Help! My kids have fallen in love with Thomas the Tank Engine. What can I do?
[If in England]
Actual locomotives fitted with faceplates to look like Thomas and Friends make the rounds to various rail museums that offer rides to the public on weekends and holidays. Human characters from the
stories accompany the engines. If you find no other source of information, you can investigate this in the schedules section of the many rail enthusiast magazines available at typical newstands all
over England. You might possibly be able to get such information from the British Rail tourist office in this country.
Two years ago I saw these engines at the the Didcot Rail Center near Oxford. I was alone, but the emotions shown by English children seeing the live engines for the first time were quite touching.
That Center may be reached by rail from London, Oxford, Reading, etc. and is within walking distance of the British Rail Station. Interesting rail museums are found in similarly convenient locations
throughout the country. All kinds of Thomas parahernalia can be purchased there.
Others are:
York:National Rail Museum
Carnforth:Steamtown
Bridgnorth:Severn Valley ... literally dozens of such centers.
THOMAS THE TANK ENGINE, DETAIL
Can anyone supply details on Thomas?
This article is from the April 1993 issue of Model Railroader, pages 86 and 87. The article and photos are by Michael Edwards.
Extracted here without permission, see above paragraph for due credit.
"Thomas the Tank Engine has steamed through many a childhood since the Reverend Wilbert Awdry began writing stories about the little blue locomotive 40 years ago. The books are wonderful, but the TV
adaptations - well, they're wonderful too. To find out how the producers of Shining Time Station achieve such stunning results, I visited the famous Shepperton film studios on the outskirts of
London.
It all began 12 years ago, when executive producer Britt Allcroft was working on a film about the age of steam. The film's technical consultant was none other than Rev. Awdry, and Allcroft began
thinking about interpreting his creations as TV characters.
To some observers, a children's series staring a steam locomotive seemed a big gamble - this was the age of space epics and Steven Spielberg. Reverend Awdry himself was concerned that TV might
destroy the delicate, period quality the original book illustrations conveyed. He was a stickler for accuracy.
He need not have worried. Authenticity became a major goal, and specialty bookshops were scoured for reference works.
The locomotives
For the pilot film, the train models were scratchbuilt from plastic. However, the problems were many and varied. To obtain better reliability, the producers turned to Marklin's superbly engineered O
scale locomotives with their die-cast metal frames. They added new acrylic bodies with radio-controlled eyes.
The many faces of Thomas
Those removable faces bring the characters alive, even though the only moving parts are the eyes. Each character has its own basic face, which was first sculpted in clay. Then a rubber mold was made,
and copies were cast in a mixture of resin and autobody filler. These were reworked to different expressions from which the final silicone castings were taken.