The Railway Series, written by the Rev. W Awdry, was published 80 years ago today!
That fact these beloved stories have been around for eight decades, shaped so many people and made such an indelible mark on the world that it still has a dedicated fanbase to this day is beyond spectacular.
I was NUTS about Thomas the Tank Engine as a lad, both the TV series by the wonderful Britt Allcroft and the original books. I adored reading and watching the adventures of these classic characters over and over again, to the point that I could recite practically all of them by heart. I had an entire section of my family's bookshelf for my Thomas VHS tapes and DVDs, as well as a toy tub filled to the brim with wooden train track pieces and Thomas toys, both Wooden Railway and Ertl. I drew the characters, my parents got me a Flying Scotsman Hornby set for Christmas and I went along to both that Day Out with Thomas event and the All Aboard live stage show in Birmingham.
And I'm happy to admit it: although I'm not that fanatical "knows everything about trains" kid anymore, I still own these books written by both Wilbert and Christopher Awdry. I will always cherish these stories that left such an enormous impression on my childhood.
Thank you, Wilbert.
"There was no doubt that steam engines all had definite personalities. I would hear them snorting up the grade and little imagination was needed to hear in the puffings and pantings of the two engines the conversations they were having with each other: 'I can't do it! I can't do it!' 'Yes you can! Yes you can!'" - The Rev. W Awdry
When 46 040 had declared that she would become friends with James, nobody in the sheds had really believed it.
James was vain, occasionally pompous, and immensely suspicious of diesel traction. It was a minor miracle that Bear and BoCo had been accepted by him, and Gordon speculated that it was due to the fact that neither engine was in a role that would displace the red engine.
040 on the other wheel, was in direct competition with him - right down to her shiny red paint. The big diesel had been eager to prove her worth, and had gladly accepted any work that the Fat Controller had given her. This meant that for most of the past year, there had been two red mixed traffic engines on Sodor.
Naturally, James was quite upset by this - he felt that he was being supplanted instead of supported, and tried valiantly to make 040 go away.
Unfortunately for James, 040 was determined to make a friend out of him, and treated him and everyone else with an almost impenetrable level of charm and good cheer that soon ingratiated herself with the other engines.
“She is of good stock.” Gordon said when she came up in discussion.
“A hard worker” was Duck’s assessment.
“Aye, if more diesels were like ‘er, the other railway would work a treat!” This from Douglas - high praise considering his well established and totally understandable dislike of diesels.
When he first met 040, he’d growled at her to ‘stay away’, and after a moment’s reflection, she’d apologized.
“What MPD were you at?” She’d asked after he’d growled at her.
“Glasgow - Eastfield.” He’d replied after a confused moment.
“Yeah, that figures.” She sighed ruefully. “I’m sorry, by the way. They only had enough of the “I hate steam engine” bits for the 45s, so us 46s and 44s never quite understood why everyone was so eager to replace you. Well, everyone except Spamcan, but he’s an arse to everyone.”
“Aye?” Douglas was very surprised.
“Of course. We tried to make them be nice - they certainly didn’t need to be so vicious about it - but once they know you care - well, it’s said that you can smell weakness in someone’s exhaust, so we weren’t treated much better than you were.”
“I... had no idea. Do they truly do that? There’s no’ even unity amongst diesels?”
“Not a whit. At least, not in the Midlands. Don’t worry though - they’re getting what’s coming to them. All three of us Peak classes are ‘non-standard’ now, so they’ll see what it’s like to be on the wrong side of progress soon enough.” Her tone was not light, but neither was it overly dark. She clearly had private opinions on the subject that she wanted to keep private.
Douglas stared at the big diesel with newfound respect.
James soon found himself in the minority of opinions about 040. His resolve began to waver when she would cheerfully keep her composure even in the midst of a heated argument.
“You’re wrong and I can prove it!”
“How?”
“You haven’t got a boiler! You wouldn’t understand what boiler sludge feels like!”
“Ah! That’s where you’re wrong my steam-powered friend! I do have a boiler - for steam heating! I know exactly what boiler sludge feels like!”
“Cinders and Ashes you are impossible! Why are you so cheerful?!”
“I like arguing with you Jamie, it’s fun!”
“Jamie??!”
-----
One morning, the Fat Controller arrived in the sheds with some important news:
“The Thin Clergyman and his son will be visiting the island once again!” He declared cheerfully.
