One day, Henry was feeling playful. He met Emily as she chugged along, but he was going in the opposite direction on the same track. Emily braked hard and managed to stop just in time.

“Henry, what are you doing?!” she cried.

Instead of answering, Henry began pushing Emily.

“You’ve heard of Tug of War, haven’t you?” laughed Henry. “This is Chug of War!” He pushed with all his steam as Emily, who was not laughing, chugged just as hard against him.

“Henry, will you stop it? We’re going to get carried away and derail ourselves!”

But Henry was having too much fun. He chugged, and chugged, and chugged until there was a great clatter of and screech as Emily and all her cars crashed to the side of the tracks.

“Now you’ve done it!” shouted Emily as she struggled to right herself. “You’re going to be in so much trouble!”

Henry, trying the help, suddenly jerked backwards only to find himself off the tracks as well.

Henry felt bad. He never meant to hurt Emily. He really liked Emily. They’d always had good times together, but this time, he’d just gone too far.

He knew he was going to be in trouble. He could just imagine Sir Topham Hatt’s face, but he didn’t have to imagine. Sir Topham Hatt came down as soon as he heard about the terrible accident.

“Oh, Sir Topham Hatt, I didn’t mean to. I mean. It’s just that…”

“Well, Henry, you’ve gone too far this time,” Sir Topham Hatt interrupted. “You’ll see just how serious this is in just a moment.”

Sure enough, Henry saw just how serious it was when Sheriff from Cars showed up.

“Well,” said Sheriff, “the first thing we need to do is get these trains back on the tracks.”

Sir Topham Hatt called Kevin and Harvey to put the trains both back on the tracks.

Just as Henry was about to chug away, the Sheriff called after him. “Henry, you will be coming with me, I’m afraid.

“I really didn’t mean to hurt anyone,” Henry said as he chugged beside Sheriff. “I just wanted to have a bit of fun. Emily likes to have fun.”

“Henry, did she say to stop?” Sheriff asked.

“Well,” began Henry.

“When trains ask you not to do something, you should stop. That means it’s not fun for them,” Sheriff explained.

“I know you didn’t mean it, but there still are consequences for our actions,” Sheriff explained.

“What?”

“Time out.”

Just after Sheriff left, Toby and James chugged past.

“Oh, Henry, what happened? Why are you in time out?” asked Toby.

“I did something… something…” Henry stammered.

“Not useful?” Toby suggested.

“That’s it exactly. And Sheriff traveled back in time, crossed the Atlantic ocean, and left his movie to come into our story just to take me to time out!”

“Oh no!”

“And that’s not what’s the worst part of it! The worst part is that I didn’t mean to do any of it!”

Toby and James felt bad for Henry. They knew what it was like to get in trouble for something you don’t really mean to do. They were afraid all the other trains would be angry at Henry so they chugged off to the Tidmouth Sheds to explain to the other the other engines what happened. As they were explaining, Sheriff rolled up.

“Did you talk to Henry?” he asked.

“Yes, we. I mean, no. I mean,” stammered Toby.

“Yes, we talked to Henry,” James said sadly.

“While he was in time out?”

James and Toby exchanged guilty glances before admitting the truth.

“We knew we weren’t supposed to, but…”

Sheriff didn’t even wait.

“Off you go to time out as well!”

Such was our morning play.