Godred

**Godred** is named similarly to King Godred and a character in The Sudrian Dozen.

## History

Godred's fate is much different. While he put too much faith in his automatic brakes as per the original story, there was more to his accident. On the day of his accident, he had been put back together after being taken to pieces the day before. The problem is that he wasn’t reassembled properly. His grippers and handbrakes were loose. He knew, but, he didn’t think anything of it at the time. As he was coming down the mountain, his grippers fell off. About one-half mile above Devil's Back, where the line runs on a shelf formed across a steep drop, Godred jumped off the rack rail due to settlement in the ground, causing him to lose all braking force and accelerate down the track. His driver tried to apply his hand brakes, but, the handle was jostled loose from the vibrations. Realizing he was out of control, Godred's crew jumped off the footplate. Godred ran about 110 yards after losing the rack rail before hitting a left-hand curve. Here, he derailed and fell over the side of the mountain. His coach, Guinevere, accelerated to a speed at which the automatic brakes were triggered (7–10 mph). These brakes brought her to a stand safely. In derailing, Godred had broken the telegraph lines used to signal between stations. Some versions say that the wires had touched as they were hit and made a signal that was mistaken for the 'line clear' signal, while other versions say that so long a time had passed that the people at the summit assumed that the telegraph system had failed. Whichever is true, the other train left the summit on its descent. In spite of the 5mph line speed and a man being sent back up the line to warn the second train, it did not stop before reaching the point where Godred had lost the rack rail, at which point, the grippers of engine No. 2 (Ernest) got snagged on the settlement, stopping him. When Godred reached the bottom, he was a complete wreck with only the boiler, pistons, motion, frames, and wheels still intact. There wasn't enough money to fix him back then, but, the manager back then felt that even if there WAS and Godred DID get repaired, he'd still go on in his old ways and decided to use Godred's boiler as a stationary one while the rest of him was used to mend the other engines. Godred's remained a stationary boiler for over a century thereafter. The other engines puff past him every day and don't say a word to him so as not to rub salt in the wound. But, each time they pass him, Godred says nothing to them. Every time they see him, he has a sad look on his face.

## Personality

Godred was very arrogant, supercilious and reckless. Culdee speculated that this was due to his name being that of a Sudrian king. He believed that nothing bad could ever happen to him and put too much faith into his automatic brakes, believing that they would save him if he was ever in the face of danger. Despite all warnings, Godred never learned sense and paid the price when he was completely damaged on the mountain. As a stationary boiler, Godred became lonely, silent, and miserable.

## Trivia

* While Bad Look Out says Culdee made the story up, the 'field guide' books contradict this by saying Godred was indeed scrapped. In this version, parts of Culdee's story ring true while others, such as Godred actually being scrapped, are false.