".007" (originally subtitled "The Story of an American Locomotive") is a short story by Rudyard Kipling. It is a story in which steam locomotives are characters (".007" is the serial number of the protagonist), somewhat like the later, better-known tales of The Railway Series by Wilbert Awdry and his son.

Publication

The story first appeared in Scribner's Magazine in August 1897, and was collected with other Kipling stories in The Day's Work (1898).

Plot

The locomotives themselves have personalities and talk in a manner reminiscent of what in real life would be the manner of the men who operate them. Human beings appear in the story only as seen from the perspective of the engines. The story relates a sort of rite of passage. A fast goods train was derailed by hitting a shoat (young pig) which got on the track, and ended up in a farm field. .007, a "sensitive", new, youthful engine performs in a heroic and manly way pulling the breakdown train, winning him the respect of his fellow engines. At the conclusion, the highest-ranking engine Purple Emperor, a "superb six-wheel-coupled racing-locomotive, who hauled the pride and glory of the road, the millionaires' south-bound express" inducts him into a fraternal organisation:

Themes

".007" is one of a number of stories and poems that Kipling wrote about engines, engineers, and machines. A social history of technology notes Kipling was a pioneer in "establish[ing] the world of work as an appropriate subject for literature" and says, Another critic notes, Some contemporary reviewers felt he went too far in this story. In a long essay in MacMillan's magazine, "an admirer"—who, judging from his comment on bicycles and horses, does not feel the same way about machines as Kipling—complained,

The 007 connection

The story is sometimes mentioned speculatively as one of many possible inspirations for 007, the code number of Ian Fleming's fictional detective James Bond, but no connection is known.

Footnotes