Equestria, we are in Equestria… fizzling fireboxes it all makes sense now! The animations, the mountains, the colours! How the hell did I not figure this out earlier!? How the hell did we mange this? We were trying to go into the magical realm of Railroads, not talking ponies.  Must of knocked my head harder than I thought…my inner ranting was interrupted by a sudden jerk, Thomas had stopped himself.

“Im guessing your thinking what im thinking?” he said with a slightly shocked tone. I did my best Big Mac impression as a response, which got a chuckle out of him. “Well…” he continued trying to break the sudden silence “what do we do now?” I pondered this for a moment, but quickly came to a simple conclusion. I locked up the cab as I stepped down, making sure the doors were closed so my bags wouldn't fall out. I clambered up onto Thomas’s boiler, minding his hot safety valve and then slid down by his funnel so I was standing next to his face, finding secure places for my feet, i placed my hands on the hand rails that ran along his smoke box and smiled.

“Its simple dude, we explore” i reply confidently "we just steamed ourselves into the land of talking ponies completely by accident, no point sitting around eh?"

Thomas looked up at me with a apprehensive expression. "you sure?" i looked at him puzzled "i mean, come on, you know how it goes, you of all people have read the fanfics!" poor guy, read too much stuff on FIMfiction i think.

"Dude, relax, we will be fine" i say reassuringly "now come on, mush!" with that, Thomas sighs and sets off at a cautions pace.

After roughly five minutes of travelling along the old track, some times catching more looks at Equestria through cracks and holes in the rock we arrived at a set of points, the rails and sleepers of the other track looks well maintained and well used. We came to a stop well clear of the points and I jumped down to inspect them, after a good looking over I conclude they hadn’t been used in a VERY long time. There was no lever to change them over so they were clearly only there for emergency's. "Well well well" i say, turning back to Thomas "i do believe we have come across the Equestrian main line" i began to now ponder our options.  

"Whats the plan then?” Thomas asked, was a silly question really, we had plenty of coal and water. We shift these points and we run on down and see where the line takes us!

"Simple mate" i reply as start digging through his cab again "we go exploring" I found my oil can and went back to the points and gave them a good going over with the oil. I was surprised that when a kick of my steel toe cap boots caused the rail to shift slightly. I repeated booted the rail with my foot over and over, Thomas simply laughing at the constant clanging sound of metal on rubber-covered-metal. After a good 20 kicks or so and a sore foot I had succeeded in moving the rail over and I signalled Thomas to roll over. With a chorus of whistles he was now on the mainline. I set the points back with more kicking and another aching foot. I finally clambered back into the cab and started to put on more coal as Thomas had mentioned he was feeling low, i didn't get far though as i was interrupted by a whistle... and it wasn't Thomas's.

I looked out the rear of the cab, to be honest i wish i hadn't because all i saw was another train barrelling towards us...

"aahhhh crud!"

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