Cheerful locomotive Chu-Chukhin and his friends. Good fairy tales with fantasy elements

© Fedir Tytarchuk, 2025

ISBN 978-5-0062-5775-7

Created with Ridero smart publishing system

SYNOPSIS. What is this book about

Here is a collection of children’s fairy tales, united by:

– a single terrain on which events unfold;

– common heroes;

– events that, to one degree or another, follow one another and sometimes lead to the next story.

Thus, fairy tales can be considered both individual works and something whole.

Setting: a “fairy-tale” area somewhere in the Poltava region, an area known to be a haven of witches, evil spirits and filled with other attributes of the supernatural. In a forest, cut off on one side by a river, on the other by swamps, and on the north by a ledge of rocks from the rest of the world. Previously, there were military men there who had suffered from the local supernatural, and as soon as they had the opportunity to get out of there, they immediately left these places, leaving all their real estate there. There was also a depot, which over time began to fall into disrepair, like everything else in this forest, until wandering trains settled in it.

In the swamps, in a house abandoned by the military, stylized as a hut on chicken legs, lived an old woman – Baba Yaga, who considered herself an old resident of the forest, who melted spoons and forks from scrap metal, which she fished out abandoned steam locomotives from the swamp, and therefore was hostile to the appearance of steam locomotives. And since she was a vindictive and vindictive person, this enmity began to result in constant skirmishes and intrigues on her part.

A little about each of the fairy tales:

001. Like Baba Yaga, Chu-Chukhina wanted to melt the train into spoons.

Here we meet the two main characters – Baba Yaga and the locomotive Chu-Chukhin, who, having gotten lost in the forest, almost became a victim of an insidious old woman and was not melted down into spoons and forks, but thanks to the ingenuity and help of a hut on chicken legs (a military project abandoned in forest) he manages to escape from history.

002. How the little locomotive Chu-Chukhin saved Kolobchuk.

Kolobchuk is the hero of fairy tales, Kolobok, who now lives in the depot near the trains, but before he came to them, he suffered hardships and persecution from his grandmother and grandfather, who live just beyond the railway bridge across the river, and from the flattering brethren. And only the help of Chu-Chukhin, and the cunning of Kolobchuk himself, allowed him to get out of this mess. In this story, a cunning fox appears, which at the end of the fairy tale ends up in Baba Yaga’s house.

003. The story of the Ghost Engine and how Baba Yaga wanted to get to Chu-Chukhin.

Baba Yaga, already angry at the engines, persuaded by that very Fox, decided to get to Chu-chukhin, as one of the informal authorities in the depot, through witchcraft, calling to life the spirit of the engines from the Swamp of Old Engines. But her idea failed, since the ghost engine turned out to be not evil and took the side of the train.

004. How the engines met Alenka.

The girl Alenka, who was going to visit her grandfather and grandmother (they live across the railway bridge and who made Kolobchuk at one time), decided to take a shortcut and went through the forest and swamps. She met Baba Yaga and, naturally, she lured her to her place. Aleka ran away, hid in the swamps until the Ghost engine accidentally found her and took her to the depot with the engines.

005. How the trains looked for the magic fern at night.

Baba Yaga cast a spell on the engines and the only way they found to remove this spell was the color of the fern. It grew in a remote corner of the forest, in the abode of the Walking Oaks, and bloomed only once a year, just on the next weekend.

The engines performed a ceremony on the river bank and set off. From the other side, Baba Yaga and her cohort moved to the same place. In the clearing they collided. And it is not known how all this would have ended if the forest spirits had not intervened in this matter and kicked everyone out of their monastery. And only Maslenka the Cat, a mechanic at the depot, hid in one of the trees, waited for everything and in the morning brought a fern flower.

