The roads around Falmouth were in urgent need of a new renovation. They were once again full of potholes thanks to botched repairs done by the local council, and as a result they had been forced to call the workmen in to fix them again. As the saying goes, 'get something done cheaply, you pay twice'.

This work crew consisted largely of workers, but they also had a large green steamroller named George. I am sorry to say that he and his driver, a woman called Cozy Glow, were absolute pieces of work. One morning, Porter rolled into the yard to collect them, so they could be taken to a new worksite. When they arrived, George was being rude to Bellerophon and Misty.

"Call yourself a working engine, eh?" George laughed. "You're just worn out wheels on worn out rails! Rip the rails up and lay road in their place, that's what I say!"

Bellerophon looked annoyed. "Your roads are built from raw materials we extract from the quarry!" he said. "Without us you'd have no roads to build!"

"It doesn't work like that, dearie," Cozy Glow said, with her usual mix of false concern and sarcasm. "They'd just move the stone and rocks in lorries."

"Lorries?" Misty asked.

"I think we did that joke last year," Bellerophon said.

"Besides, nobody would notice if they flattened you," George said.

Porter buffered up to the flatbed George was on and decided to speak up. "That's quite enough, you bag of bolts," he said. "I will not tolerate anybody speaking to my friends in that manner. Now say sorry or you're going nowhere."

George rolled his eyes. "Sorry you can't take a joke, Bellerophon."

"Can we get moving?" said the guard. "We've been sitting here for ages."

When they got underway George was still complaining. "Railways are no good! Turn them into roads!"

Bellerophon was pleased George was gone. "Rollers are rubbish! Good riddance to old rubbish!"

Misty sat down on a nearby bench and sighed. "Why is the world full of so many nasty people?" she asked, rhetorically.

"I don't know," Bellerophon admitted. "But that doesn't mean we can't try and bring some positivity to the world."

Misty nodded. "That's true. Mom said she was going to try and meet me for lunch, so that's something to look forward to."

Porter dropped George off at the first work site near Penrhyn, where George was still moaning. "That was a bumpy ride," he grumbled. "Glad that's over."

"Frankly, so am I," Porter said. "The day when I never see you again cannot come soon enough."

Izzy leaned out of the cab. "You know George, if you spent less time being spiteful and more time trying to be positive the world would be a better place. You'd probably enjoy yourself more too."

"Right," George said. "Still, least I get to flatten tarmac now."

Once Porter was uncoupled, he made his way up to Perranwell, where he encountered Charles with a freight train.

"Having a good day?" Charles called. He then noticed Porter looked annoyed. "Did somebody put sugar in the water tank?"

"No, it's that George," Porter fumed. "He's really rude to everybody. He won't stop complaining!"

Charles sighed. "I know this will sound highly bizarre coming from me, but ignore him. If you never let anybody see your buttons, they won't be able to push them."

Zipp leaned out of the cab. "That's what I do whenever Pipp is being annoying. Or that time mom tried to cook spaghetti and nearly blew up the cooker."

With that, the signal changed, and Charles was on his way. Izzy sighed. "I hope they get the road problem fixed. That steamroller is mean. And I don't like people who are mean."

"With you, mate."

George was busy flattening tarmac to fill the potholes, and his mood had improved considerably. "This is the life," he said. "Getting the roads repaired, and then off to the next one. The freedom of the roads awaits!"

"You're already on a road," Cozy said.

"I was referring to the freedom of the drivers when the repairs are done," George replied. "Then they shall be able to get back in their cars and drive whenever they want rather than having to suffer the tyranny of railway timetables!"

Just then, Charles rolled through with the freight from earlier. George called over. "What do you think of this, eh?"

Charles just ignored him.

Once Charles was away and clear, George smiled. "I'll pay him out for ignoring me," he smiled, as he eyed the nearby level crossing.

Charles pulled into Perranwell and dropped off the empty tankers from his train for the fuel depot. "Hello Salty!" he said. "Fancy seeing you up here!"

"I fancied a change of scenery," Salty said, "so Sunny pulled a few strings and got us working up here!"

Sunny leaned out of the cab. "It's a very different working environment, I can tell you." Her face then switched to a look of confusion. "Guys... why is the music echoing?"

"Good question," Zipp said. "It's possible that whomever was doing the dub forgot to remove the original dub track and put it slightly out of sync with the main audio."

