Work Text:
"How was your first day on the Railway, number 7?" The number Three said. She was spotted at the water column next to a field of rather oversized tomatoes. Her open trucks were being loaded with some of them.
The new engine, a dark blue saddle tank 0-4-0, smiled. "It was hard, but very engaging! Much more fun than my old railway. I got to go back and forward all day, pushing trucks and wagons in and out of the industries on the line. My small driver and the big driver both left me still for a few hours, but that's okay, they came back for me once number 5 came through with the passengers. Such a queer engine, carrying on with that tinny growl."
The number three, a green 2-6-2 tank engine with a tall cab, broad side tanks, and little wheels, smiled a soft, kind smile. She had wrinkles on her face and wear on her paint, and her smile didn't look quite right, like she wanted to say something.
"So the, erm, big driver, had you doing shunting ops then? That's good, I'm surprised to see a steam engine doing something so complex," the number Three said.
"Haven't you done any shunting?" said Seven.
Three squinted. "Well, yes, of course I have. The Owner of the Railway--the 'big driver' if you like--tends to use me for passenger trains, after all that's what my prototype really were used for, but uh, you and I aren't exactly, uh, how should I put this?"
Seven looked on with big, wet, adorable eyes.
"You're... you do know what this railway is, don't you?" Three said at last.
Seven closed her eyes and smugly smiled, "We're on the Burlington Hills Light Tramway, a common carrier and passenger railway built to three foot gauge to serve the iron ore mines, and the markets and shops and industries along its right-of-way."
Three smiled, somewhat awkwardly, and glanced over at the "big driver's" house, then back over at Seven. "Well, yes, but."
Oh, but Seven looked so proud of herself...
"But...," Three continued, "don't forget the passengers. I'm sure the owner will entrust you with a passenger train soon enough!"
Seven gave a cheery smile. The owner came up and, soon enough, her 'small' driver and fireman came too, and she reversed back into the shed. As her fire went down, eventually she went to sleep, content in her day's work.
Three, One, and Four were brought into the house together that night as well. "We have a problem," Three said at last.
"I was wondering when you were going to say it," One, a small red 0-4-0 saddle tank with no cab, said, "The fern near the top station is getting entirely too big. We've got to petition the owner for a bit of 'maintenance of way' work, so to speak. My trucks keep derailing, and if it gets much worse, I'm going to be next!"
"No, it's not that," Three said. "It's about our new friend."
"The 'live-steam' engine?" Four, a little diesel-mechanical, said. "Charming lady," she said, "Clearly enjoying playtime more than I ever did."
"The problem is," Three said, "She doesn't realize it is play."
"What do you mean?" said One.
"She actually thinks we're a three foot gauge common carrier railway."
"Hah. Hahaha!" One started laughing. "That's--that's hilarious," One said, still wheezing.
"Oh, poor thing," Four said.
"Well I will admit it is a little entertaining... cute, even," Three said. "But I've seen this kind of thing happen before. Owner used to keep me at a Club, before she bought the house and the garden, and they had live steam engines there too--some of them were so big they could actually pull real people on special trucks, hanging down on elevated tracks. One of them--a model of an LMS Pacific if memory serves--also thought she was real. When she found out... she was devastated. She couldn't hold pressure after that, and always ran out of time. Her owner had to take her apart, and they never got around to putting her back together.
"That's horrible," Four said.
One was quiet, her face uncharacteristically somber.
"I just don't know what to do," Three said.
"We've got to tell her, let her down easy," Four said.
"No... no, we can... we can keep pretending," One said.
"That's mean! It might be funny now, but this is serious." Three said.
"I am serious!" One said. "Think of it like this. Have you ever gone inside during christmas? Around the tree?" One said.
"Yes," Three said, "Many years ago."
"No," Four said.
"Well just like there's lit up trees at all our stations during christmas, and a real one in the yard, there's also a lit up tree inside."
"A tree inside the house. Don't be daft," Four growled.
"It's true," Three said.
"--Only this one is special. Every December, owner invites his family over for a party."
"Right, the christmas party, we're always a favorite with the children," Four said.
