Famous Train Picture

maltrab

maltrab

Administrator
Staff member
After my visit to the NRM in York today I thought I would share the picture I managed to get of the what is probably the worlds most famous Loco in it's original Livery, it is unusual to be able to get a picture of this Loco without crowds of people clambering all over it,scroll down to see it
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Nearly there
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Guessed which one it is yet
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I bet you cannot wait to see it
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Loco.jpg
 
lol. Well yes both my daughters use to love Thomas. Good one. Ha ha. Very good.
:D
 
My grandson has seen this and is demanding I print it :D ( He's Autistic and obsessed with trains especially Thomas)
I hope I'm not infringing on your copyright ? ;D
 
Susan said:
My grandson has seen this and is demanding I print it :D ( He's Autistic and obsessed with trains especially Thomas)
I hope I'm not infringing on your copyright ? ;D
Click to expand...

By all means print him a copy
 
As I have heard, Thomas is based upon a real engine. Anyone know what train type this is?
 
Adanor said:
As I have heard, Thomas is based upon a real engine. Anyone know what train type this is?
Click to expand...

Like it when queries like this are raised (even if we again get the confusion between "engine" and "train"). Makes me start researching trivia.

Interesting point - Thomas was not the first engine and was not in the first "The Raiway Series" book - "The Three Railway Engines" which featured Edward, Gordon and Henry. Thomas came along in the second book "Thomas the Tank Engine".

The Wikipedia article on The Raiway Series tells us that Thomas started as a model toy tank engine constructed by Awdry for son Christopher. The initial illustration of Thomas was by Reginald Payne but that was subsequently altered by C Reginald Dalby. So there is an element of the illustrators imagination. I have looked at photographs of tank engines of all four companies without being able to pin Thomas down to a particular Class of 0-6-0 Tank.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Railway_Series

The Mid-Hants Railway (the Watercress Line) has modified a Hunslet Austerity 0-6-0 Saddle Tank, LNER CLass J94, to a Thomas lookalike - quite a radical transformation when you see the original locomotive: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunslet_Austerity_0-6-0ST.

There is no doubt some of the locomotives were based on real locomotives. Wilbert the Forest Engine and Sixteen the Steelworks Engine are very much based on that same Hunslet Austerity 0-6-0 Saddle Tank. And the two Scottish engines, Donald and Douglas are based on the Caledonian Railway 812 Class. The enterprising Mid-Hants Railway converted yet another of the Hunslet Austerities into a tender engine to replicate Douglas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_and_Douglas
 
Thomas was thought to be based on a L B Billinton E" class tank locomotive, built 1913-1916 for the London, Brighton & South Coast railway. This is due to the extended side tanks and there were very few like that.

I think nos 100 - 104 had standard tanks and 105 to 109 had extended tanks (they were heavier), they were all withdrawn between 1961-63.

They would have been finished in an umber shade rather than the blue associated with Sodor!

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a5/LB&SCR_E2_class.jpg/220px-LB&SCR_E2_class.jpg

should give you a picture of the original.



This shows the extended tanks.


Somewhere I have a note of the derivation of some of the others, but some were amalgams of various real locomotives.

All the locos and events were routed in real life which was one of Awdry's concerns with the TV series which deviated from factual events.
 
barmpot said:
Thomas was thought to be based on a L B Billinton E" class tank locomotive, built 1913-1916 for the London, Brighton & South Coast railway. This is due to the extended side tanks and there were very few like that.
Click to expand...

The following all makes sense:

"In 1946, Reginald Payne used the later series of E2 locomotives as the basis for the character Thomas the Tank Engine in the second book of The Railway Series by the Reverend W. Awdry.[4][5] According to some sources and early sketches by Awdry Thomas was originally going to be modelled on one of the L.N.E.R. J tank classes,[citation needed] although Awdry's original model of Thomas was a Tri-ang LMS 'Jinty'. This was later replaced with a Tri-ang E2 which represented engines 100-104, the original five engines.

In the television series from 1985, Thomas appears to have some subtle differences to the original E2 class and to the original Thomas from The Railway Series. He is noticeably shorter than the E2 class, and has a set of splashers over his leading driving wheels, which the original engines never had. His water tanks appear closer to the later batch of engines, although they are more squared in shape than the originals."

It is no wonder I could not identify the now standard image of Thomas with any specific locomotive of the past.
 
Yes Big Unc

more to do with artists not knowing much about railways!

Apparently the early locomotives were composites - although later on they were quite specific. It seems that Awdry did not always like what the artists did!

Gordon - a brother of Flying Scotsman
Henry - latterly a class 5 after the rebuild
Edward - there was some retrospective continuity here but apparently there is a book that explains it all.

"The Island of Sodor: Its People, History and Railways" Published 1987
Written by Rev. W. Awdry and George Awdry
Illustrated by Clive Spong
 
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