The REAL History Behind The
Thomas The Train Toys

As the old adage goes if you can’t beat them – join them. In this article I am going to share with you a brief history about Thomas The Train. You are going to discover the REAL story on how he came to be a world phenomenon.

I was surprised when I found out that our loveable little friend is a little over fifty years old. Thomas was originally created by Reverend Wilbert Awdry, as a means of entertaining his child Christopher while he was ill. Christopher was stuck in isolation because he had scarlet fever.

Christopher loved the stories so much that he demanded that his father tell them to him again and again. As most kids do, Christopher would correct his father whenever he found inconsistencies in his stories. The Reverend could no longer make the stories up from the top of his head. He began to write them down on little scraps of paper. To add to the stories Reverend Awdry drew little pictures of trains. Since a head on view was the easiest to draw, he drew a row of trains parked in a engine shed with human faces and expressions on the smoke box door. 

After looking at the drawings, Christopher looked up at his father and asked, “Why is this train sad?”, pointing at an unhappy faced train. “Because he’s old and tired and he hasn’t been out in a long time.”, replied his father. “What’s his name, Daddy?”

“Edward” was the first name that came into the Rev. Awdry’s mind. This was the genesis of “Edward’s Day Out”, the first in almost a hundred simple moral tales about the exploits and adventures of a group of railway engines given human personalities.

A lot of people mistakenly thought that Thomas was the first train that Rev. Awdry wrote about. After unveiling this information I often wondered why wasn’t the show called Edward and Friends, instead of Thomas and Friends. Then I thought… Hmmm… Does it really matter? Anyway let’s keep this story moving.

The Reverend’s wife Mrs. Awdry believed that her husbands little stories were pretty good. So she began to pester him to take action. Which proves another great adage, “Behind every great man there is a great woman!”

Mrs. Awdry determined found a distant cousin who was a small publisher by the name of Edmund Ward. Edmund was very interested in the Reverend’s stories. So much so that Rev. Awdry had to submit his writings as they were – on little scraps of paper. Edmund loved the stories and in 1945 the first of the Railway Series of books began – “The Three Railway Engines.”
This was a book that was designed small enough to fit in children’s hands, and it consisted of three stories, “Edward’s Day Out, Edward and Gordon, and The Sad Story of Henry.” The infamous Thomas the Tank Engine did not appear until the second book was published a year later in 1946 and more books followed at yearly intervals. The illustrator for the first dozen or so books was C. Reginald Dalby, who established the basic appearance of each locomotive character from the Rev. Awdry’s sketches and by looking at real steam engines in use in Britain at that time. Thus an obscure 0-6-0T Class E2 shunting engine built in the Victorian era for the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway became the model for Thomas, now known to millions of children worldwide. Gordon can be seen to be based on a Gresley A3 Pacific from the London and North Eastern Railway; Flying Scotsman being the most famous real locomotive of this class.

As the yeas went by and the stories began to develop, the location and other features of fictional railway systems emerged. Many stories were based on actual happenings on British Railways and its predecessors. A railway locomotive did disappear down a mine shaft on the Furness Railway and get spun on a turntable by the wind: Midland Railway. More than one of the Reverend Awdry’s clerical colleagues were just as fascinated as he with steam powered machinery.

The Rev. Terry Boston was a well-known collector of steamrollers and became the inspiration for the vicar who saves Trevor the Traction Engine from the scrap heap. More locomotive characters appeared, learning to deal with the troublesome trucks and to become “really useful engines” as they pulled their trains over the railway system presided over by the stern but kindly Fat Controller. Sir Topham Hatt. The now famous engines all went to London and the Queen came to visit the railway. By the time British Railways retired its last steam locomotive, the Rev. Awdry had firmly established the Island of Sodor as the location of his railway, happily unaffected by the modernization of the mainland.

After twenty six books, the Rev. Awdry decided to lay his pen down. His pen didn’t even get a chance to get cold before his son Christopher picked it up. It was Christopher is currently writing stories for his son. Ten more books have been released under Christopher’s name. Who knows – one day in the near future Christopher’s son may continue on the Thomas The Train legacy.

The Rev. Awdry built a model of Thomas’s branch line in 1960 and displayed it at various model railway shows throughout England. In 1984 Thomas The Train and his friends were introduced to a whole new generation of children, when the first television series was produced. Gauge 1 models based on Marklin mechanisms were used in the making of the T.V. shows in a studio not far from Clapham Junction, Britain’s busiest railway station. In response to the rekindled interest in Thomas, a British Model Railway Manufacturer, Hornby Railways, introduced a number of 00 gauge models of the locomotives in the Railway Series.

Thomas The Train And His Friends is currently distributed in 150 countries worldwide. I would say that it is a pretty safe bet to say that Thomas and his friends are a huge hit. It appears that the parents love the adorable little trains as much as the children do. I know I do.

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