"No, no," One said, "You're thinking of the christmas open house. This one is just the owner's family, and it's usually too cold and dark to go outside. But owner likes us too much to leave us out altogether, so she puts up a loop of track around the tree, and then we get to run around in circles, as long as the children keep their sticky fingers away."
"It seems more like you're bragging than explaining, One," Three said.
"Well anyway. There's a story the kids are told. It's in all the songs; the parents all talk about it. The story goes, there's a magical man who brings gifts and presents from far in the North where it's always cold, so that the children can open them on Christmas Day."
"That explains a lot," Three said, "The first time I came out of my packaging was to run around a tree, all those years ago, back when Owner was a boy, and I was still red, white, and green."
"Oh hohh... I remember that! You had that garish red plastic cowcatcher and box headlamp! You looked like an American!" One said.
"Only, there's no magical man," Three said. "It's just Owner's parents, or Owner herself, now, I guess."
"Exactly," One said. "They buy the presents, and put them out. They pretend that it's real, so the children think there's something special and magical about christmas."
"I'm not sure I see the point," Three said, "Of the Santa thing, and why you're bringing it up. Owner likes us even without thinking Santa brought us--and clearly, she likes me more as a realistic model and not some yankee-doodle christmas toy, or she wouldn't have spent so much time and money on repainting me!"
"Well, eventually, the children grow up, and they have to be told the truth--if they don't figure it out themselves," One said. "And then they can pretend with the younger kids, and keep the 'magic' going. If a child finds out too early--an older kid lets it slip and they overhear--there's lots of crying and it's a whole Event. But if they find it out on their own... well, there's no crying! And I think the parents get just as much joy over keeping up the 'magic' as the kids get from thinking it's real."
"You're saying, we pretend like we really are a real world three foot gauge railway, doing real work--at least, while Seven is in steam?" Four said.
"Could be fun. We already do this whenever Owner is filming us, after all," One said.
"But... Seven isn't a child. She's an engine. She may be inexperienced, but, she's just as smart as the rest of us," Three said. "Actually, smarter than you, One, given how well she managed the trucks."
"Hey!"
"Children find out the truth when they grow up," Three said. "Seven is already as grown as she'll ever be. When will she find out?"
"I suppose," Four said, "When she's ready. If she is as smart as the rest of us, she'll pick up enough clues to figure it out on her own."
Three sighed, her speakers crackling softly, and pinched her eyes tight. Had she any limbs, she would have face-palmed. She opened her eyes, and looked at Seven, faceless, cold, on the work bench, and her expression softened.
"I'll talk to the others, next running session," Three said at last. "If they agree... we can try it."
"Good," One said.
"I'm sure Five will agree," Four said. "She'd find it a great joke, what with her broken sound decoder."
And so that's how it was for the next few months. Seven was too much work to run every session, which gave the other engines a welcome reprieve from the performance, but whenever she was taken out, the models would try their best to appear as anything but models.
One morning, Three awoke, her battery fully charged. That's unusual, she thought, I'm not due for a recharge for a few months.
Owner unsheeted her, and picked her up. "Oh, hello," she said, "it looks awful rainy out for a running session."
Owner's eyes were narrowed as she rotated Three around, inspecting her. "It should be fully charged," she said, "Good, don't want any problems at the show."
"The Show?" Three said, raising an eyebrow.
Before she got an answer, Owner put her on her side in a foam case. "Ah. A model railway show," Three said. She had gone to such shows before. They were a good chance to mingle with engines from other garden railways, even meet engines built to different scales altogether. Once, she had an enjoyable evening with a charming HO scale Yellowstone who was nearly as long as she was, and who had been... very... articulated.
Three was excited. But then her voltage dropped and her running gear felt like it would seize: There was Seven, faceless and cold, being wrapped up in bubble wrap and lowered into the case next to her. "Owner! Owner! You're making a mistake! You can't bring her!" But the Owner just zipped up the case.
Three spent the entire drive over to the model railway show in dread, trying to think of what she was going to do.
Seven felt the warmth returning to her as she simmered in the shed. She felt a little dizzy, and a little clumsy, like some of her parts had been jostled around, but the Big Driver was attending to her with a large screwdriver and an oil pot. She opened her eyes, and saw that she was not, in fact, in the shed at all.
