Lost Spark of Feral

First, she's a Doncaster product. A Doncaster express engine! (Doesn't this put As Good As Gordon into spectacular perspective?) No wonder she arrives on Sodor and immediately become one of the Main Characters on the island. She was a queen in her day! 

Much like I think Gordon experienced — perhaps even more so — Emily experienced pressures during her G.N.R. career. First, she (or at least No. 1 — tbh this might have changed by Emily's day, since we assume she was built 1894) originally did not have a front coupling link because Stirling expected his masterpiece design would never require assistance from another engine at the front. No pilots for Queen Emily, if you please! (in the same cadence as "tender engines don't shunt™":) Stirling Singles Do Not Fail. They Do Not Need Help. They, And They Alone, Pull The Train. 

Further pressure: The G.N.R. did not tolerate its express trains being a minute late, even if you're going from Edinburgh to London in pounding rain (see first link). It was not acceptable. 

Further pressure: The G.N.R. appeared to overload the 1894 locos (see second link). One of them wrecked (there was a dead passenger) in 1895 (food for thought for Emily backstory?) and the Inspectorate noted that the axles were overloaded. The railway also had to rebuild the 1894 series because experience proved it had given them a little too much adhesion for safety. 

(Is Emily's safety consciousness making sense to everyone by now? And her self-importance? Good, good…)

Now, unlike Gordon, Emily would have had to learn some hard-won humility long before Sodor. Four years after Emily was presumably built, the Atlantics arrived to claim the express services and older Singles began to be withdrawn accordingly. Emily would have been shifted to secondary passenger duties (slower trains, piloting) until no later than 1916. 

After this point, Emily must have been hidden or put into storage. My preferred headcanon is now that she was stored as a source of spare parts for her sister, G.N.R. No. 1 (the one now in the National Collection). I headcanon No. 1 as a Doncaster express engine in the worst way, and as Designer's Favorite Daughter she never learned humility. She thought it quite natural that she had a "spare," and did not care to find rescue or relief for her younger sister. 

(In Bird at Barrow Central, Coppernob will be one of the engines on hand to hear No. 1 carelessly refer to the existence of a surviving sibling in storage in passing. No. 1 was quite enjoying boasting about her pending return to steam, and she really could not understand why the other preserved engines one after another were gaping and asking stupid questions. Nor why, after these simpletons finally put together the whole story of Emily's abandonment to nearly 70 years of storage, the entire Great Hall wound up shouting at her!)

I have Emily arriving on Sodor in the 80s, since I headcanon No. 1's return to steam being the inciting event that brought Emily to the attention of people (the Fat Controller) who gave an appropriate damn about this. Indeed Crovan's Gate probably refused to do the work they'd been contracted to do on No. 1 until they were first given Emily, whom they restored and found coaches for. 

Sooo… skipping over all of that… (honestly, Emily managed to sleep through a lot of it. She wasn't aware 70 years had passed, and the Fat Controller et. al. are delighted to find she's fit as a fiddle, physically and mentally. But, of course, she has a lot of Issues due to her former status as spare…) 

Let's try that sentence again, shall we? 

So, Emily comes to Sodor with three formative experiences Gordon didn't have the benefit of (I mean, I think he knew pressure during his trials — but he was never in regular timetabled service on the mainland). Given that they do have some fundamental similarities (and are both Doncaster products), contrasting Emily and Gordon sheds a lot of light on them both. 

The most obvious contrast is that Emily arrives much more humbled than Gordon, which I think is reflected well in her rather muted Series 7 entry. She's not going to come in on a high horse. But you can see her high spirit in being as active and forward in integrating onto the main line as she is, despite everything she's been through. 

And what an adjustment that must have been! For all Emily did some "secondary duties" before, it wasn't the variety of jobs we saw her do in Series 7. And I doubt she mingled with such a diversity of fleetmates before. Perhaps, if she was stored in Doncaster 'plant' for some of the interim, there was a period where she met lots of different engines and got a bit more well-rounded. Either way, she comes in and makes an impressive effort to put herself forward and make friends, even on a railway that (antiquated though Sodor is, in some ways) is still quite a leap in modernity from her last stint of WWI-era service. 

Then, in the HIT era… we see that she's over her Humility Arc, lmao. She's more than found her wheels, and we're starting to see some of that Queen of the Victorian Rails energy. I almost don't know what to say here, the episodes in the context I've given speak very eloquently for themselves. 

But this context also explains why Emily would suffer more and more instances of insecurity as the series goes on. She's really been transported into a new age and new society. Her high spirits have carried her very far, but given her baggage I'm not at all surprised that she'd be alternately resistant to advice, pleading for help, playing make-believe royalty, overestimating her own prowess, bossing around tank engines, doting over sick engines, and having a series of star-struck crushes on powerful and beautiful female engines. 

(God I think I love this bitch. Emily's really cool as TVS characters go. Some people are just haters.