A question for Thomas the Tank Engine fans

... and that's before Annie and Clarabel start selling their stories to the paparazzi...

Thomas will eventually show up on Big Brother or I'm a Celebrity

The end of the line

Edited By Ady1 on 25/09/2018 10:14:08

H'mm Am I to take this thread as a laypersons guide to the reading material frequented by colleagues on here?

There is awful lot of detail here. Ahem!

regards

Ian

Was that a typo? Perhaps you meant to type:

'I can just see grandparents about 10 o'clock on Christmas morning, sighing with their chins in their hands after watching Thomas whizz down the orange rail for the umpteenth time, staring out the window, wondering when lunch'll be ready...'

Actually, I agree. Most toys are boring. If other children are like mine, the expensive Meccano No 10, Scaletrix, and RC helicopter I bought to relive my childhood is ignored while the little ingrates play happily with the packaging instead...

Edited By SillyOldDuffer on 25/09/2018 11:37:25

Who put the LSD in Thomas's feed water?

Lots of engines on the scrap heap

... and that's before Annie and Clarabel start selling their stories to the paparazzi...

I do hope your are not referring to the alleged steamy incident when Gordon shunted Clarabel up the sidings one dark night. That was years ago and I thought long forgotten.

No, no - if it was me (grandad), Thomas would be attacked as he rounded the curve at the end by plastic dinosaurs, riding in on the Scooby Doo Mystery Machine. Then rocket-firing Airfix Typhoons would reduce the dragon zipline to a heap of twisted wreckage whilst Playpeople Pirates made off with the golden shield...

If he was dead lucky - and if his wheels fit - Thomas might get pensioned off to run round the little 'un's wooden Brio-compatible track from Lidl. But he'd have to swallow being pushed by a little battery-powered loco.

Yes! Please ask your mummy if I can come round and play too! I'll bring a blowlamp, a bottle of meths and a box of fireworks. I don't suppose you have an air-rifle and a butane canister handy for the volcano?

I'm sure Neil will let us borrow his collection of Thomas toys and sort out any insurance claims...

Dave

what amazes me is that steam engine toys for 3-5yr olds are still selling - ok there are preserved lines but steam disappeared from the UK network 50 yrs ago(earlier in many places) and you have to be in your mid 60s at least to have any real memory of engines which indeed came in a huge number of sizes + variants and each in many ways more like a living creature than a modern diesel unless of course you live on the real Sodor!

Edited By Frances IoM on 25/09/2018 14:29:27

What amazes me still more is that the real iron monsters still shock, awe and fascinate children who've never seen them as serious transport, or had much exposure to Thomas and co. either!

I suppose it must be the fizzing, puffing, radiating mass of the thing as it arrives at the platform, but the grandkids are always keen to go on the local steam railway, and the trains are often full of other families on the same experience.

Gordon shunting Clarabel up the sidings? Really? I missed that after chapter 19 of Lady Chatterley's lover.

My local waterworks at Blagdon has a preserved Woolf Compound Rotative pumping engine, originally one of a pair requirings a specially built branch line to coal 4 Lancashire boilers, now gone. For resilience each engine and boiler pair were accommodated in separate buildings, both posh. The engine itself weighs 17 tons and produces 170HP from 4.5 tons of coal per day, with 2 or 3 men working round the clock. Taken together the installation looks massively powerful, and there are lots of polished metal moving parts, super paintwork, levers, dials, valves and catwalks.

Last time I visited they were swapping out one of the 3-phase motors that drives the modern pumping system, which is not an obvious feature of the site at all. I think it lives in a hole in the ground. The old motor was laid on the grass. Apart from the cooling fins and shaft it looked more like a medium sized oil-drum than a proper motor - a grey cylinder about 2 foot in diameter and bit under 3 foot long. Although the plate gave the output as 150kW, which is about 200HP, woof woof, it was totally charmless.

Modern stuff may be far more effective, but steam will always be drop-dead sexy. It looks good, smells good and by golly it does you good.

Dave

Having seen the 'Tornado' at full tilt, (just under 100mph I believe) it amazes me that not only can these things still run on the main line, but that we can build them from scratch too.

The late Rev Awdry, or his family certainly, should be as rich as Ms Rowling, but they aren't. Shafted no doubt by ownership of rights.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, but the real question is - why? What is it about this stuff that walks straight into the subconscious of people from 3 to 93, whether they've seen it before or not, whether they know what it's for or not, and grabs the attention so positively?

Edited By Mick B1 on 25/09/2018 17:28:16

.

Anthropomorphism

Very true. Disney made an awful lot of money from Anthropomorphism.

That explains why Thomas has a face, and why folk like Winnie-The-Pooh etc., but there's nothing anthropomorphic about a beam engine, and little about a real loco - and people are still impressed by them.

My local waterworks/museum has a 1912? beam engine. All two stories of it. And I think people are blown away just by seeing something so big, this dreadfully large lump of metal, moving with apparent ease. It's actually quite scary at first. The sense of power is a tangible thing. And so quiet too...

Modern locos, ships, aircraft and so in still impress with size of course, but you don't see anything moving.

To stand at ground level next to an A2 Pacific or something, and see those massive bits of metal, and think of it at motorway speed...quite something. A dinosaur from another age.

Strange... last night, looking up at Mars, I felt sorry for the poor robots sent on a one-way trip and their extraordinary resilience to keep going as long as possible.

Nonsense of course!

Neil

Nah, they enjoy it! It's the best thing they could be doing!

And if you're designed to function on the Martian surface, it's the most comfortable place to be...