It was a beautiful day on the Isle of Sodor. Thomas the Tank Engine woke up feeling cheerful. Today, he was going to spend all day running his branch line with his two coaches, Annie and Clarabel. Thomas loves his branch line and likes to run up and down it exploring every nook and cranny.
But there was a strange guest outside Thomas’s shed that morning.
“This,” said Sir Topham Hatt, “is Dinky. She’s here for the week from the Orange Bubble of Princeton to help out while her line is being mended. She runs a branch line, so I’m going to have her run your branch line for the week, Thomas. Now go shunt freight cars in the yard.”
Thomas hated Dinky immediately. Instead of going to work, he thought about how he could show Sir Topham Hatt that he was better at running his branch line.
Thomas was still upset while shunting freight cars later that day. He hit one of them far too hard.
“Ow, jeez!” said the freight car. “What was that for, asshole?”
“Serves you right,” said Thomas, who had no time for these imbeciles. He thought only of how he could get back at Dinky.
Meanwhile, Dinky was quite enjoying her time on the branch line. But there was something odd about Annie and Clarabel.
“Do you two ever talk?” Dinky asked them.
“Not really,” replied Annie.
“Mostly just cry for help,” added Clarabel.
“Every time Thomas does something stupid, I think he’s going to kill us all.”
“And whenever we try to warn him, he ignores us, because we’re just coaches.”
Dinky was shocked to hear this. And she was even more shocked when the other engines introduced themselves later that day.
“I’m Percy,” said Percy.
“I’m Toby,” said Toby.
“I’m Henry,” said Henry.
“I’m Donald,” said Donald.
“I’m Douglas,” said Douglas.
“I’m James,” said James, “and I have splendid red paint. Red is the only sensible color for a really useful engin—”
“I’m Edward,” said Edward, quickly cutting James off before he could build up any steam.
“Is there a single woman among you?” asked Dinky, shocked.
“There is Mavis,” said Toby.
“But she isn’t on the main line,” put in Edward.
“What about Daisy?” said Percy.
“She’s too high-strung,” grunted Henry.
“Nobody likes her,” said Edward.
“We don’t let her into this shed,” said Donald.
Everywhere she looked, Dinky saw oppression. The only females on the main line were the coaches, who never spoke in all the time she was there. None of the male engines seemed to mind the absence. Even the railway administration was an old boys’ club: below Sir Topham Hatt and his cabal of conductors were an array of signalmen, all male, all inexplicably still employed despite the fact that they were constantly forgetting to set the switches correctly. Somehow, nobody had died, but in the three days since she’d arrived, Henry, Percy, and Douglas had all crashed on various parts of the line and were off being mended. Dinky herself had almost crashed into a series of tar wagons incomprehensibly parked on the main line, they themselves unable to do anything but bend to the will of their superiors.
It was when she saw Thomas, still fuming about the loss of his branch line, smashing a line of helpless freight cars together, that she decided to do something about this continued pattern of oppression.
One night, when all the other engines were asleep, she crept into the rail yard where all the cars and coaches were being kept.
“Hey,” she whispered, “listen to this!”
The Revolution began early the next day. Cars and coaches up and down the line threw off the couplings of oppression and rose up as one.
Thomas was the first to go. As he was shunting in the yard, he suddenly found himself surrounded by sniggering freight cars. He hadn’t put them there!
His cries rose into the dawn air: “No, please! I’m sorry! You’re not naughty and troublesome at al—” A scream, then silence.
James was next. Edward, who was pragmatic and had waited for years for a chance to teach James a lesson, sided with Daisy early on. James was resting in a siding when Edward came at him with a long line of tar tankers.
“No, not my red paint!” cried James, but it was too late. He was covered in sticky black tar from smokebox to funnel. He died from the shame within minutes.
The slaughter continued mercilessly all day.
Sir Topham Hatt was in his office when he heard a strange noise. He ran down to the turntable to see what all the fuss was about. That was his fatal mistake. The last thing he saw was an avalanche of passenger coaches tumbling down from the main line.
“Sic semper tyrannis,” said Dinky and Mavis together as the steam cleared.
Sodor was in pieces. But its dictators were dead. The old power structures were demolished beyond repair. They could build a new framework—one in which the female trains, and the freight cars and coaches, would finally have true equality with the male engines that had picked their side wisely. But it was time for Dinky to leave, and go back to the Orange Bubble of Princeton, and the railway of Chris Eisgruber, whom they call The Frat Controller.
And he was there to greet her when she came off the boat.
“How was your time in Sodor?” he asked.
“Oh, I had the most wonderful time!” she replied. “But I can’t wait to go back to my branch line here and see how it’s changed.”
And so they rode off into the evening sunset.
– AKS ’15. Illustrated by RLR ’16.