“Ready to be scrapped?” The younger engines gasped in horror.
“Yes,” said Culdee calmly. “It was a strange thing. It’s very sad to us, but he was relieved once he’d decided. One morning, he asked for the Manager to come to the Shed. They had a long talk after the rest of us left for our jobs. When we came back that evening, Godred wasn’t sad anymore. The Manager, he said, had made Arrangements for him the next day.”
“Didn’t you try to talk him out of it?” asked Alaric in alarm.
Read on…
One evening, the other mountain engines came into the Shed to find Shane Dooiney already there and looking gloomy. They asked him what was the matter.
“A tooth broke off one of my pinion wheels,” he said sadly, ”and they say they have to replace it.”
“That’s not so bad,” said Patrick. “They know how to mend us at the Steamworks now. You won’t have to go to Switzerland like we used to.” Alaric and Eric agreed reassuringly, but Wilfred, Culdee, and Ernest were more sympathetic.
“Those were Godred’s wheels, weren’t they?” asked Ernest.
“Yes. They say they can’t just weld the tooth back on,” explained Shane Dooiney. “They can’t trust it not to break again. They’re going to give me new wheels instead.”
“When you used to tell me about Godred to scare me,” sniffed Patrick, “he sounded quite silly indeed. You ought to be happy not to have his silly old wheels anymore, Shane.”
“He was silly,” said Culdee, “but our Railway might have closed if not for him.”
“How’s that?” Alaric and Eric were listening raptly too.
Read on…
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