Travel By Railby Northwest BronyChaptersSet OutNo CornRush JobRIP TrackSet OutTRAVEL BY RAIL Chapter 1 The bulk ship Magic pulled into the port of Sacramento. None of the workers on the docks, the captain, or the crew knew what would happen to the cargo. Sure, there were the papers that told them, but not even a paper trail can follow something the likes of the ship’s name. The smell of creosote oil and the rumble of diesel engines were the most prominent features of the railyard in the pre-dawn hours of its existence. Like most mornings, it was an early start to a busy day shipping windmill parts, cement, and lumber to and from the ships that ferry them across the ocean. The day before, the bulk ship Magic had been relieved of its cargo of gravel and cement in order for the supplies to be shipped by train for delivery in Illinois. This morning, the loaded cars were being shunted into one long string for the two powerful 9-40CW locomotives to pick up and set out on its trans-continental journey. Junior Norfolk Southern employee Adam Cowl, known for his cheerful demeanor and positive attitude, was the engineer for the long trip; Norfolk Southern only wanted a competent man on their payroll to touch the controls, the conductor on the other hand would change in the last leg of the trip to another Norfolk Southern employee. The first conductor was senior Union Pacific employee Jacob Holcroft, a somewhat grouchy man who drove fear into the hearts of greenhorns. As the last car of the eastbound train was coupled on, it was time for the two railroad employees to leave the comforts of the warm yard office and begin the long journey to the lakes. “Heh, this will be the longest point-to-point trip I've done,” Adam broke the silence as they made their way to the idling locomotives nearby. “It's not that special,” Jacob replied, his lack of sleep giving him a cranky tone that set off Adam. Climbing into the cab, they were greeted with temperature only slightly warmer than the early morning air. The two chilled employees sat down in their respective seats and got to work. “Go ahead and get the cars,” Jacob stated firmly. After about a minute of yard-speed travel, Adam stopped the train and mentioned, “We’re past the switches.” “I know,” Jacob said as he promptly left the cab to throw the sat witch so that Adam could back the locomotives onto the train. A minute later, Jacob’s voice reappeared on the radio, “Come on and connect the cars.” Obediently, Adam pulled the reverser back, and applied small power to the throttle. Adam looked out the rear-view windows as the locomotives backed up to the cars. Adam pushed the throttle to neutral as the distinctive chunk a-chunk sound of two rail cars connecting rang out through the now-brighter morning. Jacob reappeared in the cab a minute later, sat down, and picked up his desk’s telephone. “This is Norfolk Southern 9229, requesting permission to exit the yard.” Adam could faintly hear the reply, but waited for Jacob to tell him to leave. “Lets get out of here,” was Jacob’s only order. Adam switched the reverser into forwards, and after taking a look at the trains air levels, pulled back on the throttle. The throb and whir of the engines picked up as the two turbocharged v-16s challenged Newton’s first law of motion, the train slowly picked up speed as it gave any rail enthusiast a reason to smile and wave. Making its way out of the yard in the waxing sun, the train was one step closer to its destination. o-o-o The seemingly-endless scrublands whizzed by as the train and its crew made progress across the desert. Earlier, they were held back by another freight that had a hot bearing and was unable to continue at speed until they could get to the nearest RIP track. They were behind schedule now, and dissension was growing between the two members of the crew as they sped across the desert. Surprisingly, Adam had taken an offensive stance, while Jacob was rather calm about the incident. “How come the hotbox detectors didn’t alert them before they could make us late?” Adam quipped. “There was no way that they could have done anything about it anyways. Besides, we don’t have hotbox detectors any earlier on that portion of the line.” Jacob tried to calm Adam down in the best greenhorn-quelling manner that he could put forth. “That train wasn’t even carrying anything heavy enough to wear the bearings out. You heard them on the radio, they didn’t know how it happened themselves.” Jacob shifted in his chair, then spoke up again, “It may have been a deadheading train, but it carried freight before.” Jacob’s attempts at extinguishing Adam’s ire about the overheated bearing were not met with good results. If anything, Jacob’s calm yet annoyed demeanor was harming the situation rather than helping. Adam decided that the scenery was much more worthy of his attention while Jacob sat in his chair looking cross at Adam. The air within the cab was warmer; the tension between the two was thick in the air. After a minute of staring at Adam waiting for a reaction, Jacob declared brazenly that he was going to get some fresh air for a minute. Adam sarcastically replied by telling him not to fall off. Jacob got out of his seat and walked the two steps to the door. Putting his hand on the cold metal door handle, he paused for a moment, turned the latch, and... Like an intense flashover, everything in the cab went white. To Adam, there was a blinding white light that filled the cab as Jacob stepped out the door. Blinking his eyes a few times to get them to see again, he looked around the cab to see if the light had done anything. Seeing nothing wrong with the cab, he once again turned his attention to the rails ahead. He didn’t see anything different out there either. Just what was that light anyway? Adam didn’t see the point of caring about it anymore; his eyes had readjusted, and it didn’t affect anything. A minute passed without any disturbance from Jacob. It was a good minute. Adam looked back at the door that Jacob had left the cab by. Jacob still hadn’t come back in yet, and Adam was getting worried about him. Did Jacob fall off? was Adams main question as he turned his attention back towards the rails ahead of him. A large gray something was coming at him fast. Not good. What the heck? Why is there someone on my line? Adam’s thoughts swirled angrily in his head. Instead of playing a fool, Adam took action, setting the dynamic brakes to the setup phase, he put the air and locomotive brakes into emergency stop. The dynamic brakes took a few seconds to prepare, and when they did, he applied all they had as well. One hand on the horn, Adam hoped it would end well. Suicide thoughts on a railroad. Promontory had a boring job. To clarify, Promontory’s job was pulling the passenger train between Grass Valley and Fillydelphia, with stops at Ponyville, Dodge, Hoofpeka, and Appleoosa. The daily service that his and the other team working for the railroad provided were invaluable to the ponies of those territories. The other team working for the railroad did not pull a passenger train like him, instead they headed a freight train going the opposite direction. In between Ponyville and Dodge there was one siding track where the two trains would stop and have lunch, then continue their journey. The daily rhythm that his railroad job provided was one that Promontory had grown quite bored of. You, the human reader, may be curious as to how Promontory and his team of ponies came to be pulling a train. The answer lies in the rarely-seen earth-pony magic. Despite unicorn magic being more noticeable and far more useful in day-to-day life, an earth pony who could manipulate the magic of the ground was a skilled pony indeed and in high demand. At least, high demand in the railroading industry. Promontory worked for one of the oldest and most famed railroads in Equestria, one that made enough profits to pay for long-term employment of earth-pony magic channellers. Newer railroads that were not as wealthy as Promontory’s employer would have to settle for unicorn-magic powered engines, a costly choice because unicorns would have to re-enchant the engine every few weeks, a rewarding process only for the unicorn. Promontory’s employer had been established early enough that they got the cream of the crop; ponies that could augment their strength to many times their own and pull several-ton trains through the desert every day. As the conductor and head of his team, it was his job to alert the team if something came up. As mentioned before, it was a boring job, but it paid the best out of all the jobs along the route. A whine-like noise cried out through the desert, breaking the bored stupors of Promontory and the three ponies behind him. “Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! Wah wah waaaaaaaaaah!” Promontory was confused. He had never heard such a noise before. He looked around to see if he could spot the source of the noise. Meanwhile, the noise continued. “Waaaaaah! Wah waaaaaaaaah waaaaaaah!” Promontory had heard of dragons and their strange calls before, but he had neither heard of or seen a desert dragon before. Maybe he could get a sum of money off the discovery if he lived to tell the tale. The sound, which didn’t stop except for short breaks to catch its breath, still continued; in fact, it was getting louder. “Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!” Promontory looked around once again, and steeled himself for an attack. When he looked dead ahead, he could see a black shape with blinking lights headed right at him. Promontory had heard of unicorns that light up when they get really angry. If something