#furness things

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Against all odds (Coppernob — who was consulted and kept in the loop — was notably pessimistic about the whole project), in 1998 the Furness Railway Trust succeeds in rebuilding and steaming No. 20. 

What no one saw coming: 

No. 20's memories of being rebuilt into a tank engine — even his memories of being informed of the project — and everything since — all 100+ intermittent years and then some — they're all lost. 

No. 20 comes to thinking it's 1868. 

He doesn't know he was sent back to Atlas Works. 

He doesn't know that he and five of his brothers were rebuilt into saddletanks. 

He doesn't know that he spent 80+ years in the steelworks. 

He doesn't know that the Furness Railway no longer exists, that hardly any trace of exists… certainly none that's there when he comes to at Carnforth. 

He doesn't know that he was abandoned. 

He doesn't know that he was saved.

He doesn't know his new owners. 

He doesn't know his new fleetmates, like Austerity saddletank Cumbria (who only ran her wheels off for years to raise money for his big rebuild, ta love!) 

He doesn't know about the preservation duties he's now committed to, without his consent. 

He finds he has one brother left, in disrepair and disuse, still waiting his own restoration… which will keep him in that same strange saddletank form.

He finds No. 3 is still extant. Not 3 the former mentor, to whom 20 grew into a role where they became peers and collaborators. No, still to him 3 the grand and dreadful lord of the Copper-Nobs… the F.R. was at its harshest during No. 20's short working stint there. He and his brothers' rebuilds were part of a series of crises that somewhat softened No. 3 and 4 and, accordingly, all the engines they had ruled over with an iron fist for years. No. 20 has no memory of that great sea change. 

Nor does 20 remember the process of aging to such a degree that the people he worked with took any special note of him. He was used to being one cog in a busy, bustling, semi-martial environment, full of strict discipline. Now it's all soft informal modernity and rose-covered nostalgia and a baffling degree of personal honor and even… affection. For him.

So yeah, his brain broke a little. 

That's mostly a figure of speech though… he woke up young, rather cowed No. 20, accustomed to expecting nothing but Regulations and Orders, speaking freely only among his own small crowd of intimates, knowing there was a rigid fleet hierarchy and he was solidly in the middle-low tier of it. And, of course, the downpour of a hundred different griefs, cascading on him all at once, don't help… 

So he listens, learns, adapts. 

Eventually, he'll come to love his new friends and owners and caretakers.