Re: How are kids exposed to Thomas?

The Rev. Awdry, who wrote the "Thomas the Tank Engine" stories, was an avid railfan. He was involved with at least one of the narrow-guage railways in the UK, from the Talyllyn Railway came the characters "Skarloey", "Rheneas", "Sir Handel", "Peter Sam", and "Duncan".
The venerable "Duke" is patterned after "Prince" and "Princess" on the Rheilffordd Ffestiniog Railway. The rack engines "Godred", "Ernest", "Wilfred", "Culdee", "Patrick", "Alaric" and "Eric" were patterned after the engines on the Snowdon Mountain Railway; "Rex", "Bert", and "Mike" were patterned after the engines on the Ravenglass & Eskdale Railway. BTW, all of the above are narrow-gauge, so I am staying on topic. " />
Real full-size engines such as "Stepney" also made cameo appearences (in model form, of course.) Some of the stories were based on actual railway events told to the Rev. Awdry, including the episode where Thomas falls into a mine.
If you have a copy of "Surviving World Steam Locomotives", do the following:
1. From the menu, select "Help", then "About".
2. Double click on the about screen that appears, then click on OK.
The usual database of steam locomotives worldwide is replaced with the engines from the "Island of Sodor". The name, number, and current line for each engine is as listed in "Thomas", but the remaining details are from the actual characters they're based on. ("Skarloey", for example, is based on engine built by Fletcher Jennings in 1864, and is currently at the Talyllyn Railway.) Later releases of the database also had pictures of the engines they were based on, some complete with "Thomas" faces. My son goes nuts when he sees them. " /> Pressing F2 restores the database to normal; my first "Easter Egg".
I have mentioned on another board that perhaps we would do railway preservation a better service by painting one or more trains in bright colors and sticking a face on the front of the engine, and perhaps drawing hundreds of families; than we would trying to stay exactly accurate and drawing a few dozen mostly solo railfans. As mentioned before, more than one railway has made it's entire annual budget in one "Thomas" weekend; not to mention the number of kids "turned on" to steam and railways.
-James Hefner
Hebrews 10:20a