similar held true for the dragon, it must be pissed. His eyes went wide and his mind found only one word, “STOP!” “What the hell?” Jacob swore loudly. One moment he was leaving the cab of the locomotive, the next, he was deposited onto the ground, his hand on an invisible door handle, the train mysteriously nowhere in sight. Author's Note Last edit: 6/1/13 No CornTRAVEL BY RAIL Chapter 2 The opposing train, which was now much closer, was identified by Adam to be a steam engine, possibly a 4-4-0 or a 4-6-0 by its prominent diamond stack. The other train still had yet to acknowledge his erratic honking, and as far as he could tell, continued on at about the same speed. Adam's speed on the other hand was dropping slowly. From the high 80's that he and Jacob were traveling at to make up for lost time, the speedometer now read about 60 miles per hour. What the heck is this? It's like I don't even exist! Adam continued to lay on the horn with hope that something would happen and everyone would be safe. Looking over the controls to see if he missed something, he found the knob that controls the lights and with a frantic twist, the dial was set to all the way on. It's going to be a cornfield meet without any corn. The lights seemed to be the catalyst; the opposing train seemed to slow down, but it didn't seem to be enough to Adam. The trains speed now was about 50 miles an hour, but it was dropping slightly faster than before, which gave Adam some hope that the engine's Comfort Cab would protect him. The two trains still were getting closer and closer together as Adam was still busy on the horn. In an act of self-preservation, Adam fled the cab and ran along the side of the engine and jumped onto the running board of the second engine. He made haste in getting the cab's front door open, then fled out the back of the second engine's cab as well. In his desperation, Adam had forgotten to turn the bell off, but it was too late to do anything about it now. Adam looked at the ground to estimate his speed, he guessed the train was going about 20 miles an hour now. Each passing second, there was no sound of a collision, and Adams hope grew. As the engine slowed down to a crawl, he believed that disaster had been averted. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, Adam counted the seconds until his train would come to a complete stop. Adam was almost estatic now; for all the anxiety that the whole incident had caused, there was a real chance that nobody would get hurt. Nothing could have prepared him for the heart-wrenching scream of pain that came from the front of the locomotive as it finally stopped. Unlike the other ponies behind him, Promontory had a clear view of the angry dragon as it got closer and closer to him. The other ponies could sense his fear though, and tried to stop the train as best as they could. The railroad that ran the trains that Promontory and his team pulled had an advanced system of braking that they installed at all of the stops. The brakes worked much like that of a roller coaster or retarding system at a hump yard. The stations had fins embedded in the ground that would close on train car wheels when they passed by, slowing trains from full-speed to stopped in a very short time. Unfortunately for the four ponies in front of the train, they were not at a station. Only primitive buffer brakes existed on the trains in case of an emergency, installed after competitive railroads tried to run them out of business by pointing out the safety flaws. The buffer brakes worked when slack was introduced between the cars, making the buffers press up against each other and applying brake shoes to the wheels. The system did not provide good braking, nor was it used any time before. The four-pony team put their prayers into the brakes. The train and the dragon were closer now, and Promontory could begin to make out details. The first thing that Promontory noticed was how small the lights were now that they were close. He wondered if the dragon had calmed down some and perhaps by the time they met would not try to eat them. As they got closer, Promontory couldn't help but think that the dragon looked a little fake. Granted, he had never seen a dragon, but he didn't imagine them as such. There was a repetitive bell noise that he didn't think a dragon could make if he tried, but there was also a deep rumbling noise that he thought could only belong to a dragon. The two conflicting thoughts confused Promontory. Despite thinking that the dragon no longer was a dragon, Promontory still held fear, a lot of fear. Now, Promontory could truly see the scale of the not-a-dragon. It stood higher than Princess Celestia; a normal pony couldn't even hold a candle to it. There was also a stylized pattern on the front that looked like it resembled Princess Celestia, but it didn't have wings or a horn. The thing also smelled horrible, never had Promontory smelled something so acrid. By now Promontory had to strain his neck in order to see the top of the not-a-dragon. "Promontory, get out of the way!" The second pony in the team, John Bull, yelled from beside the tracks; he and the two other ponies on the team had overcame their fear and gotten out of the way. John Bull tried dragging Promontory off of the tracks by pulling on the harness, but it was no use as a protruding section of the whatever-it-was smashed into Promontory's head, then a split second later, a lower part of it ran into and crushed his legs. "AAAAAAAAAUGH!" Promontory's cry rang through the desert. He had never felt such pain before; he didn't even know if he was alive the pain was so great. "Promontory!" John Bull, shouted after the thing had stopped and overcoming his own shock of seeing his conductor and friend get smashed by it. John Bull took a bound towards his fallen team member and tried to get the harness off of Promontory. After a few seconds, he flung the harness off and away from Promontory. Evening Star and Caboose helped John Bull move Promontory off of the tracks. "I-I don't think I can make it, J-John Bull," Promontory cried out, "Oh Celestia it hurts!" John Bull was not amused by Promontory's declaration. He saw what had happened to Promontory, and his experience with accidents told him that it wasn't too serious. At least, death-level serious. "Promontory, where does it hurt?" John Bull asked to keep Promontory out of shock. Promontory's response was quick, "E-Evening Star, tell my f-family that I..." "Oh cut that out!" John bull said to Promontory. John Bull didn't want Promontory waste away in the desert simply because he thought he wasn't going to make it. "Everything is going to be OK," John bull commented. Despite the fact that the accident was not life-or-death serious, the whole scene of the accident wanted to make John Bull puke. The noise of the thing that had injured Promontory and the smell that it was producing was more than John Bull could handle. As John Bull prepared to channel healing magic into the stricken conductor, a single unaccounted voice disturbed his thought process. "What the hell?" Author's Note Edited 6/1/13 Rush JobTRAVEL BY RAIL Chapter 3 "AAAAAAAAAUGH!" The cry of pain dashed Adam's hopes of an accident-free day. "Promontory!" A second voice rang out. Running on the ground beside the train, Adam almost made it to the front when he remembered there was a first-aid kit in the cab of the first locomotive. Climbing onto the running board at the back of the locomotive, Adam ran the rest of the way to the cab and flung open the door. Scrambling around the conductor's desk, he looked for a cabinet or something that would hold the large railroad-approved first-aid kit. Where the hell did they put the first aid kit when they made this thing? Adam turned around and looked at the back wall of the cab. Franticly searching for the first-aid kit, his eyes darted over a regulations poster and a fire extinguisher before finally finding the kit. Grabbing the kit, Adam lunged down the stairwell, opened the door to the outside, and jumped down to the side of the locomotive. Adam looked around anxiously for the injured people, but he wasn't prepared when he found them. Three miniature horses with red bandannas and striped engineer hats were huddling around a fourth one, who Adam presumed to be the injured one. "Everything is going to be OK," the white one said to the injured one. The concept of talking miniature horses dressed up like engineers was much too foreign for Adam, especially the talking part. As Adam stood there slack-jawed, he decided he couldn't take any more of it, and muttered a single phrase: "What the hell?" The decision to vocalize his confusion may not have been the best his sanity, as it caused the three uninjured miniature horses to look up at him. The white one's eyes widened when he saw what Adam had in his hands, the first-aid kit. Adam was shocked when the white one ran right up to him and grabbed the first aid kit out of his hands, then lugged it over to the injured one and started giving orders. "Evening Star, you go get some sticks to splint Promontory's legs with. Caboose, help me with this latch," The white one said, and the brown one with the curly hair, whom Adam guessed was Evening Star, ran off, presumably to get some sticks. The other one, Caboose, went over to help the white one with the clasps. Adam still stood there with his mouth open. "John Bull, I don't know how these latches work," Caboose said confusedly to the white one, which Adam guessed was John Bull. Deciding now was a good time to take action, Adam ran over, grabbed the first-aid kit from the two who were trying to flick the latches