#coppernob things

Coppernob wasn't expecting visitors at that hour. The sun hadn't yet put in an appearance, so there were no passengers disembarking from ships. Even the Steelworks were quiet — apparently, operations were no longer 'round-the-clock. A few of the Twenties had been able to make a visit, even though Coppernob was at the wrong dock for them to swing by on their usual route, and he expected to see more of them before his week was out. But not at the crack of dawn.

The last Furness engine he had not counted on seeing at all. Coppernob had been loaned to B.R. and stationed at Buccleuch Docks for the week in a blatant attempt to steal some rail-enthusiast thunder from the North Western region, and he well knew it. Odds were that Charles Hatt understood he was being snubbed, and he might have warned his own famous engines off crossing the line and feeding into the ancient engine's publicity. 

But the Seagull showed up. Albeit before six a.m. there was a certain amount of discretion involved.

That's what taking the morning post will do for you.

After dropping it off for the mainland engine the Seagull navigated the yard until he was alongside Coppernob's makeshift plinth. His eyes widened when he saw the damage on the older engine's dome and boiler, but Coppernob was well used to that, and for that matter the Seagulls were well used to pretending not to stare. "Good morning, Nobby!"

"'Morning, Two."

At that the Seagull blinked, and his boiler gave a little shudder. "Oh, that still feels so wrong!"

"And I still don't see a nameplate."

"Nobody calls me that."

Coppernob snorted. "Oh yes, you're riding rather high these days, aren’t you? A book named after you and everything. It's lucky you have me to keep your wheels in trim."

"It isn't that. My new name would sound wrong coming from you, too. But you might use my old Furness number... there's no one else left to use it."

"That," said Coppernob, slow and deliberate (a mighty bulwark, warding off sentiment) "would be arrant disrespect to your new owners."

"Ah. And you're famously deferential, of course, to humans not named Ramsden."

Coppernob rolled his eyes. "Your lot always fancied yourselves barristers," he muttered... not quite as crossly, perhaps, as he'd intended. "Though that Charles Hatt is quite a muckety-muck among those national rail types, these days."

"Isn't he just."

"I can remember that boy boarding L.M.S. trains after holidays to return to his apprenticeship… he was slimmer, then."

There was a pause, as both watched the great yellow-and-black hammerhead crane slowly swing a piece of container freight. Coppernob was impassive as ever, but Edward was smiling.

It was the blue engine who next spoke. "Town has never been the same without you… I expect you’re getting a good many visitors here?"

"By the train-load," said Coppernob, matter-of-factly. "They really ought to have put me at the new station. Me being here is a disruption to dock operations."

"They may move you, yet. Have you seen the new station?"

"No. But you needn't wrack your smokebox thinking how to break the news gently. I know very well how ugly it is."

Edward smiled again, tamping down a nostalgic sadness that he knew Coppernob wouldn't appreciate. (Or that he would appreciate, but would take aim at anyway, by reflex.) "Gordon complained about the new station every night for two years."

"He left off complaining too soon." Coppernob eyed the younger engine, committing several mechanical alterations to memory. "Are those new frames?"

"No?"

"Don't take that tone with me. Well, if they're the same old, then that paint is doing wonders. New boiler?"

"No."

"Then why did they raise it?"

"They did swap out for a new one for a bit, while mine was in repairs, and that one required these braces. It seems they liked the look. I'm still not so sure."

"No one cares what you think, son," said Coppernob dryly. "If you please your directors, it's all that matters."

"Thanks, Nobby. Can always count on you."

"Always. You're still taking main line trains, then?"

"Not often." Edward grew quite animated. "My friend BoCo usually takes this train. He offered it to me for a day so that I could come see you. He's a class 28 — you've seen them, haven't you? The main line diesel-electrics that are stabled here. Do you know, they were built by the company that merged with Vickers?"

"All right, son." Coppernob eyed him askance. Not exactly reproving, but bemused. "I didn't need your friend's life story." A faint blush began to grow on the Seagull's smokebox. "What do you do these days, when you're not swapping jobs with dodgy diesels?"

"He's not dodgy."

"Mechanically, son. Mechanically. They have something of a reputation."

