Thomas the Tank Engine
One of the delights of being a grandparent is introducing the grandchild to the joys of reading those childhood books that have remained in the memories of the grandparent. For example, I recently introduced our youngest grandchild to a delightful box of small, colourful books. The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter is one of many popular titles. Peter Rabbit is a mischievous bunny who gets in trouble in Mr. McGregor’s garden. The illustrations of Peter and his world add to the book’s charm.
Likewise, I have a beautiful, fully illustrated May Gibbs, “The Gumnut Babies”, her first book about Australian bush fairies, published in 1916 in Sydney. Apart from the famous Snugglepot and Cuddlepie (1918), her publications include Flower Babies, Wattleblossom Babies, and other Gumnut fairytale books.
Her deep love and understanding of the Australian bush was portrayed by her animated images in conflict with fellow bush creatures and the environment. May Gibbs aimed to engender in children her own love of nature.
Other Australian books are good for older children, such as “Seven Little Australians”, by Ethel Turner. You can also add Mary Grant Bruce’s great series of bush adventures. A contemporary writer Mem Fox, is Australia’s most highly regarded picture-book author. Her first book, Possum Magic, is the best selling children’s book ever in Australia, with sales of over three and a half million. And in the USA Time for Bed and Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge have each sold over a million copies. Time for Bed is on Oprah’s list of the twenty best children’s books of all time.
Mem Fox was an Associate Professor in Literacy Studies at Flinders University in Adelaide for twenty-four years until her early retirement in 1996. No list of famous children’s books would be complete without mentioning Dr. Seuss. However, he was such a popular and prolific picture book author that it is difficult to pinpoint a single title as his most famous. Any grandchild will enjoy “Green Eggs and Ham,” “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” and my favourite, “The Cat in the Hat.”
Older children should be introduced to “The Chronicles of Narnia”, a series of seven fantasy novels for children written by C. S. Lewis. It is considered a classic of children’s literature and is the author’s best-known work, having sold over 120 million copies in 41 languages.
Written by Lewis between 1949 and 1954 and illustrated by Pauline Baynes, The Chronicles of Narnia have been adapted several times, complete or in