open with their hooves, and quickly undid the clasps. Throwing open the lid of the kit, Adam silently gawked at the amount of stuff they packed into the metal box. Snapping back into the real world, Adam grabbed a knife from the box, took off his shirt, and started to cut off strips of it in order to tie the splint. The two animals present looked like they were shocked at Adam's way of lifesaving. By now, the one with the curly orange hair had come back with several nice-sized sticks. Adam briefly pondered where one would find such sticks in the desert before snatching them up and out the animal’s mouth to prepare the splint. The act made Evening Star jump in surprise. As Adam straightened out the injured one's leg, the miniature horse gave a whimper of pain. "Promontory it's going to be alright, we have help," the John Bull one said, even though he was clearly shocked and weirded out by the whole scene. Adam finished tying up the first splint and moved on to the second. By now, the three uninjured ones were watching Adam work as he started the second splint. When Adam finished tying the second splint, he tried to pick up the miniature horse in order to move him into the cab. As it turns out, miniature horses are not very light, and Adam struggled to keep the injured one, Promontory, in his arms. "Help me get him into the cab," Adam said as he strained to get the now-unconscious miniature horse off the ground. The three uninjured ones fell over themselves in aiding Adam maneuver the injured one onto the front of the locomotive. After climbing up onto the front deck, Adam swung the door open and pulled the animal up the stairs and into the cab, the three others obediently following. Spinning the conductors chair with his foot, he laid the unconscious animal into it, and plopped into his own chair. "Where's the nearest hospital?" Adam called out to the silent cab. A few seconds passed as Adam started to release the brakes in order to leave, "well?" "Ponyville, behind you," was the answer he got from Caboose. Adam finished adjusting the controls, "Wait, we need to keep our train running," Evening star commented. While he waited for the train line to fill with air, Adam dashed out of the cab. Looking at the scene, he saw the ropes and harnesses that the miniature horses wore. Adam was awed knowing that those four creatures were actually pulling the entire train. Seeing nothing else that he could do to at least rescue their schedule, he grabbed the harnesses and wrapped them tightly around his locomotive's coupler. Running back into the cab, he threw himself into the chair, turned on the sand, put the train into reverse, and slowly moved the combined power handle into notch 8. The locomotives were surprisingly responsive for hauling two trains at the same time. Like a landslide, all the anxiety of the day came crashing down on Adam. Everything from the train with the hot bogey to the collision to the knowledge that he severely injured an animal, even if it was a talking one that pulled trains, stormed through Adams head. Adam's head fell into his hands as he muttered quietly, "what has my life come to?" As Caboose was helping the dragon or whatever it was take Promontory into the larger thing, he couldn't help but feel like this was taken out of one of those bad sci-fi books that Northern Wind, a pony working for the freight train, gushed over all the time. 'You have the ponies that get abducted by the alien and then get experimented on by the aliens.' It was something he heard many times before, enough that Caboose didn't believe there was bad sci-fi without it. This isn’t bad sci-fi though, it’s real. Caboose thought. The dragon opened up a door on the front of the thing, and pulled Promontory through it. Caboose followed, not willing to drop his friend and leave him up to the will of the dragon. The inside was not as large as Caboose had expected it, but it was surprisingly much quieter inside than it was outside. Now fully inside and in the main room, Caboose could see everything. There were two chairs, one had a desk with a few papers on it, and the other had a large box-like thing obscuring it from view from where Caboose was standing. The dragon used its rear leg to turn the chair in front of the emptier desk, and gently placed Promontory in it. The dragon then sat down in the chair on the opposite side of the small room and spoke. "Where's the nearest hospital?" the creature asked. A few seconds passed as it started adjusting some of the levers on the box. "Well?" It asked again. Caboose, startled, said, "Ponyville, behind you," he said, and the dragon started working on the things, moving their positions until Evening Star spoke up. "Wait, we need to keep our train running," Evening Star said. Caboose did not expect Evening Star to say anything at all; Evening star was a pretty timid pony. After the prompt, the creature jumped up, ran down the stairs, swung the door open, and disappeared outside. The three of them, Caboose, Evening Star, and John Bull didn't move, but they did look at each other, scared that some creature the dragon kept as a pet would eat them if they moved. A minute later, the dragon appeared and ran up the stairs, sat back in the chair, then started adjusting the levers on the large box again. A small lurch and the whatever-it-was started to move. As it picked up the pace, Caboose was amazed at its speed; he didn't think anything ground-based could ever move so fast. None of the four ponies moved, and neither did the dragon. A few minutes passed by without any noise but the rumbling of the dragon’s lair. A buzzing sound started sounding through the lair and the dragon’s head shot up. The three ponies jumped in surprise and tried to quickly brace themselves for an attack. No harm came to them though, as one of the dragon’s claws came down on a button on the large box and the noise stopped. The dragon didn’t look down again after the strange buzzer; instead it looked at a mirror that was strangely outside of the lair that Caboose hadn’t noticed earlier. While Caboose had only heard of dragons and their habits, he could see some things that he didn’t think were very dragon-like. For one, the dragon hadn’t really made any attempt to eat them; in fact, it had helped Promontory quite a bit. Second, the dragon didn’t appear to have anything of obvious value, in fact, the only thing Caboose could see that might possibly be of any value to a dragon was anything inside of a bag made of a material he had never seen before. Third, Caboose thought that dragons liked much larger lairs than this, and he certainly never heard of a dragon lair that moved. The tense air between the three ponies could be cut with a knife. Promontory on the other hoof just sat there. Going for the kill, Caboose felt the need to interject into the silence, "so, just what kind of dragon are you?" What other questions are worth a million bits? Author's Note edited 6/1/13 RIP TrackTRAVEL BY RAIL Chapter 4 "So, just what kind of dragon are you?" The brown one with the white hair, which Adam thought was Caboose, said. The question drew Adam’s attention away from the receding ground and towards the rapidly receding track. Adam didn’t know how to answer the creature’s question. Where did they get the dragon part? Dragon’s don’t even exist! “Well, that’s an interesting question,” Adam replied, avoiding the question altogether until he could formulate an answer. While he was thinking of an answer, the alerter rang again, breaking his train of thought. Adam pressed the acknowledge button to silence it, and sighed. Knowing no other place to start, Adam began to talk about his race. “Well, for one, I’m not a dragon,” Adam began. Adam was about to continue when the Caboose one interrupted him, “You’re not a dragon?” Adam, who thought his whole day was a massive hallucination, looked annoyed at the interruption, but continued anyway, “no, I’m not; I’m a human.” Adam never thought he would ever have to say that line ever; the alien thought sent a shiver down his spine. “A human? I’ve never heard of a human before,” Caboose commented. The other three miniature horses didn’t say anything as Caboose continued after a short pause, “you look enough like a dragon, walking on two legs and have claws.” “Uh, well, definitely a human here,” Adam replied nervously replied; this whole conversation was getting really awkward for him. Trying to gain the upper hand in the conversation, he volleyed a question to the only talkative creature, “what are you anyway? I’ve never seen any horses like you before.” Caboose didn’t respond for a few seconds, then said, “uh, I’m not a horse, I’m a pony!” Adam deadpanned, “close enough.” “Not really, horses are just fiction; they aren’t real,” Caboose retorted. The comment puzzled Adam. How can they have ponies but no horses? Adam thought. A silence permeated through the cab for several minutes, with only the alerter breaking the quiet atmosphere. Looking in their direction of travel, Adam noticed that the scenery was changing: the hoodoos which had cropped up when he apparently teleported here were getting shorter, and the outside temperature was cooler. “I need you to tell me when to stop,” Adam said to the silent cab. A long pause as Adam's sentence sunk into the ponies. “What?” Was the reply from the cab, “You mean we going faster than any right-minded pony should travel and you don’t know when to stop?” Adam could tell by the voice that it wasn’t Caboose. Looking backwards to where the three ponies stood, Adam noticed that of the three, the tan and gray one looked particularly incensed. It was John Bull. "Uh, what