006. How the Cat Bayun wanted to help Baba Yaga!

Having complained in a letter to her old bosom friend Kot Bayun, Baba Yaga thereby summoned him to her. The cat assessed the situation and decided to shake off the old days, since he himself was from these places. Having come up with a plan, he decided to lull the locomotives to sleep, enchant them, as he did with the birds in the forest and in the swamp, and direct them towards the swamp, where Baba Yaga would be waiting for them. And everything would have been fine if I hadn’t taken with me two cats – Baba Yaga’s assistants, who ruined the whole event.

As a result, all three ended up in a box, drugged by valerian…

007. How the Chu-Chukhin locomotive helped to look for the scarlet flower.

The story is about how Chu-Chukhin the Engine decided to help an unknown man, whom his household (women) had driven out to the market, to sell his crops and buy gifts there, including a scarlet flower.

008. Conspiracy of the tailed ones.

The cats gathered in a secluded place and Kot Bayun offered them a model in which there would be peace in the forest, and they would be at work, managing this situation. Everyone was happy and happy, if not for the stupid cat Peach (one of Baba Yaga’s cats), who imagined too much of himself and his “star fever” did not allow these plans to come true.

009. History of Oaks-Khodunov.

The little girl Alenka (the granddaughter of the grandmother and children who live behind the iron bridge) went into the forest to pick mushrooms. They tried to dissuade her, but she went anyway. And there, among the abundance of colorful mushrooms, she accidentally met Baba Yaga, running away from her, she wandered into the lost places and was almost eaten by a carnivorous plant, but the Walking Oaks came to the rescue, fighting off and then telling their story, escorting her to a safe place.

010. Witches’ Sabbath and collision with trains.

The climax was the witches’ Sabbath, which took place in the swamps, at which Baba Yaga complained to her friends about the engines and they decided to attack the depot right away. Kot Bayun tried to settle the matter, but was sent on a voyage and therefore the battle took place.

000. Introduction…

In one difficult area that fits exactly between Poltava and Kiev, among swamps, ancient forests and abandoned military installations, wandering trains settled. Their appearance would not have aroused any particular interest in anyone if it were not for the evil old woman who lived in the Swamp of Old Locomotives and ran her business by melting rolling stock into spoons and forks.

Those places stood apart and were not listed on any map. Some attributed this to their witchcraft nature, and others saw it only in the recent stay of the military here, who, as you know, are in no hurry to put their objects on maps. But be that as it may, the military safely left these places, leaving behind all their buildings, a dozen railway crossings, several bridges over rivers and other utensils that were either forgotten or could not be used in the new place. It was in such a military facility, very similar to a hut on chicken legs, that the old woman, who was called Baba Yaga, settled, and who harbored a grudge against the traveling engines.

The engines sometimes interfered in forest or swamp affairs, but more out of ignorance or urgent necessity than for any other reasons, and this infuriated the old woman every time.

And the locals lived across the river. They lived here for a long time, at least they thought so themselves. They lived, but they clearly drew a line where they could enter without fear, and where it was better not to interfere. Therefore, if anyone wandered across the river, he returned from there with gray hair and a mass of fables, from which there were even fewer people willing to visit the forests and swamps.

The forest inhabitants only looked to outsiders as something single, monolithic, but in fact, even within this closed community, which tried not to let outsiders in, a stormy life was in full swing. Baba Yaga, after leaving the military swamps, called herself their successor, which the Walking Oaks, who had lived in these places for thousands of years and therefore considered Baba Yaga to be an alien, openly disagreed with. The forest and water inhabitants did not want change, having become accustomed to the life that had been here for centuries and therefore aggressively perceived any outside interference. The swamp spirits that settled in the local swamps lured passing locomotives with their spells of mechanical magic, and periodic damage and other witchcraft of Baba Yaga were neutralized by the manifestations of the magic of the local flora and fauna. To a large extent, the locomotives were simply lucky…

The histories that are given below just tell about the events that took place in this corner of the Poltava region, not mapped on any map, where, as you know, every second old woman is a witch, and every third cat is Bayun.

