" she asked.

"George." Blake replied bluntly.

"Ah, say no more." replied Yang sympathetically, "I don't pay any attention to that bastard. He's all talk and no show. Says he'll flatten our tracks and turn them into roads but held back by the law."

The guard's whistle blew, and Yang departed, while Blake went to find a turntable to run light back to Knapford for her next stopping service.

George was now enjoying himself. The new road to the lake was being built on a long-abandoned railway line that had belonged to the Hawin Valley Railway. It was forced to shut down in 1936 when the North Western Railway built the Peel Godred Branchline and rendered it redundant, even though they were willing to do business with them and even built a diamond over their tracks. The railway's sole locomotive was sold to another railway on the mainland, and would eventually return to Sodor as a member of the NWR around the time Great Waterton reopened…

"Ripping up rails!" he chortled, "What a life!"

He saw Yang pass by with her empty trucks.

"Whaddaya think of this, Xiao Long?" He had tried to make a racist-sounding name for her, but that was the best he had. Yang took no notice.

George felt insulted! "Pay attention to me when I'm insulting you, bitch!" Yang didn't even hear.

"I'LL SHOW HER WHO'S BOSS!"

At last, they reached the diamond.

"What shall we do here?" asked the workmen.

"Tear it up! Tarmac it!" said George. And so, they did.

But as it wasn't the Sodor Island Council or the Packard Construction Company, but a completely different contractor from the mainland who had no experience lifting rail lines or building level crossings, they did it improperly, and George exacerbated their shoddy work on purpose.

"Lights out, Yang!" he chortled, as he chuntered to the next road.

Unfortunately for him, Yang had been held up at Blue Mountain Quarry when it took longer than expected to load the slate. Instead, Neville was bringing a train of empty wagons from the power station at Peel Godred, where he had just unloaded coal. The plant was due for decommissioning in favor of expanding the hydroelectric dam's power-generating capacity.

Nobody knew about the bad crossing, so the signalman set the home signal to green.

"Oh, good!" said Neville, "We don't have to stop!"

"Yes, we do!" cried his driver, seeing the tarmacked crossing ahead.

But by then, it was too late.

"Wait, what do you-OH, GOD!"

Neville came off the rails, slid down an embankment, and rammed straight through a barn. He stopped several hundred yards away from the now-demolished structure, taking with it many chickens.

Neville was more annoyed than hurt, but his driver and firemen were injured.

News of Neville's accident spread fast. After Penny brought Rocky and the other breakdown cranes, Yang was rerouted via the other line around Hawin Lake and returned home to Knapford Harbor sheds. That night, she and the others held a "vigilante justice" meeting.

"He tarmacked that crossing specifically to take me out!" she said angrily, "I say we take him out and make it look like an accident!"

"Wait, what happened to ignoring him?" asked Blake.

"He's gone too far this time, Blake! He wants a war; we'll give it to him! So... any ideas?"

"Put him on a flatbed and push him into the sea!" said Blake.

"I'll do you one better," said Tim, "We put him on a flatbed, and push him into the Plague Pit at Barrow Scrapyard!"

"Ooh, Tim, you ARE devious!" snickered Chloe.

"Any ideas, Ruby?" asked Yang.

"Put him on a flatbed, push him down the embankment at Maron, and call him the c-word?"

Everyone just stared.

"60 years, Ruby." said Yang, "It's been 60 years, and you still won't let that go."

"Okay, new idea: have him and James destroy each other. Two birds with one stone."

"Much as I'd LOVE to get rid of James," said Tim, "he's one of our own. And we Nor'Westers protect our own to the very end, no matter how unpleasant they are."

"You're such a good engine, Tim," cooed Ruby, "That's one of the reasons I fell in love with you in the first place."

"Okay, okay, save the mushy stuff for later!" interrupted Chloe, "Right now, we need to find a way to deal with George, otherwise he'll do something even worse!"

But nobody could think of anything that was legal. Eventually, they gave up and went to sleep.

The next day, George was working at Crosby Yard, helping to resurface the asphalt access roads used by lorries. He had heard about Neville's accident. While he was upset it wasn't Yang, he figured one engine was as good as another. Then, he heard Tim's whistle, and had an idea.

An AWFUL idea.

He chuffered to a pedestrian crossing within the yard and stopped on it. As he predicted, Tim did indeed come into the yard with empty trucks bound for the Coaling Plant on the Loop Line, while he would pick up loaded trucks for the power station at Peel Godred. Normally, Neville would have done this run, but he was laid up in the Steamworks.

George was now blocking Tim's way, and the brake van was left out on the mainline.

"Let me through!" demanded Tim.

"I'm too busy! You'll just have to wait!"

"There's no time to wait! I MUST clear my trucks from the mainline to let Ruby through!"

"Oh, hey, remember that time I cared? She'll just have to wait, too!"

"Don't think I don't know what you're up to, you piece of shit! I KNOW you caused Neville's accident yesterday AND intended Yang to be your target!"

"Stupid ugly duckling is too loud and clumsy for his own good!"

