Hey everyone, it's August now. I hope everyone is enjoying this summertime or wintertime perhaps if you're in the southern hemisphere. Anyways, it's the beginning of the month, and I have lots of updates for Adventures on Rails, so let's get started.
- In July, there were two new stories which are The Hose and The Queue. They both deal with water towers and focus on the Ffarquhar Branch and Main Line Engines respectively. There's plenty of humour and they're both light-hearted stories, so definitely check them out if you haven't.
- Now, moving onto this month. My plan is to release two new stories and the abandoned concept for the Norramby Branch, Jinty, and Pug which I talked about a while back. Here's how it's going to work: there will be a new story next Sunday, then on the 15th, the cancelled episode, and finally, on the 22nd, the second new story. The last weekend of this month (27th-29th) is my Church's festival (for now), so I'm going to take that weekend off and then return in September.
As a little preview for the next two stories, I will say that one of them will focus on the 'Little Western' characters. Duck, Oliver, Donald, Douglas will definitely be prominent as well as Ryan and the Small Engines. I don't often focus much on them but this idea is a great one so they'll be getting some much needed focus. The other story will take place outside of the usual timeframe of the series. Most of the stories take place from at least 2004 (because of the appearance of Jessie) or even quite recent if Liza appears. Anyways, this story will take place in the early days of the North Western Railway. Now, in James the Red Engine there's this station that is located between Tidmouth and Knapford Junction. However, on the map of Sodor, there is no station between Tidmouth and Knapford and that gave me an idea to explain this station which I think will be called Lower Tidmouth. I know that James the Red Engine was written before Awdry really had a proper map but that doesn't mean we can't have some fun explaining the existence of the station in-universe, and whilst brief, why it was mentioned in a book.
- Finally, there's this cancelled episode that I actually have two names for; Emily's New Route and Percy's New Old Friends. As the titles suggest, this story covers the re-opening of the Norramby Branch Line and Emily's assignment to it, and Percy re-uniting with his old friends Jinty and Pug. I wrote it back in late 2018 to early 2019. None of this was focused on in volume one though but I still wanted to focus on those three concepts and I started with Emily and the Norramby Branch at the end of volume two with Emily's New Route and Molly's Idea. Then Jenna came in and finally Pug earlier this year as part of volume three. In hindsight, I think it was better to do mini-arcs for each of these rather than cram it all into one episode. I was going to basically separate the two concepts but eventually, each one became its own mini-arc. Thus, this episode basically became the original version of Emily's New Route and the introduction of Jinty and Pug. It needs a few touch-ups since it's been a while since I've gone to it but in just two weeks, you will all to get to my original plan for some of major arcs that have happened in volumes two and three.
- So far, my release plan for 2021 is going as planned so hopefully, I will release all twenty-six stories by the end of the year. In addition, I might get into planning for a potential volume four though it might see some changes at least at the beginning. However, that is a discussion for another day.
- Finally, there is still one more short that I have planned for November 2023. I can't reveal much now just that it will focus on the first three engines of the series. As time goes on, I will release more details, so stay tuned.
That's everything for now. Take care and I'll see you around. MainLineEngines (talk) 21:05, 1 August 2021 (UTC)