The Abandoned Island

Not Forgotten

(Stanley POV)

Stanley remembered everything that had happened. When he first arrived to the Mid Sodor, it was great. He wasn't owned by the war department anymore, and he didn't have to run on cheap, hastily prepared tracks near the front during the war. He also met the three Mid Sodar engines, Duke, Falcon, and Stuart. It was a beautiful line, and he pulled the goods traffic, but when he was regauged, the works had done a horrible job. He constantly bumped and bounced on the rails, coming off dozens of times. After the first three or four times he came off, he just stopped caring. There was nothing he could do about it, so he put up with it, even with Duke scolding him for it. He constantly told Duke it was fine and nothing to make a big deal about, but Duke always disagreed.

Well, the manager at the time agreed with Duke and gave Stanley one final chance to prove himself, to show he could behave and not derail or else the manager would turn him into a generator. He had been worried and scared, so that day he tried his absolute hardest to not derail. The trip up the line to the mine went slow as he didn't want to chance bouncing off, but he arrived late. On the trip down, he went at a normal speed, trying not to be late on the delivery. Luck wasn't on his side, however, and his mis-gauged wheels couldn't handle the track, and he bounced off, shattering all the brittle slate in his cars. When Duke came up to rerail him, the manager had come along, and he was pissed. Stanley tried to plead his case, but the manager was having none of it. Stanley was towed to behind the engine shed, had his wheels removed, and turned into a generator. Every time one of the engines puffed by, he tried to beg for forgiveness, but they never paid him any mind.

A few years later, he was purchased by the Cas-ny-Hawin mine to pump water out of the mines. He didn't bother to ask for forgiveness there and just stayed silent and reserved. This suited the workmen just fine and no one cared or bothered to talk to him. For many years, he worked almost around the clock, six days of the week, for nearly every month. It was through sun, rain, even snow, and he moved nowhere and saw the same thing day in and day out. By 1946, he was extremely worn out and haggard. He was leaking water, his parts were pitted, and had holes forming, but the men just continued to run him. When December of that year finally hit, it would not end well, as every day he pumped gallons and gallons of water out, and by nightfall, it grew so cold the water froze and expanded. Over the course of several days, his parts expanded further and further, till one day his parts suddenly broke and the mine flooded. Little did he know the mine was already on its last legs, so when he broke down, the already angry and upset workers blamed him for breaking down on purpose. That he purposely failed so he could flood the mines and put them out of business as his last bit of spite. He tried, in vain, to plead and tell his side of the story, but noone believed him and by the end of the year, the mine had packed up and left, leaving him there to rust away.

Ten years later, during the night, after many of the less permanent buildings had  collapsed or rotted through, he felt the ground below him rumble. It woke him from his sleep and made him look around, believing someone had finally come for him, but when he opened his eyes, all he saw was a thick fog. The sounds of creaking wood and groaning metal echoed eerily in the fog, and then he felt the ground quake again. This time, however, it was stronger, and then it shook again and again, and he soon recognized what this feeling was. It was the feeling of a mineshaft collapsing, something he had only felt twice before. Before he could think on it too much, he felt the ground beneath him, and the building he was attached to, give way and he plummeted thirty-ish feet down and landed on his side before a large slab of wall landed on his front half, creating a small cave before he felt the rest of him become buried under plenty of dirt. He opened his mouth to yell but then closed it without making a sound. He knew no one would hear him, and even if they could, they thought he was an evil, spiteful engine and wouldn't rescue him regardless. So he resigned himself to being buried for the rest of his life, and that is what happened for years. The world became his little cave, water would run down from rain and wash channels through the dirt on his face and turn the dirt to mud. This only hardened into a more solid covering, but for better or worse, the mine never collapsed again. He accepted this as his punishment for not caring and disregarding everyone and being rude to everyone.