"Their engines aren't well-made," Edward admitted reluctantly. "BoCo's very clever about managing around it, though."

"Ah," said Coppernob. "So you have something in common, is that right? But this isn't what I asked."

Edward twisted his lips briefly, the locomotive equivalent of a shrug. "I manage my yard, like always. I don't do much banking anymore, the trains are beyond me, but I help out here and there with branch line goods."

"Hmm. The steelworks engines say they heard your Controller uses you as something of an under-manager."

"The steelworks engines!"

"Yes. They're ex-Furness, you know. Well, the steam engines, obviously."

"Oh, I know. But I never knew them, you know. I hadn't expected they knew anything of me." Honestly the Sodor engine was surprised they were still extant.

"The Twenties have always kept up with the doings of the world. And they knew I'd want to know what was going on with you. Is what they say true?"

"No? Well, sort of. People have been saying I’m a manager now as a bit of a joke. Controller has put me in charge of trialling our newcomers for different things."

Coppernob's expression didn't change, except for his eyebrows to slowly rise. "That's a fair bit of responsibility."

"Well, I've been training up other engines since the '20s. But I'm expected to make recommendations now, and that's new... I suppose. The real difference is that this is fast becoming my only use."

Something between melancholy and bitterness stained those last words. Coppernob acknowledged it only by silence. They spent several minutes watching the activity in the docks. A great bulk carrier was being loaded at one pier. At another a tanker was slowly being siphoned of some of its precious liquid cargo.

"What's it like," asked Edward, "being back?"

Coppernob eyes followed the crate's progress upwards and then over to deck before answering. "The aluminum doesn't seem to do as brisk a trade as the hemitate did."

"No."

Coppernob was still not quick to speak. Edward, however, was these days a practiced listener, and wore him down. "More raw wool and foodstuffs go out. I suppose there are not so many locals to feed as there once were."

"Yes."

"The new crane seems strong."

"Oh, Sphyrna's very good. She's nice, too."

Coppernob gazed at the younger engine, eyes hooded against some hidden emotion. Or joke. "I suppose it would be ungracious of me to say I prefer the old one?"

"Oh," teased the ex-Seagull, "very."

"So many things these days, that I’m not to say."

"Of course you miss Hal," said Edward, more seriously. "There never was such a crane."

"His design was very common. But none braver, no." Coppernob snorted, but his heart wasn't in it. "People make much of what I did in the blitz, which was nothing. Hal kept this place going day and night. He couldn't take shelter when everyone else could. Nice easy target. But they had to take him out before they slowed him down. He never missed a beat."

"No."

"I wonder if the people remember him."

"The locals do," said Edward quietly. "One still hears him spoken of, sometimes. Our new Caledonian engines came and asked me if I knew who they were talking about, and they've only been here a couple of years."

Coppernob seemed to consider some more, eyes continuing to examine the yard. 

Finally, with an air of great deliberation, he gave his verdict. "I think my lot ran this place better."

Edward laughed, though subsiding to a diplomatic murmur when he spoke. "That's no very great boast. I hear those Hudswell Clark shunters are rather troublesome."

"To be sure. I've seen for myself." Coppernob, though to be sure his voice had been low to begin with, did not trouble to lower it further. Might have raised it, even. "Not open cheek and frank mischief, either. They've some sly game going. I don't know exactly what scheme they have, but whatever they’re about I know that a hundred years ago you could be scrapped for it without a second's thought. Do they try tricks with your lot?"

"Well, we generally shunt our own goods here. But no, they don't seem to dare give us trouble." Edward heard himself, and chuckled. "That may sound rather brash. It's because of our Controller. Though to be sure Gordon and our Scotsengines are plenty intimidating, even on their own." He gave Coppernob another would-be discreet survey. He was better at it than he and his lot had been back in 1908, that much was for sure. "How's the museum, Nobby?"

Coppernob thought it over. "All right. The Government projected 140 thousand visitors last year, and we had nearly 175."

"Oh, congratulations are in order."

"Government's still not happy. Somehow the money doesn't work out. But it sounds as though the money never is quite right, for a museum. I reckon things are going fair enough."

