Thomas and the Fire Engine

Huge thanks to Andrew for the faces! Couldn't have done it without you, buddy! The 2nd part of the Surprise Packet! Watch it all here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL07bY-sTdvJZCv1ljtBpkoZl-k3lPB_3Z 'Dear friends, Thomas has been rather conceited as of late. He hasn’t stopped telling Percy and Toby just how great he is. “Then, of course, there was the time I beat Bertie Bus in a race.” “Talking of Bertie”, Percy said innocently, “He told me about the time you had to wear a funny hat.” “A hat?” laughed Toby. Thomas was very quiet after that. Percy, on the other hand, was not. The story is from a very long time ago when Thomas ran the branch line all by himself. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. The Author' https://ko-fi.com/auldlangsyne BEHIND THE SCENES It's the 75th anniversary of the first stories featuring Edward, Gordon and Henry today...so I've made one about Thomas. The idea for ‘Thomas and the Fire Engine’ oddly enough started as a story for a book I wanted to write some years ago called ‘Island Railway Engines’. The story would’ve been set on Hayling Island and told by Stepney (who was visiting with a pair of engines who also worked on island railways). The incident that inspired the story happened on the Isle of Wight and didn’t involve spark arrestors or a fire started by an engine. A distracted crew did sever a fire hose that was crossing the railway line, however. This story, at the suggestion of Dan (or Mr. tardisrescue to HMRC), became one about people crewing a battered old tank engine on a run down light railway. It was fairly similar to what was finally made but ultimately was never made. The story sat on a metaphorical shelf of ‘things to finish’ until, one day, the same Dan from before suggested I make it into a Thomas story! I’m surprised I didn’t lose my rag… The process of turning what was then called ‘Bright Spark’ into a Thomas story was surprisingly easy. I did need a little help with my geography, however! Thankfully Dan provided a map of Thomas’ branch and suggestions for where certain scenes could take place. Not long after this, the story was finished...and then I did nothing with it. Hogmanay 2019. Dan, Luke (of Preston) and I had concocted a nice idea for the 75th anniversary. It would’ve been about Edward and served as a prequel to the first book. We had four story ideas, three willing writers and five months to make it. Long story short: the project fell apart within 27 days. My main issue was that my recently built Edward model was not cooperating with me, fortunately, Luke swooped in and, over the past few months, has been trying to get the thing running smoothly. Over the next few months, I pondered over what my next project would be. I think it’s fair to say that a lot happened between the 27th of January and the 9th of April and that almost as many ideas were tossed around my brain. However, it was on the 9th that I revisited ‘Thomas and the Fire Engine’ as I wanted to write a book a la Awdry for the 75th. I’d been reading his biography at the time and was keen to tell a few stories of my own. The idea of writing another four stories was thrown out the window fairly quickly when issues of continuity and a lack of available characters arose, I decided to focus on the only written story. The story didn’t really need tampering. But the fact that it was several hundred words over the average length of an RWS story bothered me. Awdry explained in his biography that he had to cut a fair bit from ‘Thomas the Tank Engine’ and so I rather naively declared that I would do the same. Oh dear. It’s easy to contract or cut a few words and still keep the story ‘right’. But I was dealing with a lot of words and a lot of jokes that I really didn’t want to cut. At most I probably cut the thing down by twenty or so words but that was obviously not enough. Fortunately, my faithful editor stepped in. Dan is very good at this whole writing lark - what he doesn’t know about words and where to place them isn’t worth knowing about. Luckily for us, he won’t read this far down so he won’t be all smug when I next chat to him. Where was I? Dan managed to cut down the story to an acceptable length in an afternoon with very little help from me. This meant the loss of most of my awful jokes, but due to a slight change in structure, it did mean more fire engine. I would go on to detail the ‘filming of’ but I’ve already waffled on enough. I am very happy with the finished story, though most of that isn’t down to me. Neil and Louie egged me on; Tom, Luke and Mike used their combined knowledge and wisdom to make sure the sets didn’t look too wrong (Luke also provided much-needed photos of his Fat Controller figure); Dan practically wrote the thing and the poor crew of an ex-L&SWR O2 in the twilight days of steam were unfortunate enough to break a hosepipe. I’m just a bloke who is very grateful to have the luxury of good friends and good books. Lots of love, Stuart