did you expect? To putter along with that guy sitting knocked out over there?" "No, but I didn't expect to set any land speed records!" "What land speed record? We're barely going 70 miles an hour!" "I made the land speed record ba-" "I don't know what we're yelling about!" A long minute of silence followed Evening Star's outburst. "What's a 'mile' anyway?" Evening Star pondered. After a pause, "it's a unit of length, five thousand two hundred eighty feet," Adam responded. He had a feeling this might go on for a while. "Uh, how long is a feet?" Adam sighed silently as his feeling was confirmed. Holding up his hands to demonstrate, he said to Evening Star, "A foot is about this much." Evening Star put his hoof to his chin in concentration. Looking at his hoof, he exclaimed, "so, one 'foot' is about 3 hoofs." A pause, then, "That would mean there's about three and a third 'feet' per length," Evening Star concluded, paused for a minute, then muttered in thought, "that means with one thousand lengths per glide, that means one glide is about two-thirds of one of your miles!" Evening Star's enthusiasm crescendoed at the end upon his realization. Two-thirds of a mile? That sounds a lot like a kilometer, Adam thought, then corrected himself when he realized that they weren't kilometers here, they were these funky 'glides'. And with one thousand lengths per glide, that sounds like a meter. What did they do to the metric system? After running a few short comparisons in his head, Adam blurted out, "I need one of you to go on the roof and tell me when we get within four glides of 'Ponyville.'" The three conscious ponies looked at him like he was an alien. Wait a minute, he was an alien to them, nevermind. Crazy is a better word for it. "You're crazy!" One of them exclaimed. "If one of you don't, I won't know when to stop, putting the recovery of your friend off while I back the train up, as well as putting the lives of innocent people in danger," Adam tried to reason with the ponies. After a pause, Caboose spoke up, "We couldn't do it from in here? We're still about 10 glides away." "Well, um, maybe until we get close to 5 glides. The whole train that way," Adam pointed towards the rear of the train, "Is over 500 meters, er, lengths that way." The ponies seemed flabbergasted that such a thing could exist. "Over 500 lengths? That's impossible, nothing in Equestria would be able to pull something like that." Caboose exclaimed. "Yeah, and weighing in at about 5000 tons, it takes a while to stop. That's why I need someone to spot for me, so I know when I need to start slowing down the train and I don't overshoot the town," Adam explained. "How long does it take to slow down the train?" Evening Star asked. "Well, I would say about... 3 glides as an estimate," Adam replied. All the pony's eyes widened at the information. A moment later, the alerter went off startling the ponies, and Adam quickly shut it off. Looking backwards again, Adam noticed that they were rapidly approaching the end of the desert; the dividing barrier a huge mountain range. "Can't you just keep that thing off?" "Please tell me there isn't a pass to go over," Adam asked, changing the subject before he had to explain about the regulations. "Um, no there isn't one. There's no way we'd be able to get over a mountain," one of the ponies said. Slinking quickly towards the approaching mountains, Adam felt trepidation; he had no idea if his train was within the loading gauge of the tunnel or not. If it didn't, everyone would be royally screwed: the train would have enough energy that it would accordion into itself, potentially derailing the locomotives and the train following and severely injuring everyone. From his seat in the cab, he saw eye to eye with the smokestack of the pony's engine. Not good news, as the roof of his locomotive was 3 feet above his head. "Hey, um, how tall is the roof of the tunnel?" Adam asked frantically, hoping to prevent another disaster from happening today. "It's just large enough for the train to get through. Don't worry though, it was bored by the finest unicorns in Equestria after all, the company wouldn't settle for less." the white one, John Bull explained, as if it answered all the questions in the world. Incidentally, it only raised more for Adam. "Wait, you said unicorns? As in magic and that sort of crap?" "Well, I wouldn't call it crap necessarily, but yeah, they used their magic to make the tunnel." "We have a problem then, my train is larger than your train." Adam said as he reached forward to apply the train brakes. A shout rang through the cab, making everyone look towards its source, "WAIT!" Caboose blushed a little at the attention before continuing, "You need to go faster, The unicorns bored it yes, but unicorn tunnels have safeties in them for over sized carriages and the likes. If you go fast enough, it might fit the entirety of your train." Adam had almost pushed the brakes out of the lap position and into apply when Caboose had shouted. Putting it back into release, Adam briefly scanned the instrument panel, looking for the switch that would allow the locomotive to give the normally-rated 4000 horsepower locomotives an extra 400 horsepower. Finding what he was looking for, he flipped the switch. The light that should have come on to signify the extra engine output did not come on. Adam toggled it a few times to see it it truly wasn't working; it wasn't working. "Hand me my backpack," He almost shouted at the ponies, "there's no time to waste!" Scrambling quickly, they flung the bag at Adam who caught it deftly. Unzipping it and reaching into it, he procured a roll of yellowed masking tape. Tearing off a short one-inch strip, he stuck it to the switch and set it to the 4000 horsepower position. "Here's the deal," he said to the three conscious ponies, "I have to re-start the engine in order to get more power. When I tell you to, flip the switch that I marked with tape, OK?" With that, Adam dashed out of his seat, flung the cab door open, and ran down the side of the locomotive. When he got to the middle, he swung open the side panel, gaining access to the engine controls. Adam pressed the shutdown button and waited for the engine to stop spinning. All the while, the mountain was getting closer and closer. Adam could see the tunnel portal creeping to meet his train as he looked around the side of the freight cars. The engine was still spinning, having slowed down to about half speed. Adam's anxiety was slowly creeping up on him: he was somehow transported into a foreign world, had an accident and injured someone, and finally speeding towards a tunnel that wasn't large enough to fit his train instead of doing the smart thing and stopped. Also, the engine still hadn't stopped. "Are you ready to flip the switch!?" Adam shouted to the pony, Evening Star, sitting in the engineer's chair. "What?" Was the faint reply, the pony's voice being drowned out by the still-running locomotive behind him. "Are you ready!?" Adam yelled harder, hoping that Evening Star could hear him this time. "I can't hear you!" was the reply, along with a shrug by the new engineer. "Flip the switch!" Adam shouted back, waving his arms around, hoping that the pony would get the idea. Evening Star understood, and looked for the switch with the tape on it. After a few moments of searching, Evening Star gave up, and shouted back at Adam, "The tape is missing!" "I can't hear you! Shout louder!" "I! Can't! Find! It!" Adam's brows knitted together in frustration. Slamming the access panel, he ran into the cab. Leaning over Evening Star, who hadn't gotten out of the chair, had to duck down to avoid Adam's hands as he quickly flipped the power setting switch and pushed the reverser into neutral and the throttle to notch 1. Flying out of the cab once more, he wrenched the panel open and pressed the start button. Shutting the panel again he ran into the cab as the engine wound up to idle. The train was at speed already so he didn't have to worry about starting up slowly, so he put the reverser back into reverse and the throttle up to notch 8. The light on the switch had finally lit up. "If the buzzer rings again, press this button," Adam quickly explained to Evening Star, who was still in the chair, then took off out of the cab once more. This time running down the full length of the locomotive, he jumped off the end towards the second power unit. It was at this point that a joint in the rail passed underneath the train, making the locomotives shift, causing Adam to slip on the running board of the second locomotive. Landing face-down halfway on and off the running board, he could see the ground speeding along a few feet from his body. Call it his adrenaline-pumped brain, or maybe fate or luck, but something caused him to look towards the end of the train just in time to see the tunnel portal come rushing up to him. Scrambling for purchase on the metal diamond-plate platform, he was able to pull his head in just in time for darkness to overcome his world. Shaking from the adrenaline, he reached out for the locomotive door's handle, twisted it open and gained access into the unused cab. Finding his prize, he flipped the power switch, waiting for the inevitable moment when it wouldn't come on. A moment's pause and the light came on. Still shaking, Adam collapsed into the chair, exhausted. A minute of rest and a bitter, chilly wind swirling around the cab from the open door stirred him. Quivering, Adam got up and made his way down the stairwell to the control locomotive. Author's Note Sorry about the delay! Also, I decided to split up the perspectives for this chapter. Next one is all pony for you guys.