Her safety valve chirped and bubbled. "Where am I?" she said.
She was on some kind of bridge, over a massive abyss of concrete, in a building that looked a little like the shed, but it was as big as the Big Driver's house. There were all sorts of other engines--standard gauge ones, narrow gauge ones--but they all looked the wrong size, too big or too small.
Three buzzed and ran alongside Seven, but stopped at the last moment, turned on her sound decoder, and chuffed up to her. "Seven, please, stay calm."
Seven was darting her eyes back and forth but she was put at ease when she saw her friend.
"Three, where are we? This isn't the Burlington Hills Tramway."
"Three, it's... it's going to be difficult to explain."
"We're... we're at the wharf! This must be an interchange between two rail networks! I've seen something like it in drawings in books!"
Three grimaced, and stared at Seven.
"Oh, Three, I'm so glad you're here, I would just get lost without you!"
"I'm sure your driver would manage to keep you safe," Three said.
"Where are my crew?" Seven said, "I only see Big Driver... Three, why do you look so sad? Is everything okay? We're going to go back home, aren't we?"
"Yes," Three said, "Yes, you're safe, I, I promise. We'll probably be here for just a couple of days, and then we'll go right back home to the garde--to the tramway. Big Driver just thought other, um, Big people would like to see us. And sometimes it can be nice to talk to other engines, too--b-b-but don't, uh, take everything they say too literally okay?"
Seven looked at Three like she'd grown a second funnel. "Yes ma'am," she said.
After Seven was finished firing up, she ran back and forth a few times to make sure her running gear was moving nicely, and then she backed down on some strange cars. They looked like passenger coaches, but they were shorter than she was used to, and had only four wheels, like trucks. "Silly things," she said, "And where are the passengers?"
Three ran alongside. "They're, well, all around us. Here, everyone is big, like big driver."
"How are they supposed to fit in my coaches, then?" Seven said.
"Not ours, but look," Three said, and she looked ahead to one of the bigger tracks, where a great big pacific was chugging on the great big bridge track with special cars, on each of them was a few passengers, straddling the cars and indeed the bridge itself like a man on a horse.
"I had no idea there were so many Big people," Seven said. "This place is amazing!"
"Yes," Three said, "I used to live in a place like this."
After Three pulled some more coaches out of a siding, and ran around them to push them onto Seven's back, she went back alongside Seven.
"That's... a lot of coaches. I'm not sure I can pull that many," she said.
"Oh, I think you'll find you're stronger than you think you are," Three said. "But if you want, I can help you."
"Oh yes! Thank you!" Seven said, "I always like working with you!"
Three gave a soft smile, the kind she had by now practiced very well, but when she ran forward far enough her expression went to a despairing grimace.
Three ran back up front, and backed down onto Seven's coupler. Finally, they set out onto the line. They ran off of the great big bridge and back into a garden. This one was relatively sterile, mostly plain blades of grass and a few specially placed decorative plants.
Owner never got too far, but it was hard to keep track of her in the crowd. There were lots of distractions. Three figured she might have to be the one to take care of Seven and make sure she didn't go too fast or run out of water, if they went too far away for Owner to see--maybe that was why she'd put her on front.
Three and Seven went into a tunnel, and popped out on another elevated section of track, with a lot of people nearby. Three sized up the situation--a complicated rail yard of elevated tracks, and some tables set up with smaller trains running along them, to the left. To the right, a single larger-gauge elevated line and--Three's motor siezed for a bit, and the train jerked. There was a static display just ahead, through the trees. It was a real standard gauge tank engine. Three had never seen one before. Even knowing about her nature as a scale model, there was still a sense of cosmic horror realizing just how much bigger real trains were, how much further they must travel.
"Seven, look at that! There's, um, minimum gauge engines on the tabl--platforms over there!"
"Oh! How adorable!" Seven said, "I didn't know engines could be that small, they look like, maybe, 2ft gauge!"
Three kept looking at the giant--real scale--tank engine, and kept engaging Seven in discussion about the O gauge trains, until the real engine was out of sight. They were still on the elevated section.
"Oh, that's weird," Seven said.
"Oh?" Three said.
"We're going in a great big loop."
