Snow

**Snow** is the twenty-third and final episode of the fifth season and the 132nd episode overall.

## Plot

One winter day on the Island of Sodor, a thick layer of snow has fallen and all engines have gone to work except Percy, who is stuck in a shed at Hackenbeck because of a snowdrift. Thomas finds him and tells him that there is no time for resting, but is told that Percy's crew have just left to seek help. Thomas scoffs at this but continues his journey to clear the rest of the snowed in railway lines. Later, he has to clear snow from Crovan’s Gate Wharf, but the snow is deep enough for him to get stuck, much to Thomas' annoyance. Rusty is working close by, so to pass the time, he tells Thomas a story.

One snowy day, Skarloey was traveling up to the Blue Mountain Quarry, when he passed through the ravine to it. Whenever snow came, work became difficult in the quarry and snow was used as a "double buffer zone" to stop trucks from falling into the ravine below. One day, Skarloey was traveling to the quarry with empty trucks, while at the quarry, Owen’s winch, that hauls the trucks up and down the incline, wasn’t working properly. So, the engines working at the quarry had to take their trucks up the incline themselves to get them loaded up with stone. When Skarloey reached the ravine, his driver was concerned that any noise from the quarry’s upper terrace could cause an avalanche, so he set an emergency cap. When Skarloey ran over it, the bang echoed around the gorge but nothing happened, so his crew decided to make a cup of cocoa before going on their way. However, up in the quarry, Sir Handel was taking a long line of mostly full trucks up the incline, but the remaining empty trucks derailed. With derailed trucks jamming them, but Sir Handel continually pulling forward, the coupling on the full trucks snapped and they ran down the incline. A workman thought the snowbank and buffers would stop the runaway, but he was wrong. The trucks instead broke through the buffers, plowed through the snowbank and plunged into the ravine in front of Skarloey, and all the noise from the trucks caused an avalanche which buried him and his crew deep inside. When Rusty came to the rescue, they discovered that Skarloey's heat from his boiler had created an igloo, and inside they found Skarloey's crew nonchalantly sipping cocoa.

Thomas uses this as an example about how trucks can be so troublesome, while Rusty states the same for snow. The workmen finally clear the snow from Thomas’ buffers, but Gordon then arrives with his snow machine to clear away drifts. Gordon loudly blows steam and causes some snow from the shed’s roof to fall, burying him. Gordon cries for help, and Thomas jokes that if Skarloey could emerge from an avalanche laughing, Gordon could do the same. In reply, Gordon just scoffs and falls silent as the snow.

## Characters

* Thomas
* Gordon
* Percy
* Skarloey
* Rusty
* Troublesome Trucks
* Sir Handel *(does not speak)*
* Duncan *(cameo)*

## Locations

* Toby’s Windmill
* Hackenbeck
* Crovan's Gate Wharf
* Ben Glas
* Blue Mountain Quarry

## Trivia

* Sir Handel didn’t appear in the original version of this episode in the official TV Series. In fact, he didn’t appear in the TV Series at all after the fourth season, until the tenth season episode, A Smooth Ride. Sir Handel’s inclusion of the Sodor Stories take on Snow, was to try and give him more of a prominent role in this series than in the official TV Series.