001. Like Baba Yaga, Chu-Chukhina wanted to melt the train into spoons

In one dense forest that grows somewhere near Poltava, away from the main roads, there is an old depot. Previously, it was used by the military, but then the military left and left everything as it was, taking only their locomotives and armored trains. But the civilian depots turned out to be unnecessary – they already had enough of their own. So the depot was left empty in the middle of a dense forest, fenced off from the outside world by huge trees, wide rivers and marshy swamps that stretch for tens of kilometers. At first, the depot was empty, but then, crossing three bridges as abandoned as the depot itself, wandering locomotives began to wander into it. Some moved on after spending only a short time at the depot, while others immediately liked the place and stayed to live here, and the depot became their home. But the locomotives were bored just sitting in the hangars; they loved to travel along the rails, accelerate, brake, carry cargo and passengers, and also sound their horn at the stops. Therefore, the locomotives first repaired the military telegraph, sent out telegrams to everyone asking them to send requests for transportation, and when such requests came, they gladly accepted them.

In the mornings, before leaving for business, the locomotives gathered behind the hangar, released steam and smoke into the sky, drank engine oil and told stories. Naturally, Chu-Chukhin was the most cheerful and talkative. Chu-Chukhin that morning celebrated exactly one month since he settled in the depot and treated everyone to the machine oil he had brought from the flight yesterday.

– Good is not enough! – the locomotives praised him.

– You should leave it for the evening, – others hinted that they had prepared a festive dinner.

– I’ll bring more, – Chu-Chukhin answered them and joyfully sent thoughts into the sky. “I’ll take two carloads of firewood and I’ll definitely pick it up on the way back.”

– Aren’t you afraid to ride along unknown paths? – a cat passing by, nicknamed Oil Can, asked him. The cat worked here as a mechanic, wore oiled overalls, checked the bearings of steam locomotives before setting off on a voyage, and lubricated everyone with his oil can, which is why he got his nickname.

– Yes, after the Lost Swamps, the Cemetery of Old Locomotives and Baba Yaga, I’m no longer afraid of anything! – answered Chu-Chukhin.

– Baba Yaga?! – one of the locomotives was surprised. – And who is it?

– How? – now Chu-Chukhin was also surprised. “Didn’t I tell this story?”

It turned out that no, he didn’t tell. And then, a lover of various stories, Chu-Chukhin began.

– This, I tell you, my friends, is a very interesting and educational story. This happened about a month ago, just before I got here. Then I was a traveling locomotive who sleeps on sidings, and when he’s not sleeping, he rolls wherever his eyes look, refueling with whatever comes to hand, and undergoes technical inspections from time to time, which is why I get sick often. And he doesn’t have any mechanics at all.

I was driving that day, it seems, from the direction of Poltava. I had been driving for a long time and it began to seem to me that the road was going somewhere in the wrong direction, somewhere to the side. Then I stopped, looked around, thought a little and went off the rails. The weather was beautiful, the sun warmed my sides, the breeze easily drove back the smoke escaping from the chimney. In this weather it was nice to take a walk in nature. Walk a little, and then get out on the tracks in the right place, stand on them with your wheels and move on.

I didn’t want to waste half the day making a big detour and only reaching the desired point in the evening. Judging by the map, and I always travel with a map, here it was possible to take a shortcut through the forest and in an hour reach the necessary paths, and from there it’s just a stone’s throw towards Kyiv.

From the very first minutes it began to seem to me that something was wrong with my card. I only found out later that the map of these places was drawn up by the military and, of course, they compiled it in such a way as to hide everything that they did not want to show – depots, hangars, warehouses, and military equipment that once stood here, and, Of course, the railroad diagram was also drawn incorrectly. I didn’t know about this and naturally trusted the card, which had already helped me out more than once.

I descended from the embankment, galloped through a shallow swamp, from hummock to hummock, from bush to bush, in one place I even had to wade into the swim. True, it wasn’t deep there, only half the wheel. And having passed the swamp, he got out to the edge of the forest. I somehow didn’t like the forest right away. Thick, gloomy, silent. The old trees immediately closed their crowns over my chimney, and not even a ray of light broke through their foliage. On a fine sunny day it suddenly became dark, damp and uncomfortable. I wanted to turn back, but something wouldn’t let me. I think it was some kind of witchcraft. Probably some kind of magnetic witchcraft that pulls ships aground and lures planes into air pockets.

