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.<\/p>\n
\u201cA tooth broke off one of my pinion wheels,\u201d he said sadly, \u201dand they say they have to replace it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s not so bad,\u201d said Patrick. \u201cThey know how to mend us at the Steamworks now. You won\u2019t have to go to Switzerland like we used to.\u201d Alaric and Eric agreed reassuringly, but Wilfred, Culdee, and Ernest were more sympathetic.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose were Godred\u2019s wheels, weren\u2019t they?\u201d asked Ernest.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes. They say they can\u2019t just weld the tooth back on,\u201d explained Shane Dooiney. \u201cThey can\u2019t trust it not to break again. They\u2019re going to give me new wheels instead.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you used to tell me about Godred to scare me,\u201d sniffed Patrick, \u201che sounded quite silly indeed. You ought to be happy not to have his silly old wheels anymore, Shane.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was<\/i> silly,\u201d said Culdee, \u201cbut our Railway might have closed if not for him.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHow\u2019s that?\u201d Alaric and Eric were listening raptly too.
\n
\n\u201cAfter Godred\u2019s accident,\u201d said Culdee, \u201cthey kept him in the back of the Shed. Our Railway had no money to send him to Winterthur, so he couldn\u2019t be mended. And every evening when we would come in, he would grumble about how dull sitting and staying was.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe all told him it served him right to have to stay,\u201d added Wilfred, \u201creckless as he\u2019d been.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cJust that,\u201d agreed Culdee. \u201cBut one day, one of Wilfred\u2019s connecting rods broke.\u201d Wilfred looked away embarrassed at this.<\/p>\n
\u201cWilfred wasn\u2019t reckless like Godred was. It was just wear and tear,\u201d appeased Culdee, \u201cbut The Railway didn\u2019t have money to send him away to be mended either. There was too much work to have two engines out of service. Everyone was worried about what to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat night, we weren\u2019t let into the Shed like usual. They made us wait. Wilfred\u2019s Driver and the Manager were inside, talking to Godred.\u201d Culdee frowned. \u201cHe didn\u2019t tell us until years later what they talked about.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey told him they were going to take one of his connecting rods and give it to Wilfred. ‘And they weren\u2019t<\/i> asking,’ he said. They told Godred that he must help keep the Railway running because if he didn\u2019t he would never be mended himself. As long as the Railway was open though, Godred could still be mended one day. ‘But the most important thing,’ he said, ‘was that they said this was a way for me to be Useful, even while stuck in the Shed.’\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo he gave his connecting rod to Wilfred and Wilfred was put back to work. And after that, instead of complaining, he would ask what Wilfred and his connecting rod did and saw that day.\u201d Culdee sighed glumly. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t very long before he was asking all of us.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cGodred would say that once he was mended,\u201d said Shane Dooiney, smiling as he remembered, \u201ckeeping a Good Look-out on his rails would be a nice change after looking at these walls for so long.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut he never did get mended,\u201d said Eric sadly.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, he didn\u2019t. I don\u2019t think the Manager meant to lie,\u201d said Culdee gently, \u201cbut it was a long journey in those days. We always try to be careful, but breakdowns happen. Every time one of us broke a part, Godred would give us his so we could keep working. But Godred kept getting smaller and smaller in his corner.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe didn\u2019t notice at first, but we did,\u201d said Wilfred. \u201cThe more of himself he gave away to us, the more he\u2019d need to have replaced later. We tried to tell him, but he wouldn\u2019t hear sense about it though. ‘The Railway had to stay open,’ he said, ‘so that was most important.’\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen the Railway finally did have the money to send us for overhauls,\u201d said Culdee, \u201cthe Manager saw it would be more expensive to replace all his parts than it would to get a new engine. We were out-of-date,\u201d Culdee gave Patrick a rueful smirk at this, \u201cand many of our parts would have to be made special for us now which costs more. Godred became very sad once he understood.\u201d<\/p>\n
Patrick, Alaric, and Eric all looked at each other guiltily.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey would still have bought the lot of you,\u201d pointed out Wilfred. \u201cThey couldn\u2019t send us for overhaul without more engines to do our work while we were away.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s right,\u201d said Culdee. \u201cAnd Godred had already decided that he was ready to be scrapped before that was ever a thought.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cA tooth broke off one of my pinion wheels,\u201d he said sadly, \u201dand they say they have to replace it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s not so bad,\u201d said Patrick. \u201cThey know how to mend us at the Steamworks now. You won\u2019t have to go to Switzerland like we used to.\u201d Alaric and Eric agreed reassuringly, but Wilfred, Culdee, and Ernest were more sympathetic.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose were Godred\u2019s wheels, weren\u2019t they?\u201d asked Ernest.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes. They say they can\u2019t just weld the tooth back on,\u201d explained Shane Dooiney. \u201cThey can\u2019t trust it not to break again. They\u2019re going to give me new wheels instead.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you used to tell me about Godred to scare me,\u201d sniffed Patrick, \u201che sounded quite silly indeed. You ought to be happy not to have his silly old wheels anymore, Shane.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was<\/i> silly,\u201d said Culdee, \u201cbut our Railway might have closed if not for him.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHow\u2019s that?\u201d Alaric and Eric were listening raptly too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[164,167],"tags":[156],"class_list":["post-4104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-the-railway-series-thomas-the-tank-engine","tag-engines-in-sidings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/djangodurango.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/djangodurango.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/djangodurango.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/djangodurango.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/djangodurango.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4104"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/djangodurango.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4104\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4229,"href":"https:\/\/djangodurango.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4104\/revisions\/4229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/djangodurango.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/djangodurango.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/djangodurango.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}