Edward waited, until seeing that was as much as he was going to get. "Do you like the other engines and things?"

"They're a little mad." Coppernob's mouth quirked as he owned: "So I get on with them. But don't pump me for tales about the others. Unlike some engines I hear of, we make it a point to guard each other's privacy."

"Well, then. Are many of the visitors Londoners? Or do they mostly travel in?"

"About half and half."

"... and do you like them?"

"A few, I suppose. Most I neither like nor dislike — they’re just part of the crowd."

Edward make a little hiss of amused exasperation. "Yes, but — are — are you happy there, Nobby?"

For his trouble he found himself, predictably, pinned by one of Coppernob's most inscrutable gazes. Predictable... and yet in years past it would have been more a blazing glare.

Certainly old Nobby had mellowed in the past few decades. But whether that was something to celebrate or something to mourn was unclear.

"Happy?" muttered Coppernob. "What is this preoccupation everyone has with happiness. In our day no one was happy or unhappy... men no more than their machines. You were decent or shiftless. Honest or ne'er-do-well. If you were happy you were born well or you were dead."

"Yes," agreed Edward. "I think it's been getting better, too. But now it's you who hasn't answered my question. Do you miss Barrow very much, or are you happy at Clapham?"

It hadn’t been easy to make himself ask. And when Edward saw his blank expression, saw how the ancient engine struggled with the question, he suddenly understood that none of them had ever before enquired after Nobby’s well-being, not really. No one had dared think of it. The entire railway, in Edward's day, had run on Coppernob being exactly what they all needed him to be: a source of legitimacy for the directors, entertainment for locals, an attraction for visitors, a role model for engines in service, an ally for the retirees, a minder for the young, a rod of correction for the errant, a reservoir of memory; the old number three seemed to have fulfilled all that was wanted of him effortlessly, with his own feelings immaterial. 

And now Coppernob blinked at him. Only vaguely annoyed, instead of wrathful.

"Oh, I'm all right enough. I miss Barrow as it was — but it's not coming back. Better to be among other engines like me and have something to do, than to watch strangers run this town. Clapham is a very comfortable place to sit around and be a well-polished curiosity. Though I rather miss Horwich."

"Horwich!" That had all been a bit surprising, a bit new. But it was that last sentence that really shocked the ex-Seagull. "I should have thought..."

It was Coppernob's turn to twist his lips. "I should have thought, too." Horwich Works had been a curse on Furness engines after the Grouping, its appetite for scrapping younger and younger engines never seeming to abate. In the immediate aftermath of the bombing of Barrow station Edward had needed to make several inquires before learning Coppernob's whereabouts, and the news "taken to Horwich" had chilled him to the firebox. He'd been genuinely surprised several years later when he'd had news of Coppernob putting in an appearance at some centenary celebration in Manchester... alive. "But it's not as if I had to see their scrap lines. If anything I felt closer to the rest there than here. Anyway, I liked being in the shop. There was always something going on — work-y, engine-y sort of things. The workshop really is the heart of a railway and while I was there I could almost feel... But then again, it was dark and noisy, and not the sort of place children come to visit. And I suppose these days B.R. is mismanaging it into the ground. I'm fortunate to be just where I am. Doubtless some other old thing is rusting away in storage because I have their spot at Clapham." And on that note, Coppernob seemed to feel confidences were over. "Tell that absurd Mogul to come over before I've gone."

"I will. Thomas sends his regards. He can't possibly get over this way, but he wanted to say hullo."

"Thomas... ah, yes, that's the little lost sidetank, isn't it." Coppernob's expression didn't change. "Haven't heard that name in a minute."

"Oh yes. I'm sure children who visit transport museums never ask every steam engine they see if they know Thomas the Train."

"Please tell me he has no idea how famous he is."

"Fortunately not. He knows he's a fixture on Sodor but not how far that fame extends. It's about the only secret Controller's ever tried to have everyone keep and succeeded."

"Speaking of fame, I don't know if you noticed that man in street wear. He's taken at least one photograph of us and will probably take more at close-range. You meant to be discreet — will your Controller be angry?"

