#crovan's gate

I now have a site where you can grab physical prints of my Sodor posters! 6 designs currently available - each has two sizes to choose from and an optional faceless variant!

https://kumatajdg.com/shop/

I plan to broach into other themes too, so stay tuned :D

The Sodor Highland Railway is an AU IOS-style book I did a lot of work on recently, which follows an AU where the Skarloey and Mid Sodor Railways united in the late 1890's.

In true IOS-style, it names all the stations on the route, where incidents happen, little historical events as well as including the histories of all the engines on the line, important controllers and references to events preceding the railway's existence. Here's a little piece from the very beginning:

'The Sodor Highland Railway is a narrow gauge railway that crosses through the heart of Sodor from Arlesburgh Port to Crovan’s Gate Works with a branch up to the Harbour at Harwick. It is an important part of the Sudrian economy, and the oldest railway on Sodor in continuous operation.

The line runs from Crovan’s Gate wharf on the Southeast of Sodor to Arlesburgh in the West and Harwick in the North, with the ancient walled city of Peel Godred being the central station and junction. This makes the railway the longest 2ft 3in railway in the world, being longer than the Welsh Highland and Ffestiniog Railways combined. 

I don't have any specific HCs tbh... except perhaps Bodiam. She got an overhaul at Crovan's Gate and while "working off" the expense of the repairs on Sodor she and Percy got up to so. much. mischief.

(I feel like the key Sodor engine involved in Duchess of Sunderland's visit was James. I can't put my finger on exactly what happened, though.)

Overall, I do think that at this point it would be easier to list the preserved U.K. engines who haven't been through Crovan's Gate, as CG would be the destination for steam and diesel engineering. Its biggest competitors are Darlington, Didcot, and Riley & Son but (sorry) CG is clearly the best in league. (They are also the fastest—once they begin—but the waiting list is looooonnng.)

The biggest exception to the long list of Sodor visitors are most of the Didcot engines (which is fine; they're taken care of) and most of the National Collection (which is not so fine—this is sheer stubbornness). The latter is because the NRM sometimes goes through long periods of pointedly ignoring the NWR's existence due to behind-the-scenes Politics that are too boring to get into. This cold war came back to bite them in the arse when Flying Scotsman's 2016 overhaul went on so long and proved so disappointing. I reckon there is a high chance that here the timeline changes because both Hattian and public pressure made the NRM pivot Scot over to CG to complete the job. If this didn't go down, then engines from both institutions are still pissed and the NRM has discontent stewing almost to the point of mutiny.

Anyway, yeah. I spend more of my time trying to re-arrange the TVS characters into permanent Sodor engines and ones who were there temporarily and when? than I do thinking about real-life engines. But Sodor is definitely a revolving door for many of them, too.

or maybe an engine who'd left on bad term prior?

Ooooh. That's really interesting.

I really like that idea—one of the many, many Class 40s that came through Sodor was probably preserved. And probably did the overhaul-and-temp-loan thing! Wonder how that went down.