Chapter Text
The Fat Controller’s engines were excited. Months of rumours had finally proven themselves, and the engines could talk about nothing else.
“A’i sae wee cood have handled it.” huffed Donald at the coaling stage one day.
“Still, it’s nice that the Fat Controller’s bringing not one, but four engines to help us!” replied Duck.
“The summers have been getting busier and busier,” remarked Percy, shunting some trucks around the two other engines.
“If only that were the case…” sighed Duck’s driver. All three engines stopped in their tracks. Or at least, the one who was actually moving did.
“What do you mean?” enquired Duck. The other two looked at his cab like it’d personally harmed them.
“It’s all just politics,” said Duck’s driver. “The acting controller of the South Eastern Railway is Lady Catherine Causer, who is a rather good personal friend of the Fat Controller’s, and the daughter of-”
“She’s related to Denise Causer?” asked all three engines at once. Their crews chuckled.
“You still remember her?” asked Percy’s fireman.
“Of course we do!” steamed Percy. “Without her know-how, goodness knows where our railway would be right now!”
“Oliver talks about her a lot,” added Duck. “It was her who helped get his papers sorted out when he arrived.”
“Thaat wus’ a good team back then,” smiled Donald. “Douggie and I had noo reeson to be afraid.”
“Do you have one now?” asked Percy, confused.
“I wasn’t finished!” shouted Duck’s driver. “As I was saying, Catherine is Denise’s daughter, and friends with the Fat Controller. What is on paper help during the summer traffic, is merely a test to see if further collaboration between the two railways is possible.”
“So you’re saying…”
“I am. If this goes well, they’ll be here a lot more often, and we might be sent over there.”
“Those engines take their work very seriously,” said Duck’s rather tight-lipped fireman. “They aren’t painted up in bright colors, there’s no dawdling, I’m interested in how this will go…”
Percy and Donald rolled their eyes. They now understood why Duck didn’t speak highly of his fireman.
Near the carriage shed, Gordon overheard the whole conversation. He had opinions of his own, but he had something to take care of first.
Gordon glared. “Out with it, Henry.”
“I won't say a word,” retorted Henry. “The Fat Controller will, once he finally shows up.’
“You know something we don’t. You don’t need the Fat Controller’s word to say it!” hissed Gordon.
The noise had gotten everyone else’s attention. “What’s this about?” asked James.
Henry opened his mouth to speak, but Gordon was quicker. “Remember that gala Henry went to last year?”
“Yeah, I remember. It was me who had to pull the Kipper, not you…” grumbled James.
“Well…” Gordon looked at Henry, satisfied. “Henry met and knows some of the engines who are coming to help us out. Isn’t that right, Henry?”
Henry let off steam. “One. I met one.”
“Do tell.”
“His name is Laurence. He’s similar to me. Green, square firebox, ten wheels. We were parked next to each other before the parade was set to start, and he was quick to chat with me. He’s quite nice, really. Then, a foreman came running up to him and scolded him for missing his cue to go. He laughed it off and said talking to me was nicer than some parade. I think he was right!” finished Henry, puffing himself up at the end. The other engines just rolled their eyes.
“He sounds painfully oblivious.” huffed Gordon judgementally.
“On the contrary!” called Henry.
“Did anything else happen?” asked Edward quietly.
Henry’s proud face soon turned to one of thinking. “Well…” he sighed. “He led the parade like it was second nature to him. Then, he was rostered to take a railtour and… he was way too good. Better than I or any other engine there could do… maybe even better than we could’ve imagined.”
Gordon shut his eyes and sniffed. “I find that rather hard to believe.”
Henry looked at his friend. “You might say that now, Gordon, but at first I didn’t believe my eyes either! The way he handled the coaches, the passengers, the way he moved on the rails… it was…”
“Professional.” burst out Duck. Everyone looked towards him. He looked at his buffers.
“My-my fireman…” stuttered the green engine. “He spoke very highly of those South Eastern engines all day long. At first I thought he was just being as miserable about us as he always is, but now with Henry saying the same things…”
The silence afterwards was most uncomfortable. Some engines were too prideful to be shown up on their own rails. Others were anxious about the new engines being too pompous for their own good. No more was said, and everyone went to sleep.
Gordon was awoken next morning by a painful noise coming from next to him. He opened one eye, and saw Henry’s crew fussing about their engine, while Henry himself was coughing frantically.
“What happened to you?” asked Gordon, his voice full of pity.
“G-Gordon…” spluttered Henry. “RUN!”
Then, thick black smoke burst out of Henry’s funnel, showering him, his crew, and Gordon. When the dust settled, Gordon was almost in a state to start a kinship with Rusty.
