Sodor's Atomic Freeze: UnOffical Remaster

January 18: Wellsworth

Today's been a long day, but pretty good overall now that we've found some survivors.

We set off early this morning the way we intended. We passed through Lower Suddery and by all the dead trees and wildlife that only made things even more eerie. When we made it to the station, we saw some families who had gathered their things and left to try and catch any engines going down the branch. I even recognized one as an old friend of mine named Jonas. Unfortunately, BoCo and Salty didn't have any coaches, so we told them to wait for Edward before we continued up the line. A few minutes later, we found Trevor inside the shed with Jem Cole and his family, all ok thankfully. There wasn't much for them to tell us, but he remembered hearing a few engines pass by the junction that split the mainline and the branchline.

We went our separate ways, mostly since we didn't have a crane and planned to get to Wellsworth. When we arrived though, we practically smelt nothing but death. The yard was also in a bad state, dead trucks and corpses were littered everywhere. Hell, we even found Neville's remains at the back of the goods shed. Salty figured we should check inside the sheds so we drove BoCo over and we opened the doors to see an engine mostly unfamiliar to us, but we knew him as a station pilot back at Vicarstown.

He introduced himself as Jinty and said he had come all the way from Vicarstown with a small train set for Wellsworth. However, he was in a bad mood before leaving the station due to messed up points and an argument with Reginald. The explosion didn't happen until he was nearing Crovan's Gate though, and he ran as fast as he could out of there, passing by both Gordon and Sir Handel. Eventually, he made it to Wellsworth and shunted away Neville before he hunkered down while Adam and Laura, his crew, searched the nearby town for supplies. But during the past few nights, he'd heard several engines pass by.

We figured to wait until they returned so we could figure out our next plan, which took longer than expected. Edward eventually arrived and we cleaned up Wellsworth the best we could.

However, we soon heard a distorted whistle of an engine, and Salty went out onto the mainline to check it out. All of a sudden, the engine raced through and crashed into him, sending him flying back down the branchline. We were completely shocked and caught off guard by what happened.

There was also only one yellow tender engine on the island. BoCo booked it back down the branch in hopes of saving either Salty or Molly. Thankfully, by the time we made it down there, luckily, basically no one was badly hurt. Salty and Molly had crashed into a siding against some vans, which damaged Salty's back buffers, but he was fine otherwise. As for Molly though, she was ok, well, as ok as she could relatively be.

It seems like those chemicals from the laboratory don't always kill you, but it may leave both people and engines vulnerable to some kind of mutations. Molly has somehow grown a third eye on her forehead that has a blue pupil. Her right eye was melted, and a whole lot of a blue hue had spread across her forehead and that part of her face. Hopefully this won't become an issue for the rest of us.

We tried asking Molly what happened to her, but her memory was foggy, presumably due to the mutations, and all she knew was that she'd been hiding inside of Henry's Tunnel with someone else she can't remember. She's a real good help if I do say so myself. (Totally not sarcastic)

Anyways, we moved back up to Wellsworth with Salty as we left Molly to be looked after by Bill and Ben. Think we'll go out and try to find survivors tomorrow at Elsbridge, and maybe beyond that if we're lucky. I'm signing off for now, hoping that we're still ok by the time I'm writing in this thing again.