Sodor's Fall

The Survivors

16/8

5:50am
I was awoken to the sound of boiler quivering and soft crying. I woke up to find it was Rosie. I asked her what was wrong. “I don’t like being outside Vicarstown” she said trying to hold her sniffling back. I understood straight away. She was pretty much told to escape her home in order to survive. She was scared. Oliver woke up, hearing half of what she said. “I’m sorry Rosie” Oliver replied, “But we had to leave so that we could survive”. “What about Douglas and Emily”, she said even more scared, “What if something happens to them. What if they get swept by a bigger flood. What if-”. I had to interrupt her and tell her to calm down. She took a few deep breaths. I told her everything will be fine. I told her that once we get to the mainland, we can try to find some other place to live. “But Vicarstown is my home. I don’t want to go anywhere else” she protested. “What are we supposed to do?” replied Oliver, “This Island has a curse for bad weather, do you really want to live in a cursed land?”. “Do you want to go back to the mainland?” said Rosie with anger in her voice “The place that tried to scrap you?”. Oliver and I decided to leave it at that.

8:40am
Okay, this is where things get a bit odd. Once everyone is awake. We load Duck onto a nearby flatbed that’s still moveable. We managed to find planks so Duck can get rolled up onto the truck. Once on, we decided to go separate ways. Oliver would traverse up to Harwick and Peel Godred after that. And Rosie would check Knapford and down Thomas’ Branchline. We’ll start with our side of the story. We headed down to Knapford quickly, but carefully so as to not upset the balance Rosie currently has given that she’s only moving on her back two sets of wheels. When we did get to Knapford, it was a total mess. Seaweed and algae laid all over the floor and the roof. I asked Damien to look around the offices to see if there was anything of notice, while Rosie and I checked the sheds and sidings. When we got to the sidings, there was nothing but a set of wheels, both of us were confused as to what or who they belonged to. Then we checked the sheds. Big Mistake. Multiple engine shells were scattered in front of us. The only ones one could tell before I threw up were a 2-6-0 modified class 28 Mogul, a 9F, and an Ivatt 2 locomotive. Strange, I don’t recall The Fat Controller purchasing an Ivatt 2, but it was still a sight of horror. We decided to leave and head for the harbour.

9:03am
The harbour wasn’t as bad as the station and sheds themselves, but it still had some significant damage. The only form of life we saw was a sailboat, and someone was inside, we went over and saw that the sailboat was skiff, and the person inside was none other than Sir Richard Topham Hatt. He told us to get skiff to his wheels at the yard, once that happened he wanted to speak to us. So Rosie and I did just that. Once skiff was back on his wheels, Damien came running to us holding a piece of paper. These were the list of engines resting at the sheds at the time. Bear in mind the sheds are meant to hold eight engines, however sixteen were managed to be cramped in with a few coaches. The significant ones were James, Murdoch, Harvey, and the Ivatt turned out to be an engine called Thwaryes. Thwaryes, who was that? “That was an engine my grandfather, Stephen, bought back in the early 70s” said Richard. “Wait. the 70s? I was at Vicarstown by then, how did I not see him?” asked Rosie. “That’s because he arrived via ship from Australia. He ran the Kirk Ronan Branchline to here” answered Richard “For now, I’ve evacuated some of the civilians into small row boats to head for one of the mountains". I was just glad he was okay. “There was another thing I noticed” said Richard “Does anyone else notice how fast the water was rising? And I accidentally slept overnight in the office that night, and I heard an explosion from the water, not an earthquake explosion, I mean by a dynamite explosion”. Now that he mentions it, Adam did mention that it felt like a dynamite like tremor happened before the flood, but I shrugged it off as an earthquake. Could it be possible that the floods were staged?

2:50pm
After what felt like ages since we left Knapford, we finally arrived at Ffarquhar with no sight of other engines. We checked the sheds, and just like what we saw with Edward and Toby, it wasn't a pretty sight. A modified E2 tank engine and a single coach stood there lifeless. We lost Thomas and Henrietta. Damien tried to find answers in the station, while Richard just stood there with a few tears in his eyes. I know what this has been for him, he lost his number one engine. Damien came back empty handed. Richard hung his Tophat on the tank engines lampion, and his coat on his buffer. We sighed a sad sigh. Fortunately, out of the blue, we heard a few sounds. A whistle, and a horn. Just then, around the corner, came Percy, Mavis, Annie, and Clarabel. We were all relived and confused. How did they survive when we were close to being caught in water on Gordon's hill?. "Well you see" said Percy, "we survived because of an avalanche that happened during the rain storm.". "Wait" Richard says confused as the rest of us, "an avalanche saved you four?". "Well" exclaimed Mavis, "these three were saved by it, I hid in the mines. The men were clever enough to form the stones into a wall of sorts. Water still came in, but we had a pumping system so we managed to survive". "And in terms of us", continued Percy, "Us three were caught in the avalanche, were stuck under a tarpaulin saving us from both the flood and the avalanche. It was until Mavis got us out sometime after that we were rescued". I was certainly glad they were safe, but also sorry for the coaches. Annie and Clarabel were told of their friend's demise. They were understandably miserable, and all of us helped to try and calm them down. Once they did, we decided to head back to Tidmouth to meet up with Oliver, Duck, and whoever else survived.

7:46pm
Thanks to the help of Percy and Mavis, we got back to Tidmouth in a timely manner and saw Duck, still perched on his flatbed. We asked him if Oliver had arrived back. "I haven't seen him since this morning when you guys left" he replied. This left us worried. We'll wait until tomorrow to see if he does return, if he doesn't then we'll go up to see if he is okay. Granted, he is only moving on one set of axles so he would be going quite slow. For now, everyone needed sleep. And that's what we did.