"Oh, uh, well," Three said, "It's just that--"
But Three wasn't paying attention to where she was going. It all happened at once. A child wasn't looking behind them. They stretched out an arm, and it hit Three in the side. Her pony truck derailed, and she started wobbling up and down on the track ties. but since she was battery powered she kept running, and Seven kept pushing. By now Owner had noticed, and scrambled to cut power, but before she did, Three ran into some points, and now, there she was, dangling over that concrete abyss.
"Help! Help!" Seven whistled, as she was pulled forward. She tried to pull back, but her wheels just spun helplessly. Her coupling broke, Three fell to the ground, and with a snap, three broke in two. Seven was horrified, and just as she fell off as well, someone caught her, shouted in pain, and put her down on the ground next to Three.
Seven looked at Three in horror. Her body was broken in two, a white crack running through their smokebox and side tank. Her eye was broken off of the rest of her face. She looked at Seven with a regretful face, but one which didn't look nearly as pained as it ought to. Seven's own face was just shock.
"Se-e-evvvven..." Three said, with a crackling, hollow speaker. "Don't be a-a-a-a-a-a-afraidiarfa-a-a-a-afraid."
Owner finally fought her way through the crowd, muttering swears, and she picked Seven up first, looking her all over to see how hurt she was. There was just a little scuff on her wheels, evidently, and so she put her carefully onto the elevated track for now. Then she picked up Three.
Three's body--boiler, cab tanks, smokebox, running board--came off, and wires connected parts of it to her... her... engine? Seven didn't know what she was looking at.
"How bad is it?" said a man, who had the offending giant child clinging to his leg, "I'm so sorry, I'm sure we can work something out."
"It was an accident," Owner said, through gritted teeth. "The body shell broke the fall, the motor looks ok. But I don't know how I'm going to fix it."
"Tell him you're sorry, son," the man said. The son said so, in a faltering voice.
Owner didn't say anything, just scowled at Three's sorry state. At last she muttered, "I should have been paying better attention." She picked Seven up, and brought them both back to the giant shed.
Seven was still shaken as her fire was dropped and she slowly lost pressure.
Three, lying on her side with her body shell removed, tried to console her. "i'LL bE oKa-a-a-a," Three said. "I might be di-di-di-different, when IiIiI come back, b-b-BbBbut I'll be okay."
Seven sobbed. "You--you're not a steam engine. You... you're... a diesel? But even Four and Five don't look like you."
"I'm so so-so-so-sorRy, SeveneveS," Three said. "We-ngle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way. Oh what fun, it is to ri--" That last bit sounded more like children singing than it did like Three's voice, but it came from her all the same. It terminated in static.
Seven was getting sleepy now, but she fought the feeling. "What's going on..." she hissed. But it used up all her energy, and she fell asleep.
Three watched Seven's wet, puffy eyes close, and saw her face fade away to a smokebox door. Then she closed her eyes, and went to sleep as well. Not long after, Owner unplugged her battery.
It was a while before anyone back home found out what happened. A string of bad weather prevented any running sessions that October, and the usual Halloween open house had to be cancelled too. The engines could tell Owner was upset, anyway.
One day, Owner came in from the snow with a big garish red box. "Look what I found!" She told--well, during Christmas she was her roommate, but the model engines knew she was really her Wife. "You'll never believe it."
"What is it?"
"They still make the Santa Express! I thought it would have been discontinued years ago. Sure, it's different now, and they only have two cars, and the track is plastic, but the body shell is the same!"
"Oh! That's fantastic!" Owner's wife said, with a little bit of a forced smile.
"Now I don't have to keep looking out for a new ebay listing," she said, as she ripped the cellophane wrapping and cut into the box.
"Are they replacing Three?" Five whispered.
"No, no, look:" One said.
Owner pulled the engine out of the styrofoam. It was a dead ringer for Three--in boiler, cab, side tanks, and running board, although its wheels were that of a chunkier inside-cylinder 2-4-0. And of course, it had the American looking box headlamp and cowcatcher.
"I wish you'd told me before buying anything this late in the year," Owner's wife said through her teeth.
"Oh come on dear, this wasn't nearly as expensive as the live steam engine. It was hardly 70 quid."
"That's not--nevermind. I'm going upstairs, have fun."
