It was a sunny morning, around 6:30. Despite still being very tired, I was really excited and prepared for what I have in front of myself. The journey to travel all across Equestria has begun and I promised myself to come back home once I will visit all of the places pointed out on my map. It has all started with packing away my bags, going to the train station and giving my family goodbye. They looked happy, with tears in their eyes. I hope they’ll be doing fine without me, be in Ponyville to help and check on them. The train whistled and instantly, without the thought, I went aboard to sit down in the train car.
I brang map to pin-point to my 'adventure track'. There were so many places to visit and so little time I had… or too much. Decided to pick 3 places that I wanted to always visit and picked it through paper roulette. It was decided - My first stop: Somnambula, with short stops on Appleloosa and Dodge Junction. Just to meet with the locals and explore their little towns, the interest was high. As soon as I sat down, with a backpack next to me and other bags above myself, I spotted some foals travelling with their unicorn mother, a “cherry-red” coated pegasus possibly heading for some journey as well. After half an hour, the station-master signaled the engineer to go and so, the journey finally began. After 16 minutes on the train, we finally passed by Canterlot. I looked at the Ponyville and Canterlot through the window, put my hoof on glass and bid my goodbye to both of those places. “Good-bye, sweet Ponyville. Good-bye, Canterlot. I’ll come back eventually.” The train ran around the mountain's corner and eventually lost sight of both cities.
The time passed. It was already 7:26AM and I was still sleepy. The train was nearing Ghastly George. I have not traveled by train for a long time, which meant that I was quite afraid of the bridge's current state. I am seriously uncomfortable traveling near georges or on bridges in trains. The worry of being stuck there while falling and not able to get out and fly up is immense. To my surprise, they got rid of that old wooden bridge and built new, cable-stayed bridges. How they managed to combine rocks and cables together and in a short amount of time, that might be a forever mystery to me.
The train passed by Ghastly Georges' narrow cliff track for a while until heading towards the tunnel and straight to a desert towards Dodge Junction. Few minutes in the desert and several passengers started to get bored, a little filly ran around the train car. The amber elderly unicorn was reading some book, which looked thick (until noticing it was a full story of “Purple Dwarf”, the story got very positive reviews).
“Hello there, young mare. Where did you get a copy of the new release of ‘Purple Dwarf’? It’s not even out yet” I really had to ask.
“Oh, this? I got my hooves on it early. It is really a nice reading.” she answered. I looked at the book.
The book looked heavenly, as it was new. Wanted to get hooves on it right now, but no, it was scheduled to be officially released next month.
All of the sudden, the train started to make funny noises.
"Mommy, why is the train making these funny noises?" the little filly asked her mother.
"Don’t worry, I think it’s nothing that serious, sweetheart," she replied. Then the train suddenly stopped with everypony throwing them off-guard.
“We will have a delay, everypony. It seems something must have broken down.” said the conductor, as the passengers got angry.
I wanted to check out what was the problem with the locomotive. Opened the door and tried to squeeze through it. Trying to silently pass squeeze through the window was quite hard, since it wasn’t able to open fully. Somepony seems to be lazy. Went under the train, to not be seen by the other engineers. As I was under the train cars, crawling under those train cars, I stopped for a moment to check out how their chassis and bogies are constructed together. It is quite fascinating to look at. When take all of those parts and dismantle them, they’re nothing but stuff, yet to be finished. But together, they can manage and be usefull for something. Like for this train. I got too interested in those chassis. As I went on, I saw a big white smoke hurding towards me, unending, and it felt too hot.
Looking next to me, on the right, saw several hooves and heard two engineers talking. It was about the problem:
“You sure it’s just too much steam pressure ?” asked the engineer
“Yeah. That must be the cause of that small pipe burstin’.” answered the main Engineer
(That’s the problem? I thought those engineers were professionals, I thought.)
“Ya' kept your eye out on that pressure level, right newbie?” asked the main Engineer
('Newbie?' Asking myself. Did they just got a new crew member to operate that locomotive?)
“Of course I did, though… Well, I looked around the field as we traveled on occasions, so-” said the newbie, as then he was interrupted
“SO?! That pipe is now broken down thanks to your negligence. Good job on taking care of the pressure, ya' moron!” Yelled the main Engineer out of frustration
“Give me a BREAK! I’ve done enough over he-”
“You do jack nothing but slack all day! Not even those gosh darn carts!” yelled the main Engineer
The newbie then frowned and walked away to grab those spare pipes
They were arguing like Sweetie Belle and Rarity. At this point, still being under the train car, It was getting too steamy and I almost had a small burns. I crawled away from under the train tracks and went back to the train car. The engineers noticed me that I was near them, sweaty, though they thought it was due to the scorching Sun.
“Were you praising the Sun? You could’ve at least taken sunscreen” one of the engineers said as I was entering.
I sat back to my seat and decided to read 'Pinkie’s Paranormal Party' weird, but neat. After a long while, we were back on the road.
