Engines of a revolution

I was stood outside the director’s office of the E.N.R., and this time Sam wasn’t with me, The management had found out about our little plan and let’s say they weren’t best pleased at us going behind their backs. I sighed as I could hear Emerald struggling to keep her voice down, the reason I wasn’t in there with her was because I’m simply an apprentice, despite the fact that I’d be getting a good majority of the credit for the conversions. I heard the voices dies down and Emerald practically stormed out, I followed her outside and my eyes widened as she sat to one side of the door, pulled a tobacco pipe out of her coat and lit it up.

“Well, Emma” I asked, using the nickname I’d given her “What’s the damage?” I asked after she’d taken a few puffs.

“The management and myself have reached a compromise, though it’s a slim chance for us” she said, taking another puff “they’ve agreed to let us build a loco based off of Falcon and take her on a test run, but if we don’t meet their standards then that’s it, the locos get either scrapped or stuffed and mounted in Canterlot Museum”

“And what’s the route?” I asked

“Canterlot to Manehatten” she said “that’s 1’400 miles as the Pegasus flies” I deadpanned

“You can’t be serious” I said

“I wish I wasn’t,” she said, grim faced. I sighed before straightening up.

“Well, if we’re gonna do it, we’re gonna give it our absolute best” I said “no way are we gonna just give up”

“I’m with you there” she said “I ain’t backing down” We made our way back to the works, where the boiler for Falcon was lying in a cradle at ground level, whilst the tubes were lying next to it. I saw a Pony climb out, covered in flakes of rust, they climbed down before shaking themselves like a dog.

“How’s the boiler?” I asked.

“It’s bucked!” the pony shouted “Whoever passed it in the first place needs their eyes checking” Whilst Equestrian advancement in terms of steam power leaves much to be desired, there metallurgy is far superior to even Earths, I kid you not, they can get steel as strong as titanium and then some. Which is why it would be more cost effective to simply make a new boiler, their QC is unbelievably strict. from what Emerald told me, they seal each new boiler in a sealed and “warded” container, then they pump the boiler up with water to twice the safe working pressure, if they hear a bang then they send the remains back to the metallurgists along with a strongly worded letter, this is why the royal guard uses solid gold as their armour of choice.

Which was why the entire thing was practically being built from new, which was fine by me, because quite frankly, fitting a boiler built for a 4 foot 8.5 inch gauge locomotive onto a 6 foot gauge loco would look really weird. That gave me other plans for the locos from my world.

After checking on a few more things we left. Now, to the left of the works is a set of sidings, and beyond that, a large shed, this is where the carriages and freight wagons used by the company itself, not including wagons used by private companies such as mines, factories or orchards, are built. Inside workers and crafts ponies were building a set of sleek, metal-bodied carriages; sheets of lightweight metal were being placed over wooden frames. Due to the high speeds Falcon was expecting to reach during the run, we were constructing new, high speed streamlined carriages, which I’d designed based off of coaches that Falcon would have hauled at some point, with the interior of the saloons reflecting that of earths most modern high speed train, though some of it was a reminiscence of some of the great American and British “named trains”, the rear of the train had a streamlined observation car, or “beaver tail” as they used to be called, with sleek double decker “dome cars” placed towards the middle of the train. the Kitchen cars acted as a divide of sorts between First and Second class, and were directly in the middle of the train

“Well, it seems things are coming along nicely” I noted. Up near the front of the train was the most complete of the carriages, I climbed inside to see a familiar white unicorn with electric-blue mane and tail tapping away at the keyboard of a computer. This coach was being built as a measurement coach, and as Vinyl was literally the only pony I knew that could pass as an electrician within a million miles of here, I’d asked her to help out. I’d managed to get hold of some of the computers in the containers down in the vault and had modified their operating system, with the help of Twilight and vinyl, to work in the Equestrian language, rather than English, it took several days of sleepless night, but we’d managed to pull it off, I’d also managed to set up measurement devises which monitored things like the power of the locomotive, the speed of the coach to the nearest millisecond, and a few other sensors that monitored ride quality.

“How are things going?” I asked.

“if this train will be anything like you say it is, then like that” she said “I’m just not used to anything this advanced”

“I trust you aren’t having too much difficulty” I said.

“[Are you shitting me?]” She asked in English, with a thick accent “I may just have to borrow a couple of these for producing music”

“You’ve be learning English” I noted.

“You can thank Twilight for that” she said, tapping away at the keyboard “that mare is practically fluent in your language”

“She’s done better than me” I said, all I’d given here was a dictionary that I’d cross translated with the words I knew, next thing I knew she’d knocked on my door and sprung up a conversation in English. The Equestrians certainly have an interesting accent, like German but with an odd twang I couldn’t place. “There are still much I haven’t learned”

“You’re doing well for somepony who could hold a conversation within a four weeks” she retorted “and it’s is, not are”

“Not helping”

“Gotta learn somehow” Vinyl said, still tapping away at the keyboard, before finally pressing the enter key and turning around “Okay, the computers are set up, the rest of the coaches just need finishing and this train is good to go”

A while later I found myself walking through canterlot castle, they were making preparations for tonight’s event, but I was looking for one person in particular, or I should say pony. I found her in a large hall, overseeing preparations.

“Princess” I greeted, giving a small bow.

“What can I do for you, Luke?” she asked.

“I was wondering if you could help me out a little” I said, she gestured for me to continue “I recently discovered a number of my world’s locomotives hidden in the Everfree forest, there currently stored at canterlot works, but we can’t convert them to your countries track gauge and I want somewhere for them to run”

“What were you thinking?” she asked. I lead her over to a table, before pulling out a copy of a map of Ponyville that I had acquired, I then pulled out a pen and marked a cross past the point where the path to the Everfree forest forked off, past the landmark titled “clock tower”

“Well, my house is here” I said, before marking an X at the station “And the station is here, I was thinking of building a strategically planned out  tramline that linked the two, but also gave the town its own transportation system” After a pause Celestia spoke

“Go on”

“Just behind my house is a large open field, which isn’t depicted on the map, the treeline is actually a couple hundred feet back from the path where my house is” I said “I was thinking of setting up a roundhouse behind my house and use that as the museum-slash-shed for storing and maintain the engines and rolling stock”

“So Ponyville gets a transportation system, and you get a museum for these engines of yours” she said, I nodded.

“I also noticed that according to this map there’s an ancient castle, I was wondering if this is actually under restoration” Celestia shook her head “then that’s another thing, this railway could provide a safe link to that castle, allowing work to start on it”

But where would you acquire the stone for such a restoration?” she asked. I began drawing various lines through the forest.

“I’ve noticed there are mountains in the direction of the forest, so we set up multiple quarries and mines throughout, mining for various resources that will benefit both Ponyville and Equestria as a whole” Celestia smiled.

“You seem to have really thought this out” she said.

“Whilst I haven’t worked out every last kink in the plan, I like to think it’s pretty good for something I came up with in the last hour” I said, rolling up the map “Though I’d withhold contacting the ENR management on the matter until I get back from the test run”

“Very well then” she said