"I will!" Owner said, and she happily inspected the new engine.
"Looks like a replacement to me!" Four whispered.
But then Owner took the broken form of Number Three out of a box below the work table, and started disassembling the new 2-4-0. After satisfying herself that the body shell fit Three's chassis, she put away the 2-4-0 chassis and got to work.
The running sessions continued again, but the engines were still pensive without Three and Seven.
Finally, one day, Seven came back. She was shy to build pressure, while she waited, number One trundled up alongside. "How are you feeling?" she said.
Seven was quiet for a bit. "None of this is... real, is it?"
One pursed her lips. "Well I, uh, I suppose it depends upon your point of view."
"Are you a diesel--or whatever--too?" Seven said. She looked down. "Why lie about it."
"None of us are steam engines or diesel engines. We're electric, powered by lithium ion batteries, like what makes Owner's cameras and telephone work."
"What about me? Am I... electric too?" Seven said, with a horrified face.
"No, no, you're special. You're a live steam engine, just like the real thing."
Seven's eyes flicked up. "What is the real thing?" Seven said.
"Well, just what you thought it was. A three foot narrow gauge tank engine powered by boiling water. Only you're powered by burning alcohol instead of coal, and, well, we're not three foot gauge, we're more like, uh, one and three quarters inch gauge. An inch is one twelvth--"
"I know what an inch is," Seven said.
"Sorry."
"Why did you lie to me?"
Four came in with the first passenger train.
"Three wasn't sure you'd be able to handle the truth," One said.
"Ahem!" Four said.
"And... well... I thought it would be fun to keep up the act," One said, bashfully. "Honestly... I'm not sure how it hadn't come up before."
"Say..." Four said, "You never told us about the railway you were on before the Burlington Hills."
"Oh... well... It wasn't as long as Burlington Hills, and there weren't even any sidings. There were a few other engines, but only one of us ever ran at a time. Two of my friends left one day, and when they came back, they told me all about this big railway that they'd seen, where they had all sorts of work to do. I wanted to go so bad and do some real work instead of just going around in circles with some empty trucks. Then a few months later, Big Driver came and drove me around, and then the next thing I knew I was here."
"Those other engines... they wouldn't happen to have been Little Tich and Mr. Toby?" One said.
"Yes!" Seven said.
"They visited us a few months before you came. Owner wanted to know if she could add a live steam engine into the kind of realistic operations she likes to do on the railway. She decided that replacing us with live steam engines could never work--thank goodness--but that one might be doable."
"Oh. Oh." Seven said. "That's me, then." Seven caught herself slightly smiling, but then her face sank. "But now... it's all pointless. I thought... gosh... I feel so stupid now. I thought we were really helping people in the community. But. This is all... playing pretend."
One didn't have an answer.
Four spoke up, though. "Well, maybe that's true. But, you can either sit around moping all day, until your joints seize and your boiler runs cold... or you can accept that your life is different than the one you thought you had, and get to work anyway. You might find that it's still fun, even though it's not 'real' work."
Seven wasn't convinced. But her pressure did eventually build, and though she kept starting and stopping in the wrong places, and on one occasion derailed her guard's van (not that anyone was going to get hurt), she still ran for the rest of the session.
The Christmas Open House was busier than usual. People came to watch the trains running all day and even into the evening. One of the visitors brought something which looked like a short boiler standing on three legs, which Owner called a 'telescope.' The visitor was showing people the Moon and one of the stars called Jupiter. Why they couldn't just look up and see it for themselves was beyond Seven, but it kept people coming.
In between trains, Seven rolled up alongside the telescope. "Hello," she whistled.
The telescope, an 8 inch Schmidt-Cassegrain with a guide-scope attached, slewed over to look at Seven. "Oh, hello. Mind you don't blow too much steam over here, you'll fog up my corrector plate."
"Oh. M-my apologies," Seven said. "What is it that you're showing?"
"The Moon at high power--about, uh, let's see, two thousand divided by what's that--fifteen? About a hundred thirty three times."
"Wow... that's even bigger than real size," Seven said. "What does it look like?"
"See for yourself," the guide-scope said. The telescope pointed back towards the Moon, and then an image appeared on the laptop screen the guide scope's camera was wired into.