Charles was, by this point, run round his train to propel the remaining trucks into another siding. "Just another strange occurrance on the Maritime Line, eh!" he snorted, as his engine revved up.

Within a few minutes, the return train was formed, largely consisting of tankers carrying chocolate syrup... for some reason. Nobody was quite sure why the oil terminal had started a sideline in chocolate syrup making, but then again if a firearms maker can switch to making motorbikes then a oil company can produce chocolate.

Charles was soon on his way back up the line, and was enjoying the run tremendously. "That's the good thing about these TTA tankers!" he said. "We can run at line speed! FEEL THE SPEED!"

Zipp looked ahead. "We're still limited to 40 miles per hour, remember."

"Still, could be worse."

And it was about to get worse. As they approached Penrhyn, Zipp applied the emergency brake. "Those idiots have tarmaced over the rails!" she shouted.

Suddenly, Charles started bouncing up and down, and his leading bogie lurched to the left. He and his train left the rails and began skidding down the road. Charles' brakes were still applied, but with no rails to grip they were having minimal effect. He just slid helplessly along.

Zipp blasted the horn to warn any cars in the way, and workmen ran for cover as Charles and his train ploughed along. Charles was particularly worried. "I'd quite like to be in a shed now!" he said.

Suddenly, he lurched to one side and up ahead was a garden shed.

"THIS IS NOT WHAT I MEANT!"

He smashed into the shed and clean through it, coming to a stop on the other side. "Ow..."

Zipp shut off his engine and jumped down from the cab, before walking back down the train. By some miracle, part of the train had detached from the formation and was still on the mainline.

Just then, Zipp noticed the signal at the other end of the station had gone to green. "This is bad," she said. She dashed over to the signal box and waved to the signalman. "SET THE SIGNALS TO RED!"

"On it!" the signalman replied, and began pulling levers. Just then, a familiar whistle echoed through the air.

"Rebecca's approaching!" Charles shouted. "We need to stop her!"

Zipp, without hesitating, grabbed a red flag from a nearby bucket and ran to the opposite end of the platform before holding it out. "STOP! YOU HAVE TO STOP!"

Rebecca was running tender first, and as a result couldn't see Zipp at all. But she could hear something was wrong. "Hitch, something's going on!" she shouted.

Hitch had been watching the signals, and glanced down to see Zipp waving a red flag. "Looks like we're stopping!" he shouted, as he slammed the brakes on. The brake blocks screeched as the train slowed down- and eventually stopped in the platform, narrowly avoiding hitting the brake van.

"Good thing we didn't hit that going at full speed," Hitch said. "We'd probably have derailed."

"But why is the line blocked?" Rebecca asked. "Charles is supposed to wait in the loop, not before it!"

Zipp walked over. "Those idiot road workers decided to lay tarmac on top of the rails, and we derailed on it. The foreman won't be happy."

"Excuse me? I'm still embedded in a building over here!"

A breakdown train was sent to clean up the mess, and the foreman was not pleased- albeit not with Zipp. "The town council shall have to answer for this," he said. "Poor quality for a low price is not a good deal, but no matter how many times I tell them that they don't listen."

The construction crew were sent away, and new workmen did the job again- a lot better, might I add. As they say, go cheap and you pay twice.

Author's Note

This story is an adaptation of the Thomas and Friends episode Bye, George!. This episode is notable for being George's final speaking appearance in the show, although he was supposed to have appeared in the 23rd Season episode Free the Roads.

Charles' comment about the audio echoing is a reference to the echo tapes, a series of Thomas and Friends home media releases in the United States in the 1990s. These tapes get their name from the odd 'echo' sound the background music has, caused by the raw dubbing track being accidentally layered on top of the finished dub audio. The echo is caused by the two tracks being slightly out of sync; the most extreme example of this is a re-release of Percy's Predicament, where the audio layers are half a second out of sync. This quickly becomes very irritating to watch.

BSA are a name synonymous with racing motorbikes, but it may surprise you to learn they started life as a firearms manufacturer; the company name stands for Birmingham Small Arms. Curiously, the acronym is better known in popular use than the company name, similar to how a lot of people don't know that P&O stands for Peninsular and Oriental and talk of PIN numbers (the N in PIN stands for number).

The crash in both the episode and this adaptation is believed to be based on an incident that occurred in Scotland in 1969. In that incident, a railtour on the line from Garnqueen South Junction to Bedlay Colliery was forced to stop when it emerged workmen building the M7 Motorway had already torn up part of the track- before they were supposed to.