the tales of the Coaldai railway

a helpful return

It was a frosty morning in the town of coaldai and mark was resting in the shed while Nick was doing permanent way duties at gallen. Mark was being steamed up while he looked into the distance. He saw a blue shape in the distance slowly backing down towards the shed; it got closer and closer until mark realised it was a tank engine; The engine greeted him warmly:

"hello there" greeted the engine" I'm Colin"

"oh so your Colin" realised Mark" I am mark"

"pleasure to meet you Mark, now why don't we get down to business"

"ok sure"

"so today lord decal has told me to help you to handle shunting and pulling coaches"

"well let's get to it"

"agreed"

With that mark and Colin set of to the coaldai carriage sidings and collected a rake of 4 coaches and a luggage van and departed for the station where Colin and mark top and tailed the train and ran passenger trains up and down the line all day; Colin told Mark when he made a mistake and told him what to do instead. 

As the day wore on Mark began to become annoyed at Colin for constantly correcting him and at the end of the day marks anger boiled over: 

"Can you stop correcting me!" yelled Mark as he shunted the coaches into the sidings but in his anger he slammed them into the buffers.

"Calm down Mark" called Colin "I am sorry if I have angered you but you should not bump the coaches because I angered you"

"I... I guess your right, I am sorry." apologised Mark.

"Don't apologise to me, apologise to the coaches" responded Colin.

"fine, sorry coaches" apologised Mark.

the coaches mumbled quietly as Mark and Colin backed towards the yard entrance as Colin noticed Mark was looking down at his buffers and spoke:

"what's wrong mark"

"it's just.. I.. I let my anger get the best of me, I hate when I let my anger gets the best of me"

"I see... well I think I can help but tonight I tell you and Nick a story"

with that the two engines left for the shed. But first Colin looked at the sunset and muttered "I miss you Josh and Jan"

Mark didn't notice.