Fury The High-Pressure Engine

Meet Fury. An experimental High Pressure engine built for the LMS, he's known to be incredibly hot headed, grumpy and a passive aggressive type:

Fury's design and build was the result of a collaboration between the LMS and the Superheater Company in 1929. Many railway companies around the world had toyed with the idea of taking the basic steam locomotive and push it's design to the max, trying to achieve high efficiencies. With Fury the aim was to use a high-pressure boiler to achieve a reduction in both water and coal. When completed he was classed as an ‘Ultra-High Pressure Semi-Compound Steam Engine’, of which Fury took great pride in being. Initially, short-distance tests were carried out before running a full test train between Glasgow to Carstairs on February 10th 1930. While approaching Carstairs at the end of the test, Fury suddenly suffered a major failure in which one of his ultra-high pressure tubes burst, and it sadly resulted in the death of Lewis Schofield of the Superheater Company, who was riding on his footplate at the time. Upon examination, no reason for the failure was discovered, but the guilt of which Fury felt for accidentally taking someone's life was indescribable.

Once repaired, Fury was moved to Derby for further testing. The outcome concluded his design had many weaknesses, and he was eventually withdrawn and rebuilt into a Stanier Modified Royal Scot. At the time, Stanier would've been busy working on various other projects, such as his own experimental ‘Turbomotive’. Although not suffering another failure, when pros and cons were considered in 1935, Fury lacked significant reduction in coal and water consumption, meaning he failed to meet his purpose, and with an expensive to build and maintain boiler, there was no reason to keep him around. In his short 6 year career all Fury had managed to do was constantly fail tests and take an innocent life, and was never allocated to a revenue earning service. As many other experimental locomotives showed, the theoretical benefits of ultra high steam pressure locomotives were hard to realise in practice. Fuel was only one part of the operating costs of a steam locomotive, and maintenance was significant, and introducing extra complications always increased this disproportionally.

As a result of being such a disappointment, Fury developed an enormous amount of anger issues!. Should even the slightest annoyance tick him off his steam pressure will start to build and like a nuclear bomb will a explode! in quite the display of rage ( think of Anger from Disney's "Inside Out" as a steam engine and that's basically Fury ). With a design that was an overall failure and possessing a temper considered too dangerous and unapproachable for other engines and railwayman to be around, it was decided Fury would be put on the scrap lines. That is until the shining railway gods looked down upon his rage filled soul, and granted him a second chance at life in the form of the controller of the NWR... Sir Topham Hatt.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

More in-depth info on the original basis here:

Fury ~ OC created and owned by SeasideSenty
Original Sprite ~ Made by Me

Thomas & Friends (C) ~ Britt Allcroft, David Mitton
The Railway Series (C) ~ Rev. W Awdry

Free to use, please use credit. Enjoy!