FMR RWS- Short Story Collection

Pride and Snow.

 Monty is a big engine who lives in a railyard in the Western Mountains. He's a distinctive looking engine, with twelve smallish wheels, a tall funnel, a massive boiler, the number 1029 on his sides, and a terrible attitude.

He's part of the strongest class of engine on his line, so he gets the heaviest trains, and takes them up the most difficult lines. He's worked hard, but he doesn't mind too much- he believes he's the pride of the line, and he's not entirely wrong. But this has led him to become conceited. He sees himself as better than everyone else- everyone except for Samson. He listens to the older engine as the best of students listening to a teacher's lecture. He may not always be the most polite, but Samson is the only engine he'll never be short with.

Why?

Well, that's the story you're here to read, I hope.

But first, a word on the older engine.

~

Samson is a much smaller engine. He wasn't the railway's first, but he was a member of the first class, and he's the oldest one still around. He has six wheels, a tender almost as large as he is, a small boiler, the number 107, and no real cab. He was built at Crewe and arrived at the docks of Fierro in 1873. He was old and worn before Montferrand's class was drawn or thought of. He used to work the heavy trains, though it'd often take two or three engines like himself. Now he works in the big yard in Fierro, where the trains coming down from the hills are broken up and the trains to go over the mountains are put together. Most of the bigger engines treat him with respect, and they appreciate his advice. He's old and wise. But not Monty, not yet.

No, if you asked Monty, Samson was full of it. Too much time in the sun had cracked his boiler, he'd say. He was a senile piece of scrap iron, fit maybe for fetching wagons or coaches, if you weren't in a hurry. Samson, of course, never took it personally, and always tried to speak kindly to him- and was always met by a blast of steam and a sharp, dry response. Now was just such a time.

The engines were sat in the yard, a moment of rest in the middle of a day's work. November 1913. Montferrand was still a young and reckless engine, having only been in service for just over a year. But as the old saying goes... the less you know, the more you think you know.

Samson was worried. The weather was turning for the worse, and Monty's train was heavy.

"I'd think that they should hold up the train", Samson spoke in a concerned tone, looking up at the sky. "Those clouds can mean only trouble, and the line out to Cords Bridge doesn't forgive."

As usual, the larger engine wasn't having any of it. He looked down at the small engine, blew out a cloud of steam from his cylinders, and then spoke, with venom in his tone.

"I'm sure that was excellent advice, perhaps in your day, when goods were sent by pack-horse over the mountains. But I believe it's the 20th century now, Samson. The train simply can't be held up for some weather. Of course, unless you want to answer to the yardmaster."

The yardmaster, of course, was a man who had been with the railroad almost as long as Samson had, and would probably side with him. Monty knew this. So instead of allowing Samson to respond, as soon as he finished speaking he sounded a blast on his whistle and rolled forward to meet his train. 30 cars, a mix of newer bogie vans- "boxcars", as they called them on the other side of the channel- and older two-axle vans and open trucks. Supplies for the town- because once the first real snow came, it could be days or weeks until the town could be reached by the outside world again. But the weather men had said with great confidence that snow couldn't be expected for another week or more. Monty wasn't afraid, even as the clouds began to roll in.