There was talk about magnetic witchcraft, to which all metal objects, and even more so steam locomotives, were believed to be susceptible, and everyone took it seriously.

“And the further I made my way through the thickets, the more I was drawn forward,” continued Chu-Chukhin. “And the thickets were getting denser, I had already scratched all my sides, hit a tree trunk once or twice, dented the ramp guard, dented the cabin, and even began to limp on a couple of wheels. And when light began to break through behind the dark green foliage, I was happy and ran faster, not even paying attention to the fact that it was squelching under the wheels, and with every meter I began to plunge deeper and deeper into the dirty swampy water.

And then, up to my very axis in the water, I got out of the forest, and there, on one of the hills, an old woman stood and picked berries. I don’t know what kind of berries they were, but there was almost a basket full of them. The old woman was thin, hunched over, with a large nose and hooked long arms, and from under her burgundy scarf a strand of ashy gray hair was sticking out.

The old woman straightened up slightly, looked in my direction and spread her arms:

– Oh, how did you get here, my dear?! – she shouted. – You can’t come here.

– It is forbidden! It is forbidden! – her two cats shouted. One was black as night, the second was probably once white, but he lived for a long time in the forest and in the swamps and therefore got pretty dirty. I somehow didn’t notice the cats right away; they were probably somewhere nearby, behind the hill.

– Why? – I was surprised, blinking my eyes from the bright sun, getting out of the darkness.

– And that’s why! – the old woman pointed forward.

I didn’t immediately make out where she was pointing, but then, when my eyes got used to the sunlight, I saw a terrible picture. If earlier I heard that there is somewhere in the sea where magnetic witchcraft attracts all lost or sunken ships and this place is called the cemetery of lost ships, then I saw something similar here. Only here there was a large endless swamp, overgrown in places with small bushes, covered with mud, marsh grass and something else that grows in swamps, and in the middle of all this lay old, rusty steam locomotives. Most of them went deep under the water and only their roofs protruded to the surface, somewhere locomotive pipes stuck out, right in front of me, about a hundred meters away, only the wheels protruded from the water – the locomotive must have turned over and was lying upside down. There were locomotives of all possible models here, there were a lot of them. They leaned on each other, pressed their sides, noses, and dived under each other. In the distance I even noticed an armored train. His rusty guns were looking in my direction and it was creepy.

– You can’t go there, my dear! – the old woman smiled and offered to go up to her hill. – There is death there. Certain death for any locomotive that gets there. Just recently, in my memory, one just like him stepped into a swamp, but he couldn’t get out. The swamp dragged him away and swallowed him whole.

– How can this be? – I was surprised. – How does this happen?

– I don’t know. – answered the old woman.

– A terrible secret! – the black cat purred.

– Yes, I see, you’re already worn out,’ the old woman shook her head, lisping from time to time. ‘He wandered into lost places, but at least he found us, – Grandma said. – Don’t be afraid of us. We are locals, we have lived here for a long time, we know all the ins and outs. Let’s help someone who is lost.

– We’ll help. – the light cat purred and rubbed against my wheel. – And the wheel is broken!

– Oh! – the old woman perked up. – How is it broken? – ran up to me. – It’s really not good with the wheel. Needs treatment.

– You need to treat, you need to treat. – the cats agreed with her.

– Shall we help the engine? – the old woman asked the cats.

– We’ll help, we’ll help. – they purred and began to wink at her somehow mysteriously.

– Do you understand mechanics? – I became interested too.

– Why not! – the old woman was surprised. – We understand. And we understand a lot of things.

– So you are mechanics! – I burst out. Although the hunched old woman and two cats didn’t really look like mechanics.

– Almost. – the black cat purred. – We are more than mechanics. We have mechanical magic. We repair using the power of spells, decoctions, tinctures, oil mixtures and other technical substances unknown to backward science.