Tim's driver and fireman, George's driver, and the workmen all argued with George as he and Tim got into a profane shouting match. The signalman, unaware of the brake van fouling the down line, set the signal to green to allow Ruby through.

That day, it was Ruby's turn to take the Wild Nor'Wester. After picking up the train from InterCity (which was in the process of being split up for privatization) at Barrow, she departed for Knapford. The passengers were singing her praises, and she was making express time.

"Nearly there," she said to herself, "I'll have this sucker in right on time." It had been an uneventful run...up to that point, at least.

As she approached the station, she blew her whistle to warn passengers standing on the platform to stand behind the yellow line. Tim's eyes went wide and his heart sank.

"This is gonna suck…" he muttered. George heard him, and grinned wickedly.

Ruby saw the people on the platform waving and jumping like mad. At first, she thought they were saying hello, but she quickly found out they were warning her of something. Too little, too late, she saw Tim's brake van sticking out on the mainline.

"SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIIIIIIIIIIIIT!" she screamed, as she made a futile effort to stop.

But it was too late.

As she was travelling at 80 MPH at the time, she slammed into the brake van at full force and flew off the rails, Tim abruptly jolting forward to George's surprise. Her coaches followed suit, smashing into each other and causing grave damage. A nearby water tower was demolished by Ruby, as she slid on her side to a stop right next to Tim.

But it wasn't over. The wrecked coaches were blocking the other two lines. And Helen, a Class 22 "Baby Warship", was coming in the other direction with a train of fuel tankers.

Loaded fuel tankers.

She had no time to stop before coming up on the wreck and plowed into the coaches. The fuel tankers stacked up around the coaches. One of them developed a leak and was right next to a sparking generator on one of the coaches (Ruby's entire train was made up of Mark 1 stock).

Everyone in the station and the yard ran for their lives, as Helen's entire train went up in a spectacular fireball.

George saw the whole thing and laughed maniacally.

"Stupid engines should look where they're going!" he guffawed.

Nobody else found it funny.

Helen was atop the platform for the up line, dazed and confused as to what had just happened.

Ruby had been knocked unconscious by the initial impact.

And Tim... went off on George.

"YOU PLANNED THIS! YOU PLANNED THIS ALL! YOU ARE SICK AND TWISTED! PEOPLE ARE DEAD BECAUSE OF YOU!"

"Well, that's what they get for being luddites!"

Tim found he could no longer form coherent sentences, and just gave a primal scream to the heavens.

Half an hour later, emergency services had swarmed Crosby. Sodor Fire & Rescue was battling the lineside conflagration, as well as digging through the wreckage with paramedics to find any survivors. So far, only a few had been found, and at least three pulled from the wreckage alive had since died.

Penny had brought Rocky and the other breakdown cranes, and the other two sets of cranes had been brought by Rosie and Kate. They were all horrified by what they saw.

The Fat Controller arrived aboard Kate and covered his mouth when he saw the crash site. Stepping off the footplate of one of his grandfather's engines, he walked over to Tim, who was snarling at George and only being held back from attacking him by his crew manually putting his brakes hard on, denying him the ability to run himself. Ruby had since stopped crying, her eyes red and puffy, sniffling and feeling sorry for herself.

The stationmaster walked over.

"Whoever caused this will have ME to answer to!" exclaimed Sir Stephen Hatt. He then turned to Tim.

"Right, Tim, as you seem to be the only one able to form cohesive sentences here, why don't you tell me the story?"

And Tim told him everything. By the time he finished, The Fat Controller was red in the face, and turned to face George.

"YOU!" he pointed at George, "YOU DID THIS!"

"And proud to, sir." George replied, smugly, "I've proven that railways are unsafe! You should retire and let these remnants of a past age be replaced by big, beautiful motorways!"

The Fat Controller couldn't believe what he was hearing. This steamroller had caused the worst rail disaster in Sudrian history since Sandra and Archibald's reign of terror in 1943.

"I'm going to end your FUCKING CAREER." he snarled.

"Not before I END YOUR LIFE!" screeched George. And he tried to run over The Fat Controller but found he couldn't move. A man had just moved his controls to disable his ability to move himself.

"'Ello, 'ello, 'ello, what have we here?"

George gulped. It was the same policeman who had come across his accident with Falcon years ago, now retired from the force.

The rescue and recovery operation lasted into the night. After the last bodies were located, the work of recovering the debris began. One by one, the most-damaged coaches were cut up on site and put in trucks, which were then taken to Crock's Scrapyard by BoCo. The coaches with less damage that could still sit on bogies were taken to the Steamworks by Penny for repairs, and the ones that were at the back of the train and hadn't come off the rails were taken to Knapford by Bear. The passengers in those rear coaches had gone the rest of the way by bus.

Using a pair of cranes, Ruby was hoisted back onto the tracks, along with her tender. While she could sit on the rails, she couldn't run under her own power, having sustained serious damage. Tim, who was undamaged, coupled up to her face-to-face and slowly and gently pushed her to the Steamworks.

