Other Railways and New Coaches

                                    

                                          
10:45 a.m., Wednesday, September 11th, 1940
Now Sodor did not just have a standard railway with one main line and five branches, it had two narrow gauge lines on opposite sides of the island and a rack railway in the center. These three were known as The Mid-Sodor, Skarloey and Culdee Fell Railways. They helped to provide minerals, sightseeing views, lead, and many other things to people from all over and abroad.
The narrow-gauge Mid-Sodor Railway was located on the far west side of the island and ran a total length of 25 miles. There lived a total of thirteen engines. Their names were Duke, Stuart, Falcon, Albert, Atlas, Alfred, Jim, Tim, Jerry, John, Jennings, Stanley and Smudger, the last two having been turned into pumping engines after recklessly coming off the rails one too many times because neither of them had been re-gauged properly.
As for the active engines, Duke was No. 1 and the oldest of the locomotives, named after his grace, Sir Charles Robert Norramby, the Duke of Sodor. Stuart and Falcon, the youngest of the engine family, called him "Granpuff" because they were fond of him and looked up to him as a grandfather figure. But at the same time, they often got tired of hearing all about his grace. They teased Duke before his story about Stanley and Smudger made them behave better and they along with the five other engines lived in harmony for many years.
Today, Falcon and Stuart were shunting and loading trucks in the mines. They had been working for eight hours and they had little to do after that. When they decided to return home to the sheds, Stuart wanted to talk about the war.
"You know how Granpuff feels about war," Falcon reprimanded him.
"The same way he feels about you after you nearly fell off the mountain road?" asked Stuart.
"It wasn't my fault! If it hadn't been for that bend in the tracks, things would have gone more successfully."
"But at least, the passengers praised you for being a bulldog who wouldn't let go."
Falcon thought back to that event.
"I guess I was a hero after all."
In spite of the many times Duke would say "That would never suit His Grace" after anything they did was wrong, he still had a few exceptions, purely for the sake of humor.
"It would be a real shame if you rolled down the mountain and spoiled your new paint," Duke once said to Falcon.
The Skarloey Railway, the island's second narrow gauge line, was located on the eastern side of Sodor and it was the home of two little engines named Skarloey, No. 1 and Rheneas, No. 2. Both were painted red with blue lining and were the oldest engines on the island as early as 1865, when they first arrived at Crovan's Gate from the engineering company Fletcher, Jennings, and Co., and now they were just about growing old. Despite the praise of their manager, Mr. Robert Sam, the Thin Controller, and the line's owner, Sir Handel Brown, service on the railway was lean and under the threat of closure if they did not work hard enough. The human crew of the railway was pretty minimal too; David Hugh was Skarloey and Rheneas' driver and fireman while Robert's son Peter Sam was the guard. He did everything else too, and he helped Mr. Hugh mend the two old engines in the shed...but even that period of rest wasn't enough time for the engine brothers to have a full conversation.
The morning was the only time where the two liked to discuss things before they went off to work and the topic of the day was England's involvement in the war. The coaches, Agnes, Ruth, Lucy, Jemima and Beatrice the guard's van had overheard their passengers gossiping about Germany's potential invasion of England last night. Newsvenders and the papers they sold were also a reliable source of information.
"The people on the mainland think they'll be safe," said Skarloey. "They look up to their prime minister as a national hero. But they don't know for certain if he will go down in history as the man who did nothing but say 'we will never surrender' and keep true to his promise. Personally, I think they'll be safe here on our island."