– Wow! – I was surprised. -Where is your hangar?

“It’s not far, my dear,” the old woman entered the conversation. – Here, not far. Just about thirty minutes to walk through the forest and we’ll be there. – she narrowed her eyes.

– What about half an hour, we’ll get there faster. – the black cat picked up, licking his lips for some reason.

– We have everything ready there, – the old woman did not stop talking all the way. – We’ll give you a poultice, change the oil, straighten the metal with tinctures, dissolve the rust and build up the metal in these places. – We understand a lot about these matters. – she whispered.

I’ll say right away that the forest was the same – gloomy, cold, damp and dark. The branches still closed over the pipe, not allowing light to pass down; the underbrush covered the entire space between the tree trunks. We walked along a green tunnel. It even seemed to me that it was as if the trees parted to the sides just for us, opening a passage, but never opening the branches above us.

I listened with half an ear to the old woman, looking around all the time. It seemed to me that from there, from behind the bushes, from behind the tree trunks, from the darkness, someone was watching us. And there were a lot of observers there, several behind each tree. They were all angry and were ready to jump out and attack. Now I understand why the old woman from time to time stopped telling me about her mechanical magic and shushed me towards the forest. She probably calmed those who were sitting there.

The cats walked nearby, proudly raising their tails. One is to my right, the other is to my left.

“But we’re almost there,” the old woman pointed forward. – Here is our hangar – a hut.

Something loomed ahead, occupying the entire passage. It was an ordinary wooden hut. Ordinary but not quite ordinary. An old tree covered with moss in the dampness. The only window had not been washed for a long time, and the roof, made of reeds, had darkened and required replacement. The Khatynka swayed from time to time and from the outside it seemed that it was breathing.

– How will we all fit there? – I was surprised.

– Don’t worry about that, honey! – said the old woman. – Here, look. – and she suddenly whistled. Her whistling immediately made my ears clog, and when she stopped, I couldn’t hear well for some time.

– Hey, wooden one, turn your front to me, your back to the forest! – the old woman shouted. At that moment it seemed to me that I had already heard this phrase somewhere, but I just couldn’t remember where.

The “wooden” trembled, groaned and, to my surprise, began to rise. The Khatynka rose upward, pushing branches to the sides, and then the trees themselves. The trees diverged as if alive, the branches prudently bent to the sides, and those that did not have time simply broke under the pressure of the hut that had begun to move.

– Come on, you wooden one! – shouted the black cat. – Are we going to wait here for you for a year?!

Khatynka rose up on her manipulators, turned there half a turn and just as carefully and slowly sank down. We stood aside and only now did I understand the true size of this building. It was huge, three hangars high and five locomotives wide. While we were standing far away, it seemed to us no more than an ordinary house.

There were no windows on this side, just one door and a large hangar gate. The gates opened and the old woman invited me to enter there

– Here we are at home, – she showed the way. – We have here decoctions, roots, and machine oils infused with fir cones. – And the stove is miraculous.

– Why a stove? – I was surprised. In the middle of the hut, which was the size of a hangar, there was a huge stove, into which the entire locomotive fit and there was still room left. The oven was already heated up and even glowing with heat.

– How could it be otherwise? – the old woman made a surprised face.

– This is to steam your bones. – added the light cat.

– This is to remove the locomotive damage from you. – the dark cat purred.

– So that all the bruises become softer and healing decoctions can straighten them out.

– So that the healing fire will separate the rust from your body, and then we can weld the metal onto you with oil extracts.

And their words sounded so sweet, the stove was so inviting. Well, just like the swamp when I was making my way through the forest. And I was already moving towards the stove, into the warm and pleasant heat, when suddenly the comparison with the obsession in the forest became comparable to what was happening now. This comparison brought me to my senses, something pulled me back and the spell immediately subsided. The warm heat of the stove turned into scorching heat, and I even began to feel how the metal was gradually giving in and was about to begin to melt.