Chapter Text
Edward sighed as he watched the twins bump another truck into the buffers.
“You’d better stop or—” There was a loud crash, and the twins glared at each other. “… you’ll cause an accident.”
Bill and Ben began arguing loudly over who’s fault it was that the buffers were now in splinters… again.
“Your fault!” they both hissed. “No! It’s yours! What’d you mean it was mine! It was yours!”
“Even when arguing they are in sync,” muttered Edward, puffing away to fetch a small crane.
While he was away, Bill and Ben scuttled off to collect more trucks and put them into a different siding.
“It’s my siding,” Bill snapped.
“No, it’s mine!”
“My train of trucks is longer.”
“I got here first.”
“I’m lined up properly for the siding.”
“You’ll have to pry it from my cold buffers.” Ben charged forwards to force his train into the siding first, just as Bill tried to do the same thing. The trucks collided violently, and turned into matchsticks and twisted frames.
“Your fault!” shouted both twins at the same time.
Edward just put together his trucks and puffed away before he got dragged into yet another argument. The two had been like that for weeks. Edward didn’t quite know how it started, but it was currently a continuing argument that was causing too many delays – and way too many costs.
There had to be a way to stop their bickering, but unless someone knew why they were arguing Edward couldn’t see a way to end their quarrel.
The old blue engine wondered if he could swap jobs with BoCo to try and get some peace – and he honestly worried that BoCo would take him up on the offer just so he didn’t have to pull the Midnight Goods to the Other Railway. The diesel had been very odd about it, as had Bear.
So instead, Edward decided to make a plan.
The next morning, Edward brought his empty china clay trucks and the workmen’s coach as usual, but then he stopped on the points at the entry to the clay works. He looked to check that both Bill and Ben were close by, then groaned.
“Oh! My poor aching joints,” he grumbled. “I think something’s wrong.”
“We can’t stop here,” his driver sighed. “Can you…”
“I can’t move another wheel turn,” Edward lied. Bill spotted them first.
“Don’t worry Edward,” he puffed, rolling up and coupling to the old blue engine. “I’ll pull you into a siding.” Unbeknownst to Bill, Edward slipped on his brakes. He’d just had them repaired – he wasn’t going anywhere. Bill pulled and puffed and puffed and pulled – but Edward did not move.
Ben sighed and rolled over.
“Stop it Bill, you’re too weak to do this. Let me!” Bill glared at Ben, but moved out of the way. Now Ben coupled up. He hauled and heaved and heaved and hauled – but Edward still did not move.
“This is ridiculous!” grumbled Ben. “Someone get BoCo!” Edward blinked.
“Aren’t you going to both try… together?” he asked curiously.
Neither Bill nor Ben answered.
“If I can’t pull Edward, then maybe I can push him. Move over Ben!” Bill shouted. And he puffed away. Edward frowned.
“Where… where is he going?” Ben didn’t reply.
“Can someone just move this engine?!” shouted the clay works foreman. By now, Edward’s crew had clued in to their engine’s plan. Used to Edward’s antics (they almost always worked), they decided not to do anything.
That was their mistake.
When Bill returned, it was with a long line of old, rickety trucks.
“If I build up enough speed I can push Edward off the points!” he exclaimed. Edward was alarmed.
“Stop, stop! That will never work!” Bill considered.
“You’re right. Ben, come over here and help me.”
“Are you sorry for bumping me?”
“Are you sorry for bumping me?”
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
Edward was confused. Happy the twins were friends again, but still confused.
“What was that?” he asked. His driver and fireman released his brakes.
“Driver?”
“We need to go. Now!” yelped his driver. Edward looked ahead to see Bill and Ben backing up down the line.
“Agreed,” gulped Edward. He puffed onto a siding and out of the way.
The Bill and Ben charged. They dashed forwards with their long line of trucks, racing past Edward and across the points. The trucks hit a sharp curve and toppled over, their rotted wood crumbling as they crashed into one another. Bill and Ben came to a… relatively safe stop once they realised what was going on.
“You tricked us!” they exclaimed.
“You two needed to talk out whatever was causing your argument,” Edward chided. “I thought you two would be sensible and ask for each other’s help to pull me out of the way – not try and use trucks as a battering ram to crush me!”
“Mistakes were made,” Bill puffed.
“Can’t stop, won’t stop,” Ben grinned.
Edward sighed.
“I’ll get the breakdown train.” And with that, he puffed away.
That evening, Edward decided to make a rule book for dealing with Industrial Engines like Bill and Ben. The first rule?
Never break down near Industrial Engines – they will not act sensibly.
But that wasn’t quite the end of Edward’s dealing with the twins’ bickering. The next day he puffed down to the clay works again to find the pair arguing over the remains of the broken trucks.
“We need to take this lot to the scrapyards.”
“No, we can just dump it in the sea!”
“This isn’t the sixties anymore – people will wave signs and stand around bonfires if we do that!”
“How does that affect us?”
“Driver and fireman won’t do their job because they’ll be too busy holding up signs.”
“I repeat: how does that affect us?”
“We won’t be moving.”
“And? Free rest day!”
“Good point. I still think we should scrap this lot though. Maybe we’ll see Oliver’s demon diesels!”
“Demon diesels?” Edward interrupted, puffing over. “What are you two bickering about?”
“I want to dump this lot in the sea – but Ben wants to scrap it all. He wants to see if the demon diesels are real!”
The demon diesels were what the engines had coined the two diesels Oliver had seen, simply because there was nothing else to call them. Only the Electric engines saw them, and none of them liked to talk about it. But Edward was curious.
“I’ll take the scrap,” he said. “After all, there is quite a bit thanks to all your arguments.” Bill and Ben nodded, then showed Edward to a very long line of trucks filled with twisted metal frames. The splintered wooden planks had been taken by the Vicar for a bonfire at the next church fete. Edward buffered up, whistled, and puffed away with the scrap.
He had no idea what he was in for.