Set OutTRAVEL BY RAIL Chapter 1 The bulk ship Magic pulled into the port of Sacramento. None of the workers on the docks, the captain, or the crew knew what would happen to the cargo. Sure, there were the papers that told them, but not even a paper trail can follow something the likes of the ship’s name. The smell of creosote oil and the rumble of diesel engines were the most prominent features of the railyard in the pre-dawn hours of its existence. Like most mornings, it was an early start to a busy day shipping windmill parts, cement, and lumber to and from the ships that ferry them across the ocean. The day before, the bulk ship Magic had been relieved of its cargo of gravel and cement in order for the supplies to be shipped by train for delivery in Illinois. This morning, the loaded cars were being shunted into one long string for the two powerful 9-40CW locomotives to pick up and set out on its trans-continental journey. Junior Norfolk Southern employee Adam Cowl, known for his cheerful demeanor and positive attitude, was the engineer for the long trip; Norfolk Southern only wanted a competent man on their payroll to touch the controls, the conductor on the other hand would change in the last leg of the trip to another Norfolk Southern employee. The first conductor was senior Union Pacific employee Jacob Holcroft, a somewhat grouchy man who drove fear into the hearts of greenhorns. As the last car of the eastbound train was coupled on, it was time for the two railroad employees to leave the comforts of the warm yard office and begin the long journey to the lakes. “Heh, this will be the longest point-to-point trip I've done,” Adam broke the silence as they made their way to the idling locomotives nearby. “It's not that special,” Jacob replied, his lack of sleep giving him a cranky tone that set off Adam. Climbing into the cab, they were greeted with temperature only slightly warmer than the early morning air. The two chilled employees sat down in their respective seats and got to work. “Go ahead and get the cars,” Jacob stated firmly. After about a minute of yard-speed travel, Adam stopped the train and mentioned, “We’re past the switches.” “I know,” Jacob said as he promptly left the cab to throw the sat witch so that Adam could back the locomotives onto the train. A minute later, Jacob’s voice reappeared on the radio, “Come on and connect the cars.” Obediently, Adam pulled the reverser back, and applied small power to the throttle. Adam looked out the rear-view windows as the locomotives backed up to the cars. Adam pushed the throttle to neutral as the distinctive chunk a-chunk sound of two rail cars connecting rang out through the now-brighter morning. Jacob reappeared in the cab a minute later, sat down, and picked up his desk’s telephone. “This is Norfolk Southern 9229, requesting permission to exit the yard.” Adam could faintly hear the reply, but waited for Jacob to tell him to leave. “Lets get out of here,” was Jacob’s only order. Adam switched the reverser into forwards, and after taking a look at the trains air levels, pulled back on the throttle. The throb and whir of the engines picked up as the two turbocharged v-16s challenged Newton’s first law of motion, the train slowly picked up speed as it gave any rail enthusiast a reason to smile and wave. Making its way out of the yard in the waxing sun, the train was one step closer to its destination. o-o-o The seemingly-endless scrublands whizzed by as the train and its crew made progress across the desert. Earlier, they were held back by another freight that had a hot bearing and was unable to continue at speed until they could get to the nearest RIP track. They were behind schedule now, and dissension was growing between the two members of the crew as they sped across the desert. Surprisingly, Adam had taken an offensive stance, while Jacob was rather calm about the incident. “How come the hotbox detectors didn’t alert them before they could make us late?” Adam quipped. “There was no way that they could have done anything about it anyways. Besides, we don’t have hotbox detectors any earlier on that portion of the line.” Jacob tried to calm Adam down in the best greenhorn-quelling manner that he could put forth. “That train wasn’t even carrying anything heavy enough to wear the bearings out. You heard them on the radio, they didn’t know how it happened themselves.” Jacob shifted in his chair, then spoke up again, “It may have been a deadheading train, but it carried freight before.” Jacob’s attempts at extinguishing Adam’s ire about the overheated bearing were not met with good results. If anything, Jacob’s calm yet annoyed demeanor was harming the situation rather than helping. Adam decided that the scenery was much more worthy of his attention while Jacob sat in his chair looking cross at Adam. The air within the cab was warmer; the tension between the two was thick in the air. After a minute of staring at Adam waiting for a reaction, Jacob declared brazenly that he was going to get some fresh air for a minute. Adam sarcastically replied by telling him not to fall off. Jacob got out of his seat and walked the two steps to the door. Putting his hand on the cold metal door handle, he paused for a moment, turned the latch, and... Like an intense flashover, everything in the cab went white. To Adam, there was a blinding white light that filled the cab as Jacob stepped out the door. Blinking his eyes a few times to get them to see again, he looked around the cab to see if the light had done anything. Seeing nothing wrong with the cab, he once again turned his attention to the rails ahead. He didn’t see anything different out there either. Just what was that light anyway? Adam didn’t see the point of caring about it anymore; his eyes had readjusted, and it didn’t affect anything. A minute passed without any disturbance from Jacob. It was a good minute. Adam looked back at the door that Jacob had left the cab by. Jacob still hadn’t come back in yet, and Adam was getting worried about him. Did Jacob fall off? was Adams main question as he turned his attention back towards the rails ahead of him. A large gray something was coming at him fast. Not good. What the heck? Why is there someone on my line? Adam’s thoughts swirled angrily in his head. Instead of playing a fool, Adam took action, setting the dynamic brakes to the setup phase, he put the air and locomotive brakes into emergency stop. The dynamic brakes took a few seconds to prepare, and when they did, he applied all they had as well. One hand on the horn, Adam hoped it would end well. Suicide thoughts on a railroad. Promontory had a boring job. To clarify, Promontory’s job was pulling the passenger train between Grass Valley and Fillydelphia, with stops at Ponyville, Dodge, Hoofpeka, and Appleoosa. The daily service that his and the other team working for the railroad provided were invaluable to the ponies of those territories. The other team working for the railroad did not pull a passenger train like him, instead they headed a freight train going the opposite direction. In between Ponyville and Dodge there was one siding track where the two trains would stop and have lunch, then continue their journey. The daily rhythm that his railroad job provided was one that Promontory had grown quite bored of. You, the human reader, may be curious as to how Promontory and his team of ponies came to be pulling a train. The answer lies in the rarely-seen earth-pony magic. Despite unicorn magic being more noticeable and far more useful in day-to-day life, an earth pony who could manipulate the magic of the ground was a skilled pony indeed and in high demand. At least, high demand in the railroading industry. Promontory worked for one of the oldest and most famed railroads in Equestria, one that made enough profits to pay for long-term employment of earth-pony magic channellers. Newer railroads that were not as wealthy as Promontory’s employer would have to settle for unicorn-magic powered engines, a costly choice because unicorns would have to re-enchant the engine every few weeks, a rewarding process only for the unicorn. Promontory’s employer had been established early enough that they got the cream of the crop; ponies that could augment their strength to many times their own and pull several-ton trains through the desert every day. As the conductor and head of his team, it was his job to alert the team if something came up. As mentioned before, it was a boring job, but it paid the best out of all the jobs along the route. A whine-like noise cried out through the desert, breaking the bored stupors of Promontory and the three ponies behind him. “Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! Wah wah waaaaaaaaaah!” Promontory was confused. He had never heard such a noise before. He looked around to see if he could spot the source of the noise. Meanwhile, the noise continued. “Waaaaaah! Wah waaaaaaaaah waaaaaaah!” Promontory had heard of dragons and their strange calls before, but he had neither heard of or seen a desert dragon before. Maybe he could get a sum of money off the discovery if he lived to tell the tale. The sound, which didn’t stop except for short breaks to catch its breath, still continued; in fact, it was getting louder. “Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!” Promontory looked around once again, and steeled himself for an attack. When he looked dead ahead, he could see a black shape with blinking lights headed right at him. Promontory had heard of unicorns that light up when they get really angry. If something similar held true for the dragon, it must be pissed. His eyes went wide and his mind found only one word, “STOP!” “What the hell?” Jacob swore loudly. One moment he was leaving the cab of the locomotive, the next, he was deposited onto the ground, his hand on an invisible door handle, the train mysteriously nowhere in sight. Author's Note Last edit: 6/1/13