The engines were surprised. “I thought that he had retired from writing?” Gordon said.
“He has,” explained the Fat Controller. “But his son has decided to follow in his father’s footsteps and will be writing books of his own.”
Most of the engines were excited, but 040 was decidedly not. As soon as the Fat Controller left, her face fell into an uncharacteristic scowl. “I am not appearing in those fucking books.” She said menacingly.
This was arguably more surprising than the news of the Thin Clergyman’s arrival.
“Whyever not?” Asked Henry, who was quite pleased to have stories written about him.
“None of you know this,” She grimaced. “But the only more damaging thing than those books was the fucking Beeching Report! When he wrote about that 08 that tried to cause trouble for Duck, he might as well have thrown a bomb into every yard in the country! Everyone was either saying that we diesels were evil masterminds or that steam engines were idiotic dupes! There was zero civility between engines! Friendships ended! Lives were ruined! Locomotives were scrapped over this! I wasn’t even built then and I still have been forced to deal with it!”
She laughed at the jaw-dropped stares of the other engines. None of them had been on the mainland at that time, and they had no idea of the trouble that had gone on.
“And then there’s one-nine-nine! That nincompoop has gotten every one of us Peaks called a Spamcan! And that’s impressive considering there’s three different classes of us! I didn’t even know what Spam was before that book!”
Silence fell over the sheds for a good while.
“I had no idea...” Gordon eventually said in a small voice.
“I know.” 040 said as she slowly regained her cheery demeanor. “And that’s okay. But I really do not want to be in the books.”
“What’s this about books?” James had been out on an early stopper train, and had missed everything.
“Oh nothing Jamie, do you want to have an argument?”
“No! and stop calling me that!”
“Great! So I think we are actually having an argument right now, but what’s your take on it...?”
-----
The Thin Clergyman arrived onboard Gordon’s express, and was given a warm welcome by the Fat Controller at Tidmouth. Fortunately for 040, Gordon had been able to pass the word on with an earlier train, and she was able to flee the station before the author arrived.
The next week of her life was not unlike a scene from the Benny Hill Show - wherever 040 went, the Thin Clergyman and his son followed.
She ran a parcels train to Barrow - the Thin Clergyman was waiting on the next platform,
She hid behind the Works, only to find his Son riding on Skarloey’s footplate,
At Haltraugh she tried to hide behind Duck - with exactly as much success as one would expect,
The two men starting interviewing engines in the shed, and she was forced to hide amongst the coaches in the yard,
Thomas’ driver unexpectedly fell ill at Tidmouth, and she leapt at the chance to take his train - despite being longer than Annie and Clarabel put together! She made it as far as Elsbridge before curious trainspotters began flocking to take her picture, and she beat a hasty retreat to the main line just before the Clergyman arrived,
The engines at the Kirk Ronan branch were quite annoyed when she tried to squeeze into their shed - she was so big that the door wouldn’t shut!
Planned track work meant that one of the Ballahoo tunnels was closed, and she bluffed her way onto the work train so she could sleep in it. This was an effective hiding spot, until she told Henry, who laughed so loudly that the Thin Clergyman heard the entire story from across the yard,
She even tried sleeping in the electric branch sheds at Peel Godred, but was not only glared at by the very antisocial locomotives who lived there, but also had to hide from both the Thin Clergyman and His Son when they came to see the Culdee Fell Railway.
Finally, there was nowhere left to run - she had managed to find all of these hiding spots while still doing her jobs, but today she was the ‘relief’ engine at Knapford, which meant that she had to sit in the yard all day in case another engine failed.
In full view of the station building.
At midday, James bustled in with a load of vans for Thomas’ branch line.
“What are you so anxious about?” He asked 040 with a mixture of scorn and surprise. The annoying red diesel was looking positively frantic as her eyes scanned the station building. It was most unlike her.
“Jamie! Hide me!” She hissed as James’ driver uncoupled the vans.
“What?”
“Hide me! Quickly!”
“Why?”
“The Clergyman! He’s right there in the station!”
James looked over, and sure enough, the Thin Clergyman and his son were sitting down to lunch in the station café. “Why?”
“Because he might write something about me!” 040 was frantic.
James was baffled, but remembered Gordon mentioning something about some engines not wanting to be written about. He’d assumed that Edward was just being introverted again, but perhaps there was more to it than that...