"Oh, no. Why would he? No, I only wanted to come when it was quiet so as to not get you in trouble. I suppose the whole point in B.R. having you out here was to try to overshadow our region."

"Oh, it was. It very much was."

"Then ought I head off the man with the camera?"

"They care. I don't."

Coppernob gave a secret, wicked smirk, as if to his own self, and Edward grinned. For an instant it was the old Nobby, a Nobby that for the Sodor engine had been bumped askew on his pedestal since 1915, the fearless golden hero of his youth. "Right. Trust you for that. Though I'm afraid I must be saying good-bye. I'm to pick up that petrol and take it back over the bridge."

"Write more often."

"More often! You never answered."

"Perhaps I didn't. Do it anyway."

"Only, I thought I must have annoyed you."

"Son, your lot has been annoying me since before the turn of the century. Don't break tradition at this late date." The old engine looked typically indifferent. Edward knew that expression very well, too well to be fooled by it, but he looked his fill anyway, re-committing it to memory. Coppernob seemed to be doing the same with him, though if he really were then he was much more subtle about it. "After all, you're my only source for news of that blasted island. No more than half of any letter about that Vickers diesel of yours, if you please."

"Very well. And I'll pass on word to James and the others today. I'm so glad to have seen you again, Nobby."

Edward half expected an idle remark in return that he, handsome old Coppernob, was of course well worth the seeing. But Nobby's playful mood — or what passed as a playful mood, for Nobby — had already passed over. He was staring ahead listlessly. Perhaps the mention of tradition had sent him on a reverie. Perhaps he was gloomy at the thought of a new day entertaining modern, unsatisfactory Barrovians. Edward did not imagine for a second that Coppernob's heart was breaking to say good-bye to him. The old engine was too tough for that.

Indeed, it seemed he was too tough to even acknowledge his departure. Edward was about to give up waiting for a response, and he gave a whistle to signal his movement.

He hadn't quite gotten off his brakes, though, when Coppernob, voice urgent and somehow bare, stopped him with a single word.

"Thirty-Four. Don't — " Coppernob broke off for an instant. Then he took a deep breath and finished, as if angry at whatever invisible force had stopped him. "Don't let them do to you what they did to me."

Edward looked over at him.

There was a new Coppernob there. One he had never shown any of the Seagulls. One he probably had shown very few engines at all.

The old engine grinned twistedly, as if to mask it. "That is what young Hatt wants, isn't it? Have you get the newcomers settled, run out your boiler ticket, then stick you on a plinth, probably at that little station of yours. The railway continues to benefit from your experience without your operational costs. I remember. I know how it goes. Don't let them, don’t you dare let them. Better scrap than that. Preservation isn’t any sort of life."

Coppernob didn't look a bit sad. But the intensity of each hissed word betrayed years of solitary pain, and Edward was terribly shaken.

"I — I can't let them scrap me," said Edward numbly. "I've been fighting to prevent that for ages."

"I know."

"Not only for myself, Nobby. I'm not a coward, I know I'm no better than all my brothers who faced the torch. But it would set a precedent for the others — Thomas and the others. I must keep going, at least until they're safe — "

Coppernob gave a harsh laugh, humorless. "Save your puff. I know. Don't I know! You mustn't fall into every single trap I did, son. Anyway, what of it? Do you suppose your friends would be happy in that position? Could you stand by, and watch it happen to them?"

"I — don't know," said Edward, still blank. The truth was that he'd assumed that the younger engines, most of them more popular than he, would be kept operational even if the future Nobby predicted for him (a future that he himself indeed saw coming) came to pass.

Coppernob's gaze was piercing. "I tried to fight them. I knew what a terrible thing they were demanding of me. You won't even try to resist — I taught you too well, didn't I? Duty above all else — that's a rule for a younger engine. It was a good rule for all those other poor sods with their short, normal lives. But you... maybe it makes no difference. It didn't for me. But fight anyway. Once you give your railway fifty years of service, you're allowed to say no, damn it. Loudly, and often."

And then Coppernob looked away. Clearly he thought there was nothing more to be said. 

After a dazed moment Edward whistled again, limply, and chuffed off.