Finally, a second pair of cranes hoisted Helen back on the rails. Her bogies were badly damaged, so she was loaded onto a depressed-center flatbed for the trip to the Steamworks.

Finally, the wreckage of the detonated tankers was loaded aboard BoCo's trucks and taken to Crock's.

The work of repairing the line followed, as the rails had melted, and the ties burned. Working quickly, the Permanent of Way department finished the up line just in time for Henry to pass with the Flying Kipper around 4:30 AM. By 6:00 AM, all three lines were repaired and inspected, in time for Bear's first stopping service.

The aftermath of the crash sent shockwaves throughout not just Sodor, but the United Kingdom as a whole. Following the crash, private operators began rapidly withdrawing their loco-hauled Mark 1 stock, believing it to be too flammable and unsafe, despite the conclusions made after the Clapham Junction crash. Heritage lines who had Mark 1 stock thoroughly inspected them.

On Sodor, Ruby and Helen were laid up at the works for weeks. Tim found it hard to focus on his work, worrying that the crash gave Ruby metal fatigue. Fortunately, it didn't, and eventually, she came out of the works looking good as new. But while she was physically fine now, mentally and emotionally, she hadn't been this much of a wreck since 1966 when James relentlessly bullied her for defending BoCo. In the weeks that followed, Tim became an emotional crutch for Ruby once again. The Fat Controller knew that Ruby was very vulnerable, and wouldn't be able to function alone, so he timetabled her and Tim to work together in the weeks following her release from the Steamworks. Over time, Ruby got better, and she and Tim began working separate trains again a month after the incident.

To say the ordeal brought them closer together would be a massive understatement.

Helen also eventually got out of the works, but absolutely refused to pull fuel trains. Again, The Fat Controller understood, and timetabled her for through goods trains to Barrow, making sure that said trains wouldn't involve hauling fuel.

"At least cows won't spontaneously combust," she would say.

But what about George?

Immediately, the Railway Investigation Unit swooped in on the scene, and after getting statements from Tim, Helen, the stationmaster, the signalman, several passengers and workmen, and a few Sentient trucks who were in the yard at the time, threw the book at George HARD.

He was drained of water and had his coal unloaded to ensure he couldn't move under his own power again. Then, he was stripped of his nameplates, his funnel was plugged, and he was repainted in NER Black, indicating he had committed a particularly heinous crime and that one should be cautious around them.

He was then stripped of his roller and loaded on a flatbed. It was taken to Knapford on a stopping goods pulled by James. He made the ride as rough and uncomfortable as possible, wanting revenge for his cousin who still hadn't forgiven him for the Strike of '34.

Before a magistrate called up from London, George was charged with malicious intent, attempted murder, involuntary manslaughter, destruction of railway property, and destruction of private property. George's defense, if you could call it that, consisted of him saying Tim was trying to off Ruby so he could have an incestuous relationship with Chloe. Tim, who was at the trial as a witness, wheeshed steam in George's face. It was the first time Ruby, another witness, had laughed in weeks. A perjury charge was added shortly thereafter. After Tim, Ruby, Helen, Penny, Rosie, Kate, BoCo, the Crosby stationmaster, the signalman, and a passenger who was in one of the wrecked coaches and survived with serious injuries testified, George was found guilty on all charges and sentenced to execution by non-compulsory Final Firing.

George was furious, and as he was taken away to the shed doubling as his cell, he called for an uprising against the railways. A small anti-rail terrorist group did materialize, but thanks to Blake's knowledge on how such groups work owing to her experiences in the Knights of Steam, it was quickly put down by MI5.

A few days after the sentencing, the Final Firing was carried out. The only ones in attendance were The Fat Controller, a few policemen, the magistrate, and a few workmen tasked with pouring the Blair Water in. George said nothing, his last thoughts being a daydream about the island being criss-crossed by motorways.

Just like with Cecil and Klondike before him, George died alone, forgotten, and universally hated.

George's remains were remanded to the North Western Railway. The Fat Controller decided to have it rebuilt so it would be Inanimate. After a few weeks at the Steamworks, Boiler #62 was ready for service, and shipped off to the logging operation on the Isle of Bren to saw logs.

While asking around for story ideas for the fifth season of the television series, Britt Allcroft and David Mitton heard the full details of the incident. They had, of course, heard about it on the news like everyone else around the world had, but they had first-hand accounts from those who were there. They took the incident and heavily watered it down to become the episode "Bye, George!" After hearing that the real George was dead, the TV series staff never again gave George a speaking role, and when the series transitioned to CGI in 2009, Nitrogen Studios made no effort to create a new George model.

The incident left a massive wound on the NWR. Of the passengers in the coaches that were wrecked and exploded, only four survived; 18 had been pulled alive but later died. In addition, Ruby's driver and fireman were severely injured, but recovered and returned to work four months afterwards. Tim's guard was in the brake van when Ruby hit it and was killed instantly. Helen's driver had also been killed by the impact, while her guard, as well as Ruby's guard, were uninjured.

After the events of the Crosby Rail Disaster, the Sodor Island Council made sure to be VERY careful about the character of the Sentient public works vehicles they brought to the island...