No CornTRAVEL BY RAIL Chapter 2 The opposing train, which was now much closer, was identified by Adam to be a steam engine, possibly a 4-4-0 or a 4-6-0 by its prominent diamond stack. The other train still had yet to acknowledge his erratic honking, and as far as he could tell, continued on at about the same speed. Adam's speed on the other hand was dropping slowly. From the high 80's that he and Jacob were traveling at to make up for lost time, the speedometer now read about 60 miles per hour. What the heck is this? It's like I don't even exist! Adam continued to lay on the horn with hope that something would happen and everyone would be safe. Looking over the controls to see if he missed something, he found the knob that controls the lights and with a frantic twist, the dial was set to all the way on. It's going to be a cornfield meet without any corn. The lights seemed to be the catalyst; the opposing train seemed to slow down, but it didn't seem to be enough to Adam. The trains speed now was about 50 miles an hour, but it was dropping slightly faster than before, which gave Adam some hope that the engine's Comfort Cab would protect him. The two trains still were getting closer and closer together as Adam was still busy on the horn. In an act of self-preservation, Adam fled the cab and ran along the side of the engine and jumped onto the running board of the second engine. He made haste in getting the cab's front door open, then fled out the back of the second engine's cab as well. In his desperation, Adam had forgotten to turn the bell off, but it was too late to do anything about it now. Adam looked at the ground to estimate his speed, he guessed the train was going about 20 miles an hour now. Each passing second, there was no sound of a collision, and Adams hope grew. As the engine slowed down to a crawl, he believed that disaster had been averted. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, Adam counted the seconds until his train would come to a complete stop. Adam was almost estatic now; for all the anxiety that the whole incident had caused, there was a real chance that nobody would get hurt. Nothing could have prepared him for the heart-wrenching scream of pain that came from the front of the locomotive as it finally stopped. Unlike the other ponies behind him, Promontory had a clear view of the angry dragon as it got closer and closer to him. The other ponies could sense his fear though, and tried to stop the train as best as they could. The railroad that ran the trains that Promontory and his team pulled had an advanced system of braking that they installed at all of the stops. The brakes worked much like that of a roller coaster or retarding system at a hump yard. The stations had fins embedded in the ground that would close on train car wheels when they passed by, slowing trains from full-speed to stopped in a very short time. Unfortunately for the four ponies in front of the train, they were not at a station. Only primitive buffer brakes existed on the trains in case of an emergency, installed after competitive railroads tried to run them out of business by pointing out the safety flaws. The buffer brakes worked when slack was introduced between the cars, making the buffers press up against each other and applying brake shoes to the wheels. The system did not provide good braking, nor was it used any time before. The four-pony team put their prayers into the brakes. The train and the dragon were closer now, and Promontory could begin to make out details. The first thing that Promontory noticed was how small the lights were now that they were close. He wondered if the dragon had calmed down some and perhaps by the time they met would not try to eat them. As they got closer, Promontory couldn't help but think that the dragon looked a little fake. Granted, he had never seen a dragon, but he didn't imagine them as such. There was a repetitive bell noise that he didn't think a dragon could make if he tried, but there was also a deep rumbling noise that he thought could only belong to a dragon. The two conflicting thoughts confused Promontory. Despite thinking that the dragon no longer was a dragon, Promontory still held fear, a lot of fear. Now, Promontory could truly see the scale of the not-a-dragon. It stood higher than Princess Celestia; a normal pony couldn't even hold a candle to it. There was also a stylized pattern on the front that looked like it resembled Princess Celestia, but it didn't have wings or a horn. The thing also smelled horrible, never had Promontory smelled something so acrid. By now Promontory had to strain his neck in order to see the top of the not-a-dragon. "Promontory, get out of the way!" The second pony in the team, John Bull, yelled from beside the tracks; he and the two other ponies on the team had overcame their fear and gotten out of the way. John Bull tried dragging Promontory off of the tracks by pulling on the harness, but it was no use as a protruding section of the whatever-it-was smashed into Promontory's head, then a split second later, a lower part of it ran into and crushed his legs. "AAAAAAAAAUGH!" Promontory's cry rang through the desert. He had never felt such pain before; he didn't even know if he was alive the pain was so great. "Promontory!" John Bull, shouted after the thing had stopped and overcoming his own shock of seeing his conductor and friend get smashed by it. John Bull took a bound towards his fallen team member and tried to get the harness off of Promontory. After a few seconds, he flung the harness off and away from Promontory. Evening Star and Caboose helped John Bull move Promontory off of the tracks. "I-I don't think I can make it, J-John Bull," Promontory cried out, "Oh Celestia it hurts!" John Bull was not amused by Promontory's declaration. He saw what had happened to Promontory, and his experience with accidents told him that it wasn't too serious. At least, death-level serious. "Promontory, where does it hurt?" John Bull asked to keep Promontory out of shock. Promontory's response was quick, "E-Evening Star, tell my f-family that I..." "Oh cut that out!" John bull said to Promontory. John Bull didn't want Promontory waste away in the desert simply because he thought he wasn't going to make it. "Everything is going to be OK," John bull commented. Despite the fact that the accident was not life-or-death serious, the whole scene of the accident wanted to make John Bull puke. The noise of the thing that had injured Promontory and the smell that it was producing was more than John Bull could handle. As John Bull prepared to channel healing magic into the stricken conductor, a single unaccounted voice disturbed his thought process. "What the hell?" Author's Note Edited 6/1/13
Rush JobTRAVEL BY RAIL Chapter 3 "AAAAAAAAAUGH!" The cry of pain dashed Adam's hopes of an accident-free day. "Promontory!" A second voice rang out. Running on the ground beside the train, Adam almost made it to the front when he remembered there was a first-aid kit in the cab of the first locomotive. Climbing onto the running board at the back of the locomotive, Adam ran the rest of the way to the cab and flung open the door. Scrambling around the conductor's desk, he looked for a cabinet or something that would hold the large railroad-approved first-aid kit. Where the hell did they put the first aid kit when they made this thing? Adam turned around and looked at the back wall of the cab. Franticly searching for the first-aid kit, his eyes darted over a regulations poster and a fire extinguisher before finally finding the kit. Grabbing the kit, Adam lunged down the stairwell, opened the door to the outside, and jumped down to the side of the locomotive. Adam looked around anxiously for the injured people, but he wasn't prepared when he found them. Three miniature horses with red bandannas and striped engineer hats were huddling around a fourth one, who Adam presumed to be the injured one. "Everything is going to be OK," the white one said to the injured one. The concept of talking miniature horses dressed up like engineers was much too foreign for Adam, especially the talking part. As Adam stood there slack-jawed, he decided he couldn't take any more of it, and muttered a single phrase: "What the hell?" The decision to vocalize his confusion may not have been the best his sanity, as it caused the three uninjured miniature horses to look up at him. The white one's eyes widened when he saw what Adam had in his hands, the first-aid kit. Adam was shocked when the white one ran right up to him and grabbed the first aid kit out of his hands, then lugged it over to the injured one and started giving orders. "Evening Star, you go get some sticks to splint Promontory's legs with. Caboose, help me with this latch," The white one said, and the brown one with the curly hair, whom Adam guessed was Evening Star, ran off, presumably to get some sticks. The other one, Caboose, went over to help the white one with the clasps. Adam still stood there with his mouth open. "John Bull, I don't know how these latches work," Caboose said confusedly to the white one, which Adam guessed was John Bull. Deciding now was a good time to take action, Adam ran over, grabbed the first-aid kit from the two who were trying to flick the latches open with their hooves, and quickly