Jump to content
 

Please use M,M&M only for topics that do not fit within other forum areas. All topics posted here await admin team approval to ensure they don't belong elsewhere.

What if Thomas & Friends were either GWR, LMS, LNER or SR?


Recommended Posts

  • RMweb Premium

What sort of engines would Thomas and Friends be if they were all from one Big 4 company?

If Thomas and Friends was Great Western:
-Gordon would be a Castle Class
-Henry would be a Hall Class
-James would be a Grange Class
-Edward - Bulldog Class or an elderly Saint class
-Duck would be a Pannier 57xx (naturally)
-Oliver would be a 14xx
-Donald and Douglas would be a 28xx/38xx
-Percy would be a 42xx
-Thomas - either 4575 class with Annie and Clarabel (B set coaches)
-Daisy - GWR Railcar

Link to post
Share on other sites

SR:

Gordon: Rebuilt Bulleid Pacific

Henry: Lord Nelson Class

James: N class or U class

Percy: LSWR B4 (Closest I can think of)
Thomas: E2

Donald and Douglas: Drummond 700's

Edward: T9

Oliver: 2-4-0WT

Duck: R1

Stepney: Terrier (Obviously ;) )

Boco: Bulleid Leader Class

Neville: Q1 (Obviously, again)

Link to post
Share on other sites

  • RMweb Premium

What sort of engines would Thomas and Friends be if they were all from one Big 4 company?

 

If Thomas and Friends was Great Western:

-Gordon would be a Castle Class

-Henry would be a Hall Class

-James would be a Grange Class

-Edward - Bulldog Class or an elderly Saint class

-Duck would be a Pannier 57xx (naturally)

-Oliver would be a 14xx

-Donald and Douglas would be a 28xx/38xx

-Percy would be a 42xx

-Thomas - either 4575 class with Annie and Clarabel (B set coaches)

-Daisy - GWR Railmotor

 

So we'd have:

Thomas the green engine,

Edward the green engine

Henry the green engine (nothing new there)

James the green engine

Gordon the green engine.................

 

Cheers,

Mick

Link to post
Share on other sites

LMS (some suggestions, but not a complete range of original characters but a few suggestions for the newer ones too)

 

Thomas - Jinty 3F

Edward - Ex Midland Compound.

Henry - Black 5 (of course)

Gordon - Princess class

James - Crab

Donald and Douglas - Midland 3F

 

Arthur - Fairburn or Stanier tank.

Connor and Caitlin - Streamlined Coronation

Hiro - Big Bertha??

Link to post
Share on other sites

  • RMweb Premium

So we'd have:

Thomas the green engine,

Edward the green engine

Henry the green engine (nothing new there)

James the green engine

Gordon the green engine.................

 

Cheers,

Mick

 

Possible Great Western names associated with Sodor:

Sodor Castle

Sodor Hall

Sodor Abbey

Sodor Grange

Sodor Manor

Lady of Sodor

Saint Wilbert

Earl of Sodor

Link to post
Share on other sites

What sort of engines would Thomas and Friends be if they were all from one Big 4 company?

 

If Thomas and Friends was Great Western:

-Gordon would be a Castle Class

-Henry would be a Hall Class

-James would be a Grange Class

-Edward - Bulldog Class or an elderly Saint class

-Duck would be a Pannier 57xx (naturally)

-Oliver would be a 14xx

-Donald and Douglas would be a 28xx/38xx

-Percy would be a 42xx

-Thomas - either 4575 class with Annie and Clarabel (B set coaches)

-Daisy - GWR Railmotor

 

Surely Daisy would be an AEC railcar ("flying banana"). Percy would probably be a 1363 class or similar.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Thomas - class 66

James - class 66

Edward - class 66

Gordon - class 66

Etc etc, ;-)

I know not big four but just wanted to raise a smile!

Considering the fact that Edward is rather elderly, surely he should be a 37!

Link to post
Share on other sites

So we'd have:

Thomas the green engine,

Edward the green engine

Henry the green engine (nothing new there)

James the green engine

Gordon the green engine.................

 

Cheers,

Mick

Green is the new Yellow

Link to post
Share on other sites

My reaction on reading the title was 'but they are'.

 

Thomas is a small 0-6-0T of obscure Southern provenance.
Gordon is clearly a Doncaster pacific.
Henry is the Royal Scot story, thus all the rebuilding.
James is one of the Scottish inside cylinder 2-6-0 types, possibly the G&SWR class.
Edward an East Coast big wheel 4-4-0, possibly a GER Claud or NER R.

Percy, the Caley/NBR pug, Y9 on the LNER.

Toby a J70.
Duck is a 57xx .
Donald and Douglas are Caley 812s.

 

That's what I documented in my copy of 'The Three Railway Engines' book and later volumes, sometime in the 1950s.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Apart from Toby being a tram loco and Duck a GWR Pannier tank (based on one he had on his model railway) the actual stories are fairly vague about the details of each loco apart from their colour, size and whether they were tank engines.

