Joined: 27 Jan 2021 Age: 44 Gender: Male Posts: 3,191 Location: Dorset
08 Jul 2021, 5:18 am
Can I derail* this thread slightly by linking to, not a film containing a train, but a music video that not only contains trains but appeals to everything autistic in me?
*see what I did there?
_________________ "No way, you forgot what a bird sounds like? No wonder you're depressed." - Jake the Dog
Joined: 1 Sep 2014 Gender: Male Posts: 2,459 Location: Pennsylvania
08 Jul 2021, 8:19 am
My Dear Son, now age 20 (DS20) was a Thomas the Tank Engine fan. We visited every train related exhibit and restaurant in the area. I became a closet steam engine fan and started researching the tech - decided not to have live steam in the living room for fear of exploding a boiler and sending shards of metal flying around the room and into my children.
The 2000 film, "Thomas and the Magic Railroad", was truly awful (though it qualifies for this thread, so I mention it anyway - the "making of" is still interesting to model railroaders) but the original stop-motion / "preformed by model trains" shorts were truly charming. Ringo Starr was the very best of the narrators. The library had a few of the shorts collected in random order and with hardly any thought to theme on VHS. We eventually got the entire collection on DVD which had a narrative thread when watched in order. The original illustrated stories by the reverent Wilbert Vere Awdry were very clever and attracted me with the obviously true-to-life details about real trains, with the anthropomorphized steam engines feeling like a natural out-growth of a fan of real trains (the later derivative work was often missing this element). The original 26 books of "The Railway Series" were closely paralleled by the original shorts. We found them collected (with some of the original artwork) in a thick volume at our library and bought our own copy. I used to read them out loud with my very best Ringo imitation. The problems of the poor Fat Controller sometimes reminded me of the real problems I faced at work, though mine had to do with shipping data and CPUs and his with shipping freight and steam engines.
The North American Thomas happens to live at the Strasburg Rail Road here in Pennsylvania. This Tomas was surgically altered to resemble the original, but is an operational, full sized tank engine and can happily pull a real train of happy kids and parents pretending to be kids again. He is supposed to be hidden when not on display, or traveling up and down the east coast, but can often be seen hiding in a shed peaking out at the visitors.