undid the clasps. Throwing open the lid of the kit, Adam silently gawked at the amount of stuff they packed into the metal box. Snapping back into the real world, Adam grabbed a knife from the box, took off his shirt, and started to cut off strips of it in order to tie the splint. The two animals present looked like they were shocked at Adam's way of lifesaving. By now, the one with the curly orange hair had come back with several nice-sized sticks. Adam briefly pondered where one would find such sticks in the desert before snatching them up and out the animal’s mouth to prepare the splint. The act made Evening Star jump in surprise. As Adam straightened out the injured one's leg, the miniature horse gave a whimper of pain. "Promontory it's going to be alright, we have help," the John Bull one said, even though he was clearly shocked and weirded out by the whole scene. Adam finished tying up the first splint and moved on to the second. By now, the three uninjured ones were watching Adam work as he started the second splint. When Adam finished tying the second splint, he tried to pick up the miniature horse in order to move him into the cab. As it turns out, miniature horses are not very light, and Adam struggled to keep the injured one, Promontory, in his arms. "Help me get him into the cab," Adam said as he strained to get the now-unconscious miniature horse off the ground. The three uninjured ones fell over themselves in aiding Adam maneuver the injured one onto the front of the locomotive. After climbing up onto the front deck, Adam swung the door open and pulled the animal up the stairs and into the cab, the three others obediently following. Spinning the conductors chair with his foot, he laid the unconscious animal into it, and plopped into his own chair. "Where's the nearest hospital?" Adam called out to the silent cab. A few seconds passed as Adam started to release the brakes in order to leave, "well?" "Ponyville, behind you," was the answer he got from Caboose. Adam finished adjusting the controls, "Wait, we need to keep our train running," Evening star commented. While he waited for the train line to fill with air, Adam dashed out of the cab. Looking at the scene, he saw the ropes and harnesses that the miniature horses wore. Adam was awed knowing that those four creatures were actually pulling the entire train. Seeing nothing else that he could do to at least rescue their schedule, he grabbed the harnesses and wrapped them tightly around his locomotive's coupler. Running back into the cab, he threw himself into the chair, turned on the sand, put the train into reverse, and slowly moved the combined power handle into notch 8. The locomotives were surprisingly responsive for hauling two trains at the same time. Like a landslide, all the anxiety of the day came crashing down on Adam. Everything from the train with the hot bogey to the collision to the knowledge that he severely injured an animal, even if it was a talking one that pulled trains, stormed through Adams head. Adam's head fell into his hands as he muttered quietly, "what has my life come to?" As Caboose was helping the dragon or whatever it was take Promontory into the larger thing, he couldn't help but feel like this was taken out of one of those bad sci-fi books that Northern Wind, a pony working for the freight train, gushed over all the time. 'You have the ponies that get abducted by the alien and then get experimented on by the aliens.' It was something he heard many times before, enough that Caboose didn't believe there was bad sci-fi without it. This isn’t bad sci-fi though, it’s real. Caboose thought. The dragon opened up a door on the front of the thing, and pulled Promontory through it. Caboose followed, not willing to drop his friend and leave him up to the will of the dragon. The inside was not as large as Caboose had expected it, but it was surprisingly much quieter inside than it was outside. Now fully inside and in the main room, Caboose could see everything. There were two chairs, one had a desk with a few papers on it, and the other had a large box-like thing obscuring it from view from where Caboose was standing. The dragon used its rear leg to turn the chair in front of the emptier desk, and gently placed Promontory in it. The dragon then sat down in the chair on the opposite side of the small room and spoke. "Where's the nearest hospital?" the creature asked. A few seconds passed as it started adjusting some of the levers on the box. "Well?" It asked again. Caboose, startled, said, "Ponyville, behind you," he said, and the dragon started working on the things, moving their positions until Evening Star spoke up. "Wait, we need to keep our train running," Evening Star said. Caboose did not expect Evening Star to say anything at all; Evening star was a pretty timid pony. After the prompt, the creature jumped up, ran down the stairs, swung the door open, and disappeared outside. The three of them, Caboose, Evening Star, and John Bull didn't move, but they did look at each other, scared that some creature the dragon kept as a pet would eat them if they moved. A minute later, the dragon appeared and ran up the stairs, sat back in the chair, then started adjusting the levers on the large box again. A small lurch and the whatever-it-was started to move. As it picked up the pace, Caboose was amazed at its speed; he didn't think anything ground-based could ever move so fast. None of the four ponies moved, and neither did the dragon. A few minutes passed by without any noise but the rumbling of the dragon’s lair. A buzzing sound started sounding through the lair and the dragon’s head shot up. The three ponies jumped in surprise and tried to quickly brace themselves for an attack. No harm came to them though, as one of the dragon’s claws came down on a button on the large box and the noise stopped. The dragon didn’t look down again after the strange buzzer; instead it looked at a mirror that was strangely outside of the lair that Caboose hadn’t noticed earlier. While Caboose had only heard of dragons and their habits, he could see some things that he didn’t think were very dragon-like. For one, the dragon hadn’t really made any attempt to eat them; in fact, it had helped Promontory quite a bit. Second, the dragon didn’t appear to have anything of obvious value, in fact, the only thing Caboose could see that might possibly be of any value to a dragon was anything inside of a bag made of a material he had never seen before. Third, Caboose thought that dragons liked much larger lairs than this, and he certainly never heard of a dragon lair that moved. The tense air between the three ponies could be cut with a knife. Promontory on the other hoof just sat there. Going for the kill, Caboose felt the need to interject into the silence, "so, just what kind of dragon are you?" What other questions are worth a million bits? Author's Note edited 6/1/13
RIP TrackTRAVEL BY RAIL Chapter 4 "So, just what kind of dragon are you?" The brown one with the white hair, which Adam thought was Caboose, said. The question drew Adam’s attention away from the receding ground and towards the rapidly receding track. Adam didn’t know how to answer the creature’s question. Where did they get the dragon part? Dragon’s don’t even exist! “Well, that’s an interesting question,” Adam replied, avoiding the question altogether until he could formulate an answer. While he was thinking of an answer, the alerter rang again, breaking his train of thought. Adam pressed the acknowledge button to silence it, and sighed. Knowing no other place to start, Adam began to talk about his race. “Well, for one, I’m not a dragon,” Adam began. Adam was about to continue when the Caboose one interrupted him, “You’re not a dragon?” Adam, who thought his whole day was a massive hallucination, looked annoyed at the interruption, but continued anyway, “no, I’m not; I’m a human.” Adam never thought he would ever have to say that line ever; the alien thought sent a shiver down his spine. “A human? I’ve never heard of a human before,” Caboose commented. The other three miniature horses didn’t say anything as Caboose continued after a short pause, “you look enough like a dragon, walking on two legs and have claws.” “Uh, well, definitely a human here,” Adam replied nervously replied; this whole conversation was getting really awkward for him. Trying to gain the upper hand in the conversation, he volleyed a question to the only talkative creature, “what are you anyway? I’ve never seen any horses like you before.” Caboose didn’t respond for a few seconds, then said, “uh, I’m not a horse, I’m a pony!” Adam deadpanned, “close enough.” “Not really, horses are just fiction; they aren’t real,” Caboose retorted. The comment puzzled Adam. How can they have ponies but no horses? Adam thought. A silence permeated through the cab for several minutes, with only the alerter breaking the quiet atmosphere. Looking in their direction of travel, Adam noticed that the scenery was changing: the hoodoos which had cropped up when he apparently teleported here were getting shorter, and the outside temperature was cooler. “I need you to tell me when to stop,” Adam said to the silent cab. A long pause as Adam's sentence sunk into the ponies. “What?” Was the reply from the cab, “You mean we going faster than any right-minded pony should travel and you don’t know when to stop?” Adam could tell by the voice that it wasn’t Caboose. Looking backwards to where the three ponies stood, Adam noticed that of the three, the tan and gray one looked particularly incensed. It was John Bull. "Uh, what did you expect? To putter along with