Thomas

Thomas Is The Main Character Of Thomas And Friends

Bio
Details of Thomas' arrival on the North Western Railway in 1915 are more or less undocumented. There is no official explanation to how he arrived on the island. However, the most popular rumour (according to Sodor: Reading Between the Lines) is that he was sent to Sodor due to a war-time mix up. Instead of returning to the south coast of England when the problem was sorted, both his driver and fireman married local girls and decided to stay. Sir Topham Hatt purchased Thomas for a "nominal fee". After that Thomas is station pilot at Vicarstown and is transferred to Tidmouth in 1925. Later that same year James had his accident and Thomas came to his rescue. He then earned his own branch line (The Ffarquhar branch) and two coaches Annie and Clarabel. After that he has had many adventures on his branch line like racing with Bertie and chasing a thief, or pulling the express. In 1990 Thomas was invited to The National Railway Museum in York, England. In 2015 Thomas turned 100 years old and in 2016, It had been 70 years since his first book was published about him when he was station pilot.

Basis
Thomas is based on the Billinton E2-Class 0-6-0T locomotives built for the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway between 1913 and 1916. He is apparently one of the last batch built as only these engines featured his distinctive extended side-tanks, projecting forward over the leading wheels and little down sweeps at each end of the footplate. The E2s were introduced in 1915 to replace earlier members of the E1 class, which had been scrapped. The last five in the ten strong class had extended side tanks to give a greater water capacity, but all engines had two inside cylinders and driving wheels 4'6" in diameter. After many years of service, all of the Billinton E2s, both original and modified, spent their last working years at Southampton Docks, alongside the SR USA Tanks (Rosie's class), and they were all scrapped by 1963, the very last pair being numbers 31204 and 31209, the latter being amongst the last batch. Their replacements were BR Class 07 diesel shunters (Salty's class). There is, however, a campaign with the aim to build a new E2, and number it 110. Two E2s of the first batch were tested on passenger trips, as well as given the LB&SCR brown passenger livery, this was a failed experiment, the reason for it being that the first batch didn't carry enough coal and water. So the class was used only for shunting.

Thomas has a slight modification of having wheel splashers over his front wheels whereas the original E2s did not. Unlike Thomas, the E2s had footplates with dips at the ends or ones that were straight. Thomas only had a dip at one end of his footplate, which it was repaired after his accident with the Stationmasters house, making it straight.

Appearences
The Missing Coach

The Unaired Pilot