I've always thought that the idea behind the original stories was to imagine what the locomotives that a child could in those days see everyday might be thinking and saying to one another, even perhaps to giving each other names, so he probably thought it better not to be too specific and if you ignore the illustrations and just go by the stories you could place them on any British railway you liked.
Born in Hampshire in 1911 with a railway enthusiast reverend as a father, Awdry himself would have grown up with the pre-grouping railways so perhaps seeing red, blue and green locos wasn't so unusual.

Awdry did build models of most of his fictional locos both for his various model railways and also to help the illustrators. Some of these were freelance but others were based on real prototypes. Some of the locos do become a bit more specific in his later stories, partly to promote preserved railways- Stepney was of course the real loco from the Bluebell line. The original characters, James, Edward, Gordon and then Thomas and Percy were pretty vaguely described in the stories though his models of them were far more specific. There's more about all this here

http://www.pegnsean.net/~railwayseries/ffarquhar.htm

This site also reproduces (with their permission) all of Awdry's Railway Modeller articles.

The Ffarquhar branch (mk1) was Railway of the Month in RM in Dec 1959 and though they were painted and lined to correspond with the books the locos that operated on it quite definitely did not have faces. I wonder if that was something he'd been a bit iffy about even though his own rough sketches to illustrate the stories did include faces.

Thomas was an 0-6-0T using an Essar cast body. It was officially an LBSCR E2 but the model seems to have been either freelance from Stewart-Reidpath or a Jinty.
Percy was an 0-4-0 ST with a home made body
Toby was an ex LNER Y6 scratchbuilt from official drawings running on a Romford motor bogie. Awdry wrote an article about this
Duck was of course a GWR 0-6-0 PT, a model by "Gaiety" that retained its GWR livery, lettering and number.

I did see Ffarquhar mk 2 and had the great good fortune to meet the Rev. Awdry at one of the MRC shows in the early 1960s. It was a fairly simple but effective BLT that he ran to a proper timetable. Ffarquahar mk 2 has been restored and there is a film of it on YouTube here



Ffarquhar mk 1 was a folding 6x4 that made very effective use of the space to include a terminus, fiddle yard, reasonable main line run through scenery and a link ("Toby's" quarry branch) to give a continuous run. It was based on an idea by Marice Deane where the fiddle yard is hidden by scenery behind the terminus.
Link to post
Share on other sites

 

If Thomas and Friends was Great Western:

-Henry would be a Hall Class

-James would be a Grange Class

-Donald and Douglas would be a 28xx/38xx

-Percy would be a 42xx

I think Henry would be a Manor as they were mediocre steamers when new and only improved after redrafting.

James is a 2-6-0 so I think he would be a 4300 class mogul.

Donald and Douglas were both 0-6-0s so I would imagine them as 2251 Collett Goods.

The 4200s were huge great tank engines for hauling coal, Percy is a much smaller, something like 1340 at Didcot.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Just to see if it's possible with modern proprietary trackwork I did have a go at reproducing the original Ffarquhar plan in AnyPlan. 

Awdry used Wrenn trackwork with a minimum radius of 18inches. He doesn't say whether that included the points but they look to be about that

 

post-6882-0-87687900-1396269886_thumb.jpg

 

I've used small radius streamline points and some setrack to make it easier to draw the tight curves. The minimum radius is 17 1/4 inch but with flexible track I think that could be eased to 18 inches. It does fit onto a 6x4 - just. It would make a change from the usual 6x4 roundy round and with short trains there is good operating potential.

 

For comparison the original plan is included in the article here.

http://www.pegnsean.net/~railwayseries/rm-1959-12.htm

 

It could be built almost entirely with Setrack of course.

post-6882-0-90089000-1396275628_thumb.jpg

 

This uses just one length of flextrack to complete the loop at the top 

Link to post
Share on other sites

I have always been fascinated the Rev W Awdrys stories and layouts (who hasn't?) for me they encapsulate a world far off from the modern world. Combined with layouts that have represented entire systems rather than snap shots of different parts of the rail network, I dream of building a layout based on something like the Madder Valley, an entire railway system freelance OO (based in the 30s?) standard gauge but using more modern modelling techniques. Unfortunately space and resources are the current restraints, but I can dream.

Link to post
Share on other sites

What sort of engines would Thomas and Friends be if they were all from one Big 4 company?

 

If Thomas and Friends was Great Western:

-Gordon would be a Castle Class

-Henry would be a Hall Class

-James would be a Grange Class

-Edward - Bulldog Class or an elderly Saint class

-Duck would be a Pannier 57xx (naturally)

-Oliver would be a 14xx

-Donald and Douglas would be a 28xx/38xx

-Percy would be a 42xx

-Thomas - either 4575 class with Annie and Clarabel (B set coaches)

-Daisy - GWR Railcar

So who's the Fat Controller? Lord Churchill?

Link to post
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.


×
×
  • Create New...