that guy sitting knocked out over there?" "No, but I didn't expect to set any land speed records!" "What land speed record? We're barely going 70 miles an hour!" "I made the land speed record ba-" "I don't know what we're yelling about!" A long minute of silence followed Evening Star's outburst. "What's a 'mile' anyway?" Evening Star pondered. After a pause, "it's a unit of length, five thousand two hundred eighty feet," Adam responded. He had a feeling this might go on for a while. "Uh, how long is a feet?" Adam sighed silently as his feeling was confirmed. Holding up his hands to demonstrate, he said to Evening Star, "A foot is about this much." Evening Star put his hoof to his chin in concentration. Looking at his hoof, he exclaimed, "so, one 'foot' is about 3 hoofs." A pause, then, "That would mean there's about three and a third 'feet' per length," Evening Star concluded, paused for a minute, then muttered in thought, "that means with one thousand lengths per glide, that means one glide is about two-thirds of one of your miles!" Evening Star's enthusiasm crescendoed at the end upon his realization. Two-thirds of a mile? That sounds a lot like a kilometer, Adam thought, then corrected himself when he realized that they weren't kilometers here, they were these funky 'glides'. And with one thousand lengths per glide, that sounds like a meter. What did they do to the metric system? After running a few short comparisons in his head, Adam blurted out, "I need one of you to go on the roof and tell me when we get within four glides of 'Ponyville.'" The three conscious ponies looked at him like he was an alien. Wait a minute, he was an alien to them, nevermind. Crazy is a better word for it. "You're crazy!" One of them exclaimed. "If one of you don't, I won't know when to stop, putting the recovery of your friend off while I back the train up, as well as putting the lives of innocent people in danger," Adam tried to reason with the ponies. After a pause, Caboose spoke up, "We couldn't do it from in here? We're still about 10 glides away." "Well, um, maybe until we get close to 5 glides. The whole train that way," Adam pointed towards the rear of the train, "Is over 500 meters, er, lengths that way." The ponies seemed flabbergasted that such a thing could exist. "Over 500 lengths? That's impossible, nothing in Equestria would be able to pull something like that." Caboose exclaimed. "Yeah, and weighing in at about 5000 tons, it takes a while to stop. That's why I need someone to spot for me, so I know when I need to start slowing down the train and I don't overshoot the town," Adam explained. "How long does it take to slow down the train?" Evening Star asked. "Well, I would say about... 3 glides as an estimate," Adam replied. All the pony's eyes widened at the information. A moment later, the alerter went off startling the ponies, and Adam quickly shut it off. Looking backwards again, Adam noticed that they were rapidly approaching the end of the desert; the dividing barrier a huge mountain range. "Can't you just keep that thing off?" "Please tell me there isn't a pass to go over," Adam asked, changing the subject before he had to explain about the regulations. "Um, no there isn't one. There's no way we'd be able to get over a mountain," one of the ponies said. Slinking quickly towards the approaching mountains, Adam felt trepidation; he had no idea if his train was within the loading gauge of the tunnel or not. If it didn't, everyone would be royally screwed: the train would have enough energy that it would accordion into itself, potentially derailing the locomotives and the train following and severely injuring everyone. From his seat in the cab, he saw eye to eye with the smokestack of the pony's engine. Not good news, as the roof of his locomotive was 3 feet above his head. "Hey, um, how tall is the roof of the tunnel?" Adam asked frantically, hoping to prevent another disaster from happening today. "It's just large enough for the train to get through. Don't worry though, it was bored by the finest unicorns in Equestria after all, the company wouldn't settle for less." the white one, John Bull explained, as if it answered all the questions in the world. Incidentally, it only raised more for Adam. "Wait, you said unicorns? As in magic and that sort of crap?" "Well, I wouldn't call it crap necessarily, but yeah, they used their magic to make the tunnel." "We have a problem then, my train is larger than your train." Adam said as he reached forward to apply the train brakes. A shout rang through the cab, making everyone look towards its source, "WAIT!" Caboose blushed a little at the attention before continuing, "You need to go faster, The unicorns bored it yes, but unicorn tunnels have safeties in them for over sized carriages and the likes. If you go fast enough, it might fit the entirety of your train." Adam had almost pushed the brakes out of the lap position and into apply when Caboose had shouted. Putting it back into release, Adam briefly scanned the instrument panel, looking for the switch that would allow the locomotive to give the normally-rated 4000 horsepower locomotives an extra 400 horsepower. Finding what he was looking for, he flipped the switch. The light that should have come on to signify the extra engine output did not come on. Adam toggled it a few times to see it it truly wasn't working; it wasn't working. "Hand me my backpack," He almost shouted at the ponies, "there's no time to waste!" Scrambling quickly, they flung the bag at Adam who caught it deftly. Unzipping it and reaching into it, he procured a roll of yellowed masking tape. Tearing off a short one-inch strip, he stuck it to the switch and set it to the 4000 horsepower position. "Here's the deal," he said to the three conscious ponies, "I have to re-start the engine in order to get more power. When I tell you to, flip the switch that I marked with tape, OK?" With that, Adam dashed out of his seat, flung the cab door open, and ran down the side of the locomotive. When he got to the middle, he swung open the side panel, gaining access to the engine controls. Adam pressed the shutdown button and waited for the engine to stop spinning. All the while, the mountain was getting closer and closer. Adam could see the tunnel portal creeping to meet his train as he looked around the side of the freight cars. The engine was still spinning, having slowed down to about half speed. Adam's anxiety was slowly creeping up on him: he was somehow transported into a foreign world, had an accident and injured someone, and finally speeding towards a tunnel that wasn't large enough to fit his train instead of doing the smart thing and stopped. Also, the engine still hadn't stopped. "Are you ready to flip the switch!?" Adam shouted to the pony, Evening Star, sitting in the engineer's chair. "What?" Was the faint reply, the pony's voice being drowned out by the still-running locomotive behind him. "Are you ready!?" Adam yelled harder, hoping that Evening Star could hear him this time. "I can't hear you!" was the reply, along with a shrug by the new engineer. "Flip the switch!" Adam shouted back, waving his arms around, hoping that the pony would get the idea. Evening Star understood, and looked for the switch with the tape on it. After a few moments of searching, Evening Star gave up, and shouted back at Adam, "The tape is missing!" "I can't hear you! Shout louder!" "I! Can't! Find! It!" Adam's brows knitted together in frustration. Slamming the access panel, he ran into the cab. Leaning over Evening Star, who hadn't gotten out of the chair, had to duck down to avoid Adam's hands as he quickly flipped the power setting switch and pushed the reverser into neutral and the throttle to notch 1. Flying out of the cab once more, he wrenched the panel open and pressed the start button. Shutting the panel again he ran into the cab as the engine wound up to idle. The train was at speed already so he didn't have to worry about starting up slowly, so he put the reverser back into reverse and the throttle up to notch 8. The light on the switch had finally lit up. "If the buzzer rings again, press this button," Adam quickly explained to Evening Star, who was still in the chair, then took off out of the cab once more. This time running down the full length of the locomotive, he jumped off the end towards the second power unit. It was at this point that a joint in the rail passed underneath the train, making the locomotives shift, causing Adam to slip on the running board of the second locomotive. Landing face-down halfway on and off the running board, he could see the ground speeding along a few feet from his body. Call it his adrenaline-pumped brain, or maybe fate or luck, but something caused him to look towards the end of the train just in time to see the tunnel portal come rushing up to him. Scrambling for purchase on the metal diamond-plate platform, he was able to pull his head in just in time for darkness to overcome his world. Shaking from the adrenaline, he reached out for the locomotive door's handle, twisted it open and gained access into the unused cab. Finding his prize, he flipped the power switch, waiting for the inevitable moment when it wouldn't come on. A moment's pause and the light came on. Still shaking, Adam collapsed into the chair, exhausted. A minute of rest and a bitter, chilly wind swirling around the cab from the open door stirred him. Quivering, Adam got up and made his way down the stairwell to the control locomotive. Author's Note Sorry about the delay! Also, I decided to split up the perspectives for this chapter. Next one is all pony for you guys.