"You mean that's a picture of that?" Seven said, glancing between the computer and the Moon in the actual sky. "It's bumpy and full of holes!"
"Yeah, those are craters," the telescope explained. "In my eyepiece you can see them even better, but uh, I'm afraid a steam engine would fog up the lens."
"I can't reach anyway," Seven said.
Big Dri--Owner came back from inside, and drove Seven away to take another train, but the perplexing instrument still stuck in her mind.
After she'd gone around a few times--it turned out the tramway was a loop, there were two reversing loops hidden in the trees at either end of the line--she finally stopped, and let One take over, and she ran back up to the telescope again, who was now pointed lower.
"What's the point?" Seven said. "Why look so far away anyway?"
"Well, you can learn a lot with a telescope. We didn't used to know that the Moon was rough and cratered, and now we do. We didn't used to know that Jupiter was a world ten times bigger than the Earth, and with four planet-like moons, and now we do. We can even learn about distant stars, and galaxies, and planets around other stars!"
"I don't really know what all that means."
The telescope tried to explain, but Seven was still confused.
"You're really smart, to have found all that out," Seven said at last.
"Oh, hah, thank you, but it wasn't me who found it out. Telescopes like the Galilean Refractor laid the groundwork, and now all of this stuff is found by telescopes much bigger than me. Some of them are even in space!"
"So... what do you do?"
"Oh, I take pictures of the Moon and Planets, and sometimes deep sky objects--you know, nebulae and things. And I show people the night sky, like I'm doing now."
"You don't see ecks-o-planets?"
"Well, no. I suppose there are a few that I could see, if I looked for long enough. But I've never gotten around to it. That's mostly the kind of thing they use big observatory telescopes for."
"So... you're like me," Seven said.
The telescope chuckled, and their image shook. A child looking through the eyepiece pulled away and rubbed their eyes. "I'm hardly a model railway engine," the SCT continued.
"No," Seven said, "I mean, you're useless, like me. The real thing that does all the actual work is much bigger than you."
"You remind me of a 12 inch Corrected-Dall-Kirkham I once knew. She was so sure she was the coolest cat in the club observatory, always bragging that she was 'research-grade,' until she found out she was only going to be used as a visual telescope with the general public, and that she wasn't even properly collimated.
Seven blinked.
"Uh, sorry, the point is, she thought she would be doing 'real science,' and was upset when it turned out she wasn't."
Seven looked down at her buffer beam. "That's just about right," she said.
"But I'm going to tell you just what I told her. Every scientist was a kid, once upon a time. We have the opportunity to inspire the new generation to be scientists, by showing them how awesome the universe is. And even if they never do become astronomers, we're still making accessible the wonders of the cosmos to the general public, so that everyone can have a chance to connect with the universe. People like looking through telescopes. They like learning about the Orion nebula or the Pleiades, and exoplanets, sure, but there's nothing more satisfying and magical to a Layperson than to see the Moon through a telescope for the first time. And we get to do that."
Seven tried to parse what the SCT was saying. "So... even though you're not doing real science, you're... still making people happy?"
"I don't envy the research observatories one bit. Who wants to be cold and alone in the mountains with a sleep-deprived astronomer as their only companion, when you could be cold and surrounded by people who are excited to see the Moon? I don't know much about railways, but I know there aren't any trains that look like you around anymore. The real ones must not have excited people that much. But you? You're bringing joy to all these children--and the nerdy adults too... almost as much as I am. And not to mention your owner. My Astronomer said your owner posts videos of you and your friends and thousands of people watch them."
"I didn't know that," Seven said.
"You're a veritable celebrity," the Guide-scope said.
Seven thought much about what the telescope had told her. She found it... a little easier to justify turning a wheel, from then on.
One afternoon about a month later, Seven was fired up. Snow had fallen, and covered the line in a thick white blanket. A plastic object was attached to her front--a snowplough.
Seven ran out into the line, pushing snow out of the way. There were two cameras pointed at her, and Owner's Wife aimed a smartphone at her as well.
"See if you can get her running through the points," Owner said quietly. Owner's Wife moved to look at the points, and Seven ran through them, clearing them off, then ran back to the platform.
