FanFic:Tales from Southampton Harbor: Characters: Julia

Julia is a powerful shunting engine who worked at Southampton Harbor.

History

Julia was designed and built in 1929. She shunted trucks in London Bridge Station for six years before being transferred to Southampton Harbor in 1935. She was resentful of this change from the high life of a station pilot to that of a harbor shunter and considered Southampton Harbor to be a "pifling little Stephenson-forsaken dockyard in the middle of nowhere".

When she arrived, she was rude to the other engines there and considered them to be useless. She particularly disliked Thomas because of his dreams of grandeur when he was, as she put it, an "outdated scrapheap that can't pull two trucks". After showing off and boasting about her strength and power, she proceeded to break down while pulling a heavy goods train, requiring Thomas to rescue her.

Since then she continued to be a problem for the other engines, and attemted to cause trouble for them. However, most of her plans backfired, only causing trouble for herself.

Julia was the last of her kind by 1967, as all of the rest had been withdrawn early. She was withdrawn and sent away to a scrapyard in November 1967. It is almost certain she was scrapped.

Personality

Julia was an overconfident and constantly angry engine. While it is true that she was the strongest shunter in the harbor, her aptitude for making mistakes reduced her usefulness to almost nil. She took pleasure in the other engines' misery, and especially liked to have been the origin of that misery. However, she did have a good side, and slowly gained a grudging respect for the other engines.

Basis and Livery

Julia is based on a Southern Railway Z class 0-8-0 locomotive. Her livery is black with gold lining.