#toby ttte

Finally with updated designs so it’s more visually appealing.

I have also updated their references a bit, as I’ve been working on my AU timeline and oh boy THINGS ARE CHANGING. I am 99% sure that the Steam Team’s birth years are now set in stone, so hopefully I never have to touch these ever again🥲 I also gave them all name tags and added their relatives!

Ref image under the cut!

Workmen in heavy rubber aprons and respirators labored tirelessly under the gray morning light, directing freezing torrents of water over the fleet of the North Western Railway to scrub away the thick, tacky layers of dark blood and dried viscera left over from the violent transformations.

The water running into the drainage grates was a sickening, swirling vortex of crimson and black engine oil. Lined up along the parallel tracks, the engines stood in a state of quiet, trembling shock. Their fever had entirely broken, and their eyes were no longer bloodshot or yellowed; instead, they stared out with wide, crystal-clear lucidity, completely aware of their rewritten anatomies.

Among them, Toby and Henrietta sat closely, their unchanged wooden cabins pressing tightly against one another. Beneath their frames, Toby's six heavy, fur-covered legs and Henrietta's four limbs were completely and desperately tangled together in the wet ballast, their skeletal fingers and sharp black claws locked in a ferocious, unyielding grip that no amount of soap or shouting from the cleaners could make them release.

They simply refused to let go of each other.

A heavy, anxious silence hung over the yards, punctuated only by the dripping of water and the occasional wet click of a claw against stone. The engines were deeply, fundamentally terrified, but it wasn't just the memory of the physical pain that haunted them.

It was a new, terrifyingly foreign sensation pulsing deep within their mechanical cores—a cold, hollow, and cavernous vacuum that gnawed at their inside workings, demanding a kind of fuel that had absolutely nothing to do with coal, water, or diesel.

They didn't have the words for this predatory hunger yet, but the confusion and shame of it radiated through the clear eyes of every engine present. They looked toward the center of the yard, their collective gaze filled with a desperate, unspoken question: how could they ever be Really Useful Engines again when this monstrous, ravenous ache was constantly clawing at their internals?

How could they pull passengers or shunt troublesome trucks when they felt like beasts waiting to strike in the dark?

Sir Bertram Topham Hatt climbed onto a heavy wooden packing crate at the head of the tracks, his top hat immaculate despite the damp air, though his face was drawn and pale with exhaustion. He looked out over his altered fleet, before his voice boomed across the yard, carrying a steady, unyielding authority that cut through the panic.

He told them that a railway was not defined by its blueprints, nor was an engine's worth measured by the number of wheels or legs beneath its frame. He looked at each of them in turn, promising that as long as he was the Controller, they would adapt, they would learn to manage this strange new internal ache together, and they would still run the lines with pride because their loyalty and their spirit had survived the rot completely untouched.

The heavy emotional weight of his speech was suddenly fractured by a loud, incredibly long, and thoroughly exhausted yawn that groaned from the back of the diesel sheds. Every engine and worker turned in absolute astonishment to look toward the dark siding where Dennis was resting.

Like the rest of the fleet, Dennis was fully and grotesquely altered; his boxy diesel housing sat high on a mass of thick, shifting muscle, and his heavy, fur-covered legs twitched lethargically in the wet dirt. Dennis had always been a notoriously lazy diesel, an engine who would create any ridiculous excuse to shirk his duties, constantly taking advantage of others and slacking off on a regular basis instead of making an effort to be really useful.

He blinked his heavy, droopy eyelids, looking utterly drained by the mere concept of the Controller's speech, and mumbled wearily that all this talk about adapting and hunting and managing new feelings just sounded like far too much effort to deal with.

He grumbled that growing extra limbs and moving around just seemed like entirely too much bloody work to bother with, his voice trailing off into a tired, fading sigh.

Then, before anyone could answer, his immense desire to do absolutely nothing triggered a bizarre, sudden reaction. With a series of wet, squelching clicks, his grotesque biological anatomy violently reversed itself purely to save energy.

His multiple legs snapped inward, the bones and muscle folding back up into his undercarriage with terrifying speed as the coarse, ash-grey fur melted away behind his closing steel side panels.

Within seconds, Dennis dropped heavily backward onto the rails, landing with a sharp mechanical clang onto his standard six steel wheels. He sat there looking almost entirely identical to his old, fully mechanical engine form, his boxy diesel chassis pristine and unburdened by extra limbs. The entire yard fell into a dead, terrified silence at the sheer impossibility of the display.

But as his heavy lids lifted one last time, everyone could see that a single row of newly grown, razor-sharp teeth glinted slickly inside his open mouth, and his unblinking irises were burning with a vibrant, unnatural shade of bright orange.

He hadn't cured the infection; his legendary, absolute laziness had just forced his body to reject the physical effort of being a monster and become similar to before.

Without another word, Dennis let out one final, quiet exhale of diesel exhaust, closed his orange-tinted eyes, and immediately drifted fast asleep, leaving the entire yard staring at him in utter disbelief.

Thomas, was the first to speak at the revelation, and in an almost clear sentence too, the vocal cords finally fully settled; "W...h...at the actual fuck?!"

"Thomas, language!"

Of course, there was the Skarloey, Arlesdale, Culdee Fell, and Estate Railways.

Not to mention the Sodor Construction Company.

Or the Sodor Roadways.

Hey, does anyone know if the Thomas Fandom is still alice? I redrew my designs from way way WAAAY back (will link below). I'm not too happy with a few of them (cough Percy cough) but hey! I think it was fun to return to the design after so long. 2018 DESIGNS UNDER THE CUT

Duck, Toby and Emily is now here!

(You guys check out the other two pictures specifically the one with the main 3)