The first cache placed in a series dedicated to the Discworld series of books by the late Terry Pratchett. Raising Steam is about the invention of the steam train and its value and challenges. While it is based in the Discworld, the society and "human" nature described are very close to home. The cache is placed in a spot where trains have been modernised and don't "chuff" and cover a person in soot, but let your imagination take you back to days gone by!
Dick Simnel was ten years old when, back at the family smithy in Sheepridge, his father simply disappeared in a cloud of furnace parts and flying metal, all enveloped in a pink steam. He was never found in the terrible haze of scorching dampness, but on that very day young Dick Simnel vowed to whatever was left of his father in that boiling steam that he would make steam his servant.
His mother had other ideas. She was a midwife, and as she said to her neighbors, "Babbies are born everywhere. I'll never be without a customer." So, against her son's wishes, Elsie Simnel decided to take him away from what she now considered to be a haunted place. She packed up their belongings and together they returned to her family home near Sto Lat, where people didn't inexplicably disappear in a hot pink cloud.
Soon after they arrived something important happened to her boy. One day while waiting for his mother to return from a difficult delivery, Dick walked into a building that looked interesting, and which turned out to be a library. At first he thought it was full of poncy stuff, all kings and poets and lovers and battles, but in one crucial book he found something called mathematics and the world of numbers.
And that was why, one day some ten years later, he pulled together every fibre of his being and said, "Mother, you know last year when I said I were going 'iking in the mountains of Uberwald with me mates, well, it were kind of a kind of lie, only very small, mind you." Dick blushed. "You see, I found t'keys to Dad's old shed and, well, I went back to Sheepridge and did some experimenting and"—he looked at his mother anxiously "—I think I know what 'e were doing wrong."
Dick was braced for stiff objections, but he hadn't reckoned on tears—so many tears—and as he tried to console her he added, "You, Mother, and Uncle Flavius got me an education, you got me the knowing of the numbers, including the arithmetic and weird stuff dreamed up by the philosophers in Ephebe where even camels can do logarithms on their toes. Dad didn't know this stuff. He had the right ideas but he didn't have the tech-nol-ogy right."
At this point, Dick allowed his mother to talk, and she said, "I know there's no stopping you, our Dick, you're just like your stubborn father were, pigheaded. Is that what you've been doin' in the barn? Teck-ology?" She looked at him accusingly, then sighed. "I can see I can't tell you what to do, but you tell me: how can your 'logger-reasons' stop you goin' the way of your poor old dad?" She started sobbing again.
Dick pulled out of his jacket something that looked like a small wand, which might have been made for a miniature wizard, and said, "This'll keep me safe, Mother! I've the knowing of the sliding rule! I can tell the sine what to do, and the cosine likewise and work out the tangent of t'quaderatics! Come on, Mother, stop fretting and come wi' me now to t'barn. You must see 'er!"
Mrs. Simnel, reluctant, was dragged by her son to the great open barn he had kitted out like the workshop back at Sheepridge, hoping against hope that her son had accidentally found himself a girl. Inside the barn she looked helplessly at a large circle of metal which covered most of the floor. Something metallic whizzed round and round on the metal, sounding like a squirrel in a cage, giving off a smell much like camphor.
"Here she is, Mother. Ain't she champion?" Dick said happily. "I call her Iron Girder!"
"But what is it, son?"
He grinned hugely and said, "It's what they call a pro-to-type, Mother. You've got to 'ave a pro-to-type if you're going to be an engineer."
His mother smiled wanly but there was no stopping Dick. The words just tumbled out.
"The thing is, Mother, before you attempt owt you've got to 'ave some idea of what it is you want to do. One of the books I found in the library was about being an architect. And in that book, the man who wrote it said before he built his next big 'ouse he always made quite tiny models to get an idea of how it would all work out. He said it sounds fiddly and stuff, but going slowly and being thorough is the only way forward. And so I'm testing 'er out slowly, seeing what works and what doesn't. And actually, I'm quite proud of me'sen. In the beginning I made t'track wooden, but I reckoned that the engine I wanted would be very 'eavy, so I chopped up t'wooden circle for firewood and went back to t'forge."
Mrs. Simnel looked at the little mechanism running round and round on the barn floor and said, in the voice of someone really trying to understand, "Eee, lad, but what does it do?"
"Well, I remembered what Dad said about t'time he were watching t'kettle boiling and noticed t'lid going up and down with the pressure, and he told me that one day someone would build a bigger kettle that would lift more than a kettle lid. And I believe I have the knowing of the way to build a proper kettle, Mother."
"And what good would that do, my boy?" said his mother sternly. And she watched the glow in her son's eyes as he said, "Everything, Mother. Everything."
Still in a haze of slight misunderstanding, Mrs. Simnel watched him unroll a large and rather grubby piece of paper.
"It's called a blueprint, Mother. You've got to have a blueprint. It shows you how everything fits together."
"Is this part of the pro-to-type?"
The boy looked at his doting mother's face and realized that a little more exposition should be forthcoming. He took her by the hand and said, "Mother, I know they're all lines and circles to you, but once you have the knowing of the circles and the lines and all, you know that this is a picture of an engine."
Mrs. Simnel gripped his hand and said, "What do you think you're going to do with it, our Dick?"
And young Simnel grinned and said happily, "Change things as needs changing, Mother."
Mrs. Simnel gave her son a curious look for a moment or two, then appeared to reach a grudging conclusion and said, "Just you come with me, my lad."
She led him back into the house, where they climbed up the ladder into the attic. She pointed out to her son a sturdy seaman's chest covered in dust.
"Your granddad gave me this to give to you, when I thought you needed it. Here's the key."
She was gratified that he didn't grab it and indeed looked carefully at the trunk before opening it. As he pushed up the lid, suddenly the air was filled with the glimmer of gold.
"Your granddad were slightly a bit of a pirate and then he got religion and were a bit afeared, and the last words he said to me on his deathbed were, 'That young lad'll do something one day, you mark my words, our Elsie, but I'm damned if I know what it's going to be.' "
~Terry Pratchett (Raising Steam)