“I… HENRY!” he puffed indignantly.
“I warned you.” replied Henry, finally being able to catch his breath.
Soon, Gordon’s crew arrived to start for the day. Gordon demanded he be cleaned immediately, but he was turned down.
“We’re under strict orders from the Fat Controller!” said his driver. “It was Henry who was meant to work with one of the new engines today, but now, we’ll have to do it!”
“Where is he?” asked Gordon.
“Outside.”
Then, Gordon looked around to see that the shed was empty outside of him and Henry. Instead, large clouds of steam came from the outside. If the Fat Controller was anywhere, he’d be there.
When he was ready, Gordon puffed out to the yard, eager to see the commotion. However, he didn’t get a front row seat.
“James!” called Gordon to the engine standing in front of him. “Move, I want to see this!”
“Fat chance!” laughed the red engine. “It’s not just you who wants to see these new engines!”
So, as James got a good look at all the newcomers, Gordon was peeking out from above his cab to catch something.
“It’s good you’re so small, you know.” remarked the blue engine. “If you were a big engine, I wouldn’t see a thing!”
James scoffed, but the sight in front of him meant he’d fume over Gordon’s remark later.
Facing the Fat Controller’s engines were four engines and Duck, being used, as always, as the podium the Fat Controller and who Gordon assumed was Lady Causer were standing on. The two controllers exchanged greetings, before introducing the arrivals.
Gordon immediately noticed Laurence. The large tender engine shimmered in the sun, his face shadowed by his blinkers. The more Gordon looked, the more familiar he seemed…
Next to Laurence was a large tank engine with long tanks and the number of wheels to match. Lady Causer introduced her as Lainey. The Great Western colours were unmistakable, much to Duck’s noticeable delight.
Then came an engine with a boiler pitched high and her running board well above her wheels, which were painted black, while the rest was red, very similar to James. Selby winked as Lady Causer introduced her.
Finally, was Jinty, a little black tank engine. Gordon noticed that Lady Causer had not touched the microphone mounted on one of Duck’s tanks, much like the Fat Controller whenever he made an announcement. Speaking of…
“All four of our visitors will be partnered with one of my engines to show them around for today.” he bellowed. “Lainey will be working with Donald, Selby with Edward, Jinty with Percy, and Laurence with Hen… Gordon.”
Gordon saw Laurence look around the yard in the hopes of finding him, but James meant that he did not.
“Good.” mumbled Gordon to himself as he went to get coal.
As he was filling up, Gordon watched the crowd of engines slowly disperse. Selby found Edward fairly quickly, and the two went off laughing to Edward’s branch line. Donald and Lainey went away, and were soon seen puffing off with a line of empty ballast trucks, no doubt to the “verra wee engines”.
Instead of doing his usual duties, Percy stayed behind at the Big Harbour to show Jinty around.
“Excuse me?” called a deep voice. Gordon saw that Laurence had slowly come up to him.
“Yes?”
“You’re Gordon. You’re going to work with me today.”
Gordon suddenly remembered that he was still covered in ash and soot because of Henry. “Nice to know you recognize me.” he said humourlessly. Laurence chuckled.
“Well, you’re rather hard to miss, clean or not. Is Henry alright?” he asked. Gordon hummed.
“Not really, but he’ll be fine again tomorrow. Nothing that a little clean-up can’t fix.” Gordon wanted to talk more about Henry. He wanted to talk about how Henry will repay him for showing Laurence around.
“What a relief!” laughed Laurence. A wide smile appeared on his chubby face. “Jolly good fellow, that Henry. Well, why don’t we go to fetch our coaches? The express won’t pull itself, even if your Fat Controller has railcars!”
And with a blow of a whistle, Laurence sped away towards the carriage shed. Gordon had trouble keeping up. He never in a million years expected the visitor to be so easy going. The thought of him being familiar did not leave his smokebox though…
“Why don’t we wait for someone to fetch them for us?” he called. Laurence scoffed.
“Who? Jinty? She’s probably giddy to work your yards. Shame Vincent isn’t here though, he’d fetch them.”
Gordon’s eyes widened in horror. He was glad no one saw him, as Laurence was in front of him and Henry’s soot obscured his face a bit. He’d thank every power above at the end of the day if he survived this.
Laurence came to a halt as he laid eyes on the first consist in the yard.
“I say! You have a lot of Maunsells here, Gordon! Some LNER standards too! Do you have Quadarts by any chance?”
Gordon gulped. Since he arrived on Sodor, he hadn’t even taken notice of the kinds of coaches he’d been pulling. The categorizing became much easier on the Fat Controller’s railway: coaches were either comfortable to pull or uncomfortable. All were brown with a single yellow stripe, so he couldn’t tell them apart by colour either. Not to mention the men at the works worked their magic to the carriages the same way they did to engines.