He was tempted to do the exact opposite - to blow his whistle, attract attention, and pay back the loudmouth diesel for all of her arguments and nicknames, but when he looked back at her, he realized that 040 was frightened of the Thin Clergyman.
James was many things, but sadistic wasn’t one of them, and he ran around his train and shunted the vans so that 040 was almost entirely obscured from sight.
“Thank you!” She whispered as he backed away.
“Keep it dark,” He hissed back. “I have a reputation to uphold. And I’ll try and draw his attention to me so he doesn’t go looking for you.”
“Shouldn’t be too much of a problem for you.” She said with a small smile. “You always are the centre of attention!”
James smiled back as he backed into the yard proper, doing his best to make as much noise as he could until he came to a stop at the far end of the yard - as far away from 040 as possible.
His plan worked flawlessly. The Clergyman and his son had been so engrossed in their meal that they hadn’t noticed that any engine was there at all, and quickly made their way across the yard.
Unlike 040, James was always pleased to have someone write about him, and spent the better part of an hour answering the Clergyman’s questions.
“There was one other thing I wanted to know, James.” The Clergyman’s son said after a while. “We’ve been told that there’s a new diesel on the Island, but we can’t seem to find him anywhere!”
“Her.” James corrected before he could stop himself.
“Her?”
In for a penny, in for a pound. “Yes. She’s a girl, and she’s quite shy.”
“Really?” The Clergyman said as he scribbled in his notebook. “Can you tell me about her? Or where she is?”
“I don’t want to talk about anyone behind their back...” James said, knowing exactly how often he did just that. “But I saw her going to the works a few hours ago. You might be able to find her there and ask her yourself.”
This pleased the Clergyman and his Son, and they immediately set off in their hire car for the works. James waited until they had vanished from sight before he called out: “They’re gone!”
“Thank God!” 040 shouted from across the yard.
“Don’t thank him! Thank me!” James called back.
“Thank you James! Really, I owe you one now.” James couldn’t see the diesel, but he could somehow tell that she was smiling.
----
040′s luck finally ran out on the last day of the Clergyman’s trip. She was rostered to pull the night express, and didn’t realize that the Thin Clergyman was going to be on board. She almost jumped off the rails when she saw him climbing the stairs to the platform, she let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding when he entered the train, and her face fell when she realized that he was merely putting away his luggage before he got out of the train and walked up to her.
“Hello there! I haven’t seen you before!” He said jovially while admiring her paint and stripes.
“I’m new.” She said, trying to keep her tone somewhat polite. The ugly anger rising in the pit of her engine block was making that a very hard thing to do.
“I can see that - you have been quite hard to find!”
“Have I?”
“Very much so, but nevermind that. I was wondering if you would be willing to let myself and my son write about you? You see, we write books abou-”
“I know what your books are about.”
“Oh you do?” The Thin Clergyman said, not missing the sudden undertone in the diesel’s voice.
“Oh yes. And I’m not even talking about Spamcan.” She smiled viciously as the Thin Clergyman winced at that reference.
“Yes, well-”
“I’m not done. I'm talking about the other book you wrote. About the 08? The one that got more than a few engines killed?”
“What?” The author recoiled at the now-undisguised venom in 040′s voice.
“Of course you don’t know. You don’t care about diesels, just your precious steam engines.” She glared at him with undisguised malice. “Do me a favor - take that notebook and go fuck yourself with it - I will never be in one of your books.”
As she said that, the signal dropped, and the guard - who couldn’t see the Clergyman due to a porter’s trolley in the way - blew his whistle.
040 set off immediately, leaving the Thin Clergyman standing on the platform, taking his baggage with her.
-
When the Clergyman’s son started publishing his books several years later, 040 was nowhere to be seen in any of them.
What if “Gordon The High Speed Engine” was adapted into a full special?
Tale of the Brave had a story where Thomas wasn’t all front and center as Percy’s story was the main plotline. I can see a special about Gordon, especially with the Flying Scotsman introduced.
The story would likely introduce Pip and Emma early on as Gordon feels he has to keep up with the new fastest engines on Sodor. This would lead to the adapted material from the Railway Series, balancing merchandising as well as storytelling which I feel Andrew Brenner’s team does well on.
Might not happen but you never know considering the Small Railway Engines.