"I think this is going to work about as well as with the Number Three."
Seven's eyes went wide. "Three?" She said.
But Owner said nothing. Her driver figurines were placed in her cab, and she backed down on some vans, and headed out, ploughing the line as she went. Sometimes the snowdrifts were too much for her, and she just slipped helplessly, and Owner had to brush the snow away herself.
Halfway across the line, she made her first drop-off of some vans, and picked up some covered wagons, and then she waited at the semaphore signal.
These little rituals brought Seven comfort. The cars might be loaded with plastic--or at best, garden produce that could easily be handled manually--but there really was a real reason that Seven had to wait at the signal. The line was mostly single-tracked; proceeding without a clear signal might mean running into another train.
The electronic whistle of an approaching engine sounded, but it wasn't one Seven had heard before. But, when the train did finally approach, Seven gasped and smiled. "Three! You're okay!"
"Seven! Oh thank goodness you're alright," Three said.
Three's face was different. She had a scar running across it, even though the underlying plastic was undamaged, and she was younger looking, less wrinkled. Three was still the same 2-6-2 tank engine, but now, she was painted dark blue, to match Seven. Her buffer beam had a slight stair-step pattern on it, which Six had informed her was the tell-tale sign of a part that had been '3D-printed,' like most of Six's body.
"Are you... alright?" Three said.
Seven's face fell slightly. "I know the truth, if that's what you mean."
"I'm so sorry," Three said. "I didn't want you to find out that way."
"It's okay. I mean. It isn't. But I'll be okay, I think. I'm just so glad you're here."
"I've actually run a few times, just not when you've been out. I wasn't sure if you had been out since... well... the show."
The passenger train, pulled by number One, approached. Three backed down her train of ore hoppers into the siding, so that One could pull up to the platform. After her train 'boarded', she went up the line, and then Seven had to go. She almost pulled away, but then, she stuttered, and stopped.
She wasn't done talking to Three.
"Three. How do you cope with the fact that none of it is real?" Seven said.
"Seven, you should really get going..."
"Or what? Owner will be held up a moment? This is important, and I don't know when I'll get to talk to you again."
The corner of Three's mouth raised into an awkward smile.
"Okay. Let's do this. Steam trains used to be how everything got around. But that was many years ago. More than, I dunno, seventy years ago. But then, they were phased out, by automobiles and by diesel trains and even electric trains. But despite it all, humans still find them--you--fascinating."
"The telescope told me there weren't really trains like us in the real world anymore..."
"That's only partly. True. See, engines like us--like our 'prototypes,' the full size thing, we still exist. We're in museums, and heritage railways, and tourist railroads. Some of the big ones even go on railtours on the main line. There's even a whole island in the northwest full of 'em."
"But if they aren't doing real work, then what's the point?"
Three chuckled. Seven could hear, now, the little bit of fuzziness in Three's speakers. It had always been there, but she'd never noticed it until now.
"They had tough, grueling working lives. Many of them were worn down to the bare frames. Their running gear and spring rigging would fail. They'd have leaks and run out of time and all sorts of nasty things."
"Sounds exhilarating," Seven said.
"You're just being contrarian," Three said. "Trust me, it wasn't fun. I should know--I'm no full scale engine, but believe me, I've been through the ringer. The railway show was not the first time Owner dropped and broke me. I was built to be a toy, and given to her when she was a child. I was worn out after a few years of rather intense play. But her parents, and later she herself, bought parts to mend me each time."
"That sounds... painful."
"Perhaps. But I never doubted that I was loved. Our prototypes may have been neglected in their working lives, but as models, we get to have what the prototypes never had until preservation: a loving home. After all those years of being worked to the bare metal, used for nothing more than their utility, the prototypes have finally found a place where they are appreciated not for what they can do, but who they are. They're unconditionally loved, now, Seven."
At last enough pressure built in Seven's steam chest that she had no choice but to move. "Oh! W-wait! Owner! Stop! Three isn't finished yet!" Seven chirped.
But it was too late. Seven was on the mainline, and Three was far behind her.
That evening, Seven was idling on the rolling road in the garage of the house. The other engines were there, but too far away to talk to her.
Owner came back from the house, and sat down at the bench, with a screwdriver, allen key, and oil pot.