“Erm… maybe at the other end of the line… I haven’t been there in a while…” he groaned, eager to change the topic of discussion.
“Nevermind, I’ve found them!” tooted Laurence excitedly as he puffed deeper and deeper into the carriage shed. Soon, the puffing stopped altogether. Gordon raised an eyebrow.
“Well I’ll be!” shouted Laurence. “Period twos! I haven’t seen coaches like them in forever!”
He soon emerged from the depths with eight coaches Gordon was sure he’d pulled before.
“Here they are! Could we pull them?” asked the green engine.
“I think we can,” replied Gordon’s driver. Laurence’s eyes lit up.
“You see,” he began, “when I worked in the Midlands, they were what I pulled. Shame the Big Man blew all his money on us engines, he could do with coaches that aren’t those mark ones…”
“I thought Lady Causer was the one in charge.” remarked Gordon. The smile briefly vanished from Laurence’s face, instead looking at the big engine as if Gordon had asked him to do a backflip. It reemerged soon enough.
“Oh, my dear engine, Causer is only an acting controller. The Big Man? He’s the real one. Shame he can’t be bothered to show up!” and Laurence began to tow the coaches to the platform, tender first.
“That can’t be good.” frowned Gordon, unable to fathom an absent controller after so many years of working for the Hatts. “Is everyone else working at least?”
“Oh, they are,” smiled Laurence, concentrating while crossing the points leading to the station. “You should’ve seen our director of finance a few years ago. He was popular!”
“May I ask who it was?”
Laurence grinned cheekily. “No!” and with one final huff, he stopped at the platform gracefully.
“He’s very proper, very experienced…” chattered coaches and passengers alike. Gordon felt upset, but made an effort to not display it. He backed onto the train as the people got on board. Laurence meanwhile used the escape points to travel around Gordon and back down in front of him.
“Sorry,” he apologised. “Do you mind if I travel in front? It can’t be that hard to learn the line?”
Gordon resigned himself to his fate. He didn’t like showing his current state to his passengers, but at the same time, him leading, looking like this would’ve been simply too shameful.
“You can.” he sighed. Before Laurence could respond, the guard blew his whistle. Gordon started like he always did, slow and steady, and only picked up the pace once he was out of the yard. Today, he felt the coupling between him and Laurence tighten as they puffed away, but never enough to jerk him or the coaches forward. Soon they settled into a comfortable tandem as the stations passed by. Laurence stayed his talkative self, and Gordon always answered with curt replies.
“Y’know, I’ve actually been here once or twice before,” said the green engine while they steamed over the viaduct. “Surely you remember that time when everyone wanted to come here? I was just a face in the crowd for you Sudrians I s’ppose.”
Gordon’s memory finally gave way. First, he saw the Fat Controller in front of him…
“I see you had a good welcome in London…”
London. Of course. How could he forget? It wasn’t King’s Cross anymore, it was Saint Pancras! Then, Henry and James laughed at him when a couple months later, all of them went to Euston.
“That engine was right after all!” they joked.
But like Laurence said, new engines were arriving every single day in those times, and Gordon barely recalled one or two of them.
“King’s Cross? London’s Euston! Everybody knows that!”
That was one of the engines he remembered. That engine had ten wheels, deflectors, a tender like his, and a chubby face.
Gordon’s eyebrows ran up to his forehead. The engine cheerfully coasting in front of him was the engine who was the reason he didn’t speak to Duck for three weeks straight. The one visitor he went up to. Laurence kept going on and on about this and that, but Gordon wasn’t even listening by now. He replied with the odd grunt or two.
At the little engines’ station, Laurence laughed and said that their main line would’ve ended by now. Gordon was glad Skarloey was there to talk since he wasn’t in the state.
They reached the end of the line and went to get turned around. The initial shock had worn off, and Gordon mused that he felt most definitely awkward, if Laurence didn't press the topic he’d let it go too. By then the sun was shining on the train from all sides, and it was very hot. Gordon backed down onto the train again, and tried to bathe in the sunshine. He, however, could not. Instead of feeling nice against his boiler, it felt irritating. He was thankful when Laurence returned to the platform.
“My God, how did that happen?” gasped Gordon’s fireman. Laurence’s crew ran to Gordon’s cab to see what the matter was.
“Do you feel anything wrong, Gordon?” asked Laurence.
“No…” the blue engine replied.
“But I do!” hissed the first coach.
“So do I!” called all the others.
“Blimey, the steam heating’s on!” said Gordon’s driver. The engine’s eyes widened in horror.
