Desert Train

When Arielle had woken up that morning, she hadn't suspected that she would end up stuck in a locomotive cabin barreling down old-looking train tracks with no conductor, no sign of stopping, and no memory of how the situation had come to he. But then, it wasn't something she normally gave much thought. And yet, there is exactly where she found herself at present, standing inside of a train moving much faster than she thought a train that old would be able to, opposite its incredibly warm coal furnace.
As far as she knew, she was alone on the train. The cabin was small enough that she surely would have seen another person if there was one, as she hardly had room to move around herself, let alone if there were multiple bodies in it. Simultaneously, she was glad for this and extremely disheartened by it. No one else being there meant that at least she wasn't more uncomfortable, as well as the fact that no one else was forced to undergo whatever her fate may be. The other side of that though, was that it was entirely up to her to figure out both what exactly was happening and what to do about it.
The only thing that she could think of was to let the furnace burn out, but by the looks of it it had been going for a long time and would continue to do so for much longer. If there was enough track for it to run long enough for her to die of thirst, then by the looks of the fire, it would. And that concept was terrifying on an additional level, since as she had woken up on the train, she had no way of knowing how long she had been unconscious or what had happened while she had been.
So she needed to stop the train. That should be simple enough, she figured. All she had to do was find the brake. She looked about the cabin for something resembling a brake and eventually found a red metal lever. Sure enough, the lettering on the side of it read "Emergency Stop."
When she pulled it down, there was a hollow click, then nothing. She pushed it back into place and tried again. The same click, the same nothing. Someone had cut the brake line. She had expected that it wouldn't be that easy, but had done her best to remain somewhat hopeful. Now, though, she slunk back against the wall, feeling defeated.
Knowing it would amount to nothing, but wanting to have exhausted all her options before completely giving up, she reached into her pocket. Her phone was gone. She had known it was before she even checked. The weight of it that normally pushed against her thigh had been absent the entire time she had been on the train.
She could see out of the front of the train and endless expanse of desert. She knew that even if she were to resort to the extreme and jump from the train, if she survived, she would die of exposure before being able to at all better her situation. She also knew that she could not simply allow the train to run through a desert she knew neither the size nor location of, but not how to stop it.
The cabin, excepting herself and the burning furnace, was empty. And so too was the area around the tracks. There was no way she would be able to use anything to artificially slow the train, even if she was able to survive the hostile desert.
The back of the train was obstructed, and the speed was too great to stick out her head to look behind, so she had no way of knowing whether there were cars on her train or if she was alone on the doomed locomotive. She hoped for the sake of others that it was the latter, and chose to believe as much.
Suddenly, a stroke of brilliance flashed in her mind. She stood the farthest to the left she was able, and jumped. As she landed, she felt the train tilt slightly, confirming that she was thinking correctly. She tried again, jumping repeatedly without pause, and felt the angle increase slightly. After a few moments of doing so, the train started to tip.
Arielle rolled out of her jump to a position on the side of the furnace against the wall, holding her knees against her face in a ball. The hot coals scattered around the cabin, sizzling as they hit the floor and walls, and burning her legs and arms. There was a loud crash as the train fell to the ground, stirring up an enormous burst of sand as it did. Bruised and burned, Arielle took a moment to collect herself before standing in the now sideways train.
The door was on the right, so now sat overhead. She crawled over the furnace, standing on it to reach, which she could easily in the small car. She pushed the door open and heard it slam on the side, signalling that it was safe to grasp the edges of the opening and slowly lift herself out. As she stood on the side of the train, she looked behind it and saw two cars, both with sliding doors facing up. She went to the first and pulled the door open after some struggle.
Inside the car, she found crates labeled "food" and "water." She cried, relieved that she would, in fact be able to survive, possibly even long enough to get help. Each of the crates was outfitted with a metal circle on the side, and next to the door was a long iron stick with a hook on the end, seemingly intended to pull out the crates from this exact situation. She grappled one labelled "water" and pulled it up, placing it down next to herself.
The crate was simply locked, lacking a padlock and only kept closed by the built in mechanism. She turned it to the unlocked position and opened the box, revealing a single case of bottled water, explaining the relative ease of pulling it up. She removed the water and threw it to the ground, following by slowly climbing down the bottom of the car. When she reached the ground, she noticed that the train itself had been built like some sort of balancing beam, as though it had been intended to be tipped over.