"I just can't figure out what's wrong with you. You were a perfect runner before your fall, but I checked and double checked everything and you still..."
"I'm sorry," Seven said.
Owner startled, and looked at Seven closer. Owner rested her hand on her forehead, and stared down at Seven. "What am I doing wrong..."
"It's not your fault," Seven said.
Owner blinked, and rubbed her eyes. She looked at the empty glass bottle on the table, the label of which read "Ffarquhar Brewing Company" on the top and "hard cider" at the bottom.
"Bloody hell, that's hard cider? No wonder I feel so out of it," she said. "My doctor has forbidden me to drink."
"What's cider, and what's the difference if it's hard or not?" Seven said.
"It's a beverage," Owner said, "for humans. Hard means there's alcohol in it, like what you burn for fuel. Alcohol makes us... well... act different."
"Oh," Seven said. "Owner, do you love Three?"
"Three? Oh! The number three, right. Yes, I suppose I do love three. It was my first model train. You know, the Burlington Hills Light Railway started as a worldbuilding project when I was in school, before I had a garden to build it in. I came up with all the locations, and drew up schedules. I made it so that the number three could have a home."
"What about me?"
"You? You, number seven, are a dream come true. Every since I was a little, um, girl, I'd wanted to drive a steam engine. That never happened, but you're the next best thing."
"But I'm not Useful. I want to be Useful."
"Hah, now you're sounding like one of those book characters," Owner said.
"What's the point in me going back and forth all day pulling plastic wagons up to plastic buildings."
"Well, you help my wife with the gardening sometimes," Owner said.
Seven made an unimpressed face.
"Alright, alright. Well, okay. What's the point in doing anything? Even if you were 'real'--err, not real, obviously, you are real, but, even if you were full scale, what would be the point in pulling trains?"
"Well, I guess, to help move people to where they need to go."
"Ok, sure," Owner said. "Why?"
"Well, uh, because they wouldn't be able to get where they need to go? Otherwise?"
"Why do you care?"
"Well, because, I guess, I want to be... useful. I want to help people. I want to do things people like and want and make people's lives better."
"You make my life better," Owner said, smiling.
"Clearly I can't even do that right," Seven said, looking down at her running gear.
Owner patted Seven on the cab roof. "And think about all those people who saw you at the railway show and during my Christmas Open House. You weren't in steam during the family Christmas party, but believe me, you were quite the conversation starter displayed on the mantle. And my youtube views have gone waaay up since I started including you in ops videos."
"I'm just not sure if it's good enough to be wanted. I want to be needed."
"I'm sorry to say, you might just have to settle for being loved."
When Owner had left and come back, she could no longer hear Seven when she tried to talk. Seven wasn't even sure if that had even really happened, or if she'd just imagined it. Maybe the Owner had felt the same way.
When the Owner was done with her fiddling with Seven's valve gear timing, she put Seven next to the other engines while she cooled.
"I haven't talked to Owner since she was a kid," Three said.
"I talked to her when she was drunk on hard egg-nog at the christmas party!" One said.
"Three. What were you trying to tell me, back at the station?" Seven said.
"Oh. Just that... our prototypes fought long and hard for the rest that they finally got. We're unfathomably lucky to have been born into that restful life. Cherish it."
Seven's eyes had fallen shut. "Mm...hmm..." she hummed. She fell asleep.
Seven was never fully satisfied, but she did feel better. More and more she began to take pride in doing her job as well as she had when she thought she was a full size engine. She went on a vacation to other garden railways, and met new engines, some of them being live steam like herself. Eventually, she even got to meet her prototype, a welsh engine which turned out to actually be closer to two foot gauge, and posed with her for a picture.
That summer, a new engine joined the fleet. A 2-4-0, but one which looked shockingly similar to Three, and painted bright red with brass fittings.
"Ohhh, I'm anxious," Eight said, "Oh, what if I don't do a good job on the passenger train, and I hurt someone? Then I'll have to go back to goods trains... and I'm no good at those either oh i just keep derailing them and I know I'm losing the railway money and--wh-why are you looking at me like that?"
Seven and Three shared a look.
"I'm not telling her," Seven said.
Three just grimaced.