“In THIS heat? The passengers will get boiled!” he exclaimed. Some people on the platform turned on their heels and went straight to the bus station, but not all of them.
Gordon’s fireman sighed and called over the guard. “It’s no use trying to turn it off now,” they said at last. “We’ll tell the passengers to pull the windows down. We’ll go as fast as we can so they can get off quickly.”
“Hurry up then!” ordered Gordon.
The big blue engine’s call to action made the crew hastily go through the coaches. The train set off, with Gordon and Laurence’s regulators fully open, and both firemen shoveling coal onto the fires. They tore down the line at breakneck speed. Soon, the biggest flaw in their plan arose.
“Henry’s tunnel!” gasped Gordon when it came in view.
Darkness engulfed them all. Gordon felt the soot and sparks from Laurence on his face, but it wasn’t like it would ruin his appearance more than Henry had. The coaches and the passengers swore and coughed. When they were out of the tunnel, the full extent of what happened was visible: Gordon looked worse for wear, while the coaches were sooty inside and out, maybe with the exception of the brake coach.
At the little engines’ station a horde of angry passengers swarmed out of the coaches, and ran towards the ticket office. Some went up to Gordon’s cab, but the driver made sure to let steam off at just the right angle so they couldn’t get close. Goodness knows what would’ve happened if they did.
By the time they reached the Big Station, the situation had calmed down. The Fat Controller and Lady Causer had been informed, and the passengers’ feelings had been tended to.
“I’ll take away the coaches,” Laurence offered. “Sorry this happened to you, Gordon.”
By now, Gordon had absolutely nothing to say. He gave Laurence his look of approval before muttering “It’s alright. Not like Henry would’ve done any better.”
Laurence grinned. “And by the way,” he whispered cheekily, “The South Eastern has given me so many wonderful opportunities. My favourite was getting to find out that London is actually Waterloo!”
Gordon gasped in shock, as Laurence winked and began moving away with the coaches.
“Come on dears, the washdown is waiting,” he chuckled, before turning his attention back to the blue engine. “Come down to our railway sometime Gordon, and stay for a while I think you’d love it!”
“Come on, Gordon,” said his driver. “The Fat Controller told us to give you an inspection to make sure everything’s alright.”
Gordon silently puffed into the sheds, where a fitter had just finished looking at Henry. The big green engine was looking a lot more spritely than he had done in the morning.
“Well, well, well, someone got a makeover!” he joked. Gordon rolled his eyes as he rolled onto a line far away from his friend. Henry didn’t get it, so he went on talking.
“How was Laurence? Did he pull the express well? Better even?”
Gordon pouted as his crew climbed into the ash pit. While he definitely didn’t want to talk to Henry, when he went to get hosed down quickly outside, he saw someone he was more willing to make conversation with.
“Why are you standing here, little James?” he asked.
James was startled, then looked at Gordon, annoyed, before sighing and looking at his buffers.
“Oh… nothing…” he puffed weakly.
“Did something happen? What insect was it? Wasps?”
“N-no.” stuttered James. Gordon wanted to leave him be, but something inside of his frames didn’t let him to.
“Did the visitors do anything?” he asked. Truth be told, he didn’t think any of them could be malicious, but it was the only thing he could think of at that moment. Laurence in particular has been a pleasant disappointment for him.
“Yes… no… not directly… but Gordon… is it true what everyone says? That these engines are a lot better than we are?”
“Who? Duck’s fireman? Come on, James.”
“Not just him!” whooshed James angrily. “The passengers! The coaches! The trucks! And they’re right! I saw that Selby today, and watching her work was like watching magic unfold. They’re on a different level entirely! What if everyone turns on us?”
“They would never do that…” but Gordon didn’t know if he said that to convince James or himself.
“Would they? We knew the old Mrs. Causer, but not her daughter! How can we trust her? And who is the real mastermind?”
“The Fat Controller trusts her. That’s enough for me.” sighed Gordon. James scrunched his nose.
“The Fat Controller’s been fooled before one time too many. I’m not sure he can protect us. And what if those engines start slowly inviting the best of us to their railway like vultures?”
Gordon’s confidence slipped away from him. The conversation he’d overheard yesterday and Laurence’s friendly offer played over and over in his smokebox.
“Let’s wait for tomorrow, James.” he said as he slowly clanked back to the shed. Gordon saw the red engine scoff at him before puffing away himself.
Gordon didn’t consider himself to be one who is immediately suspicious of newcomers. He tried to leave that mindset behind him. But now, the pieces started to fall into place way too well. Laurence saw him from the washdown, and greeted him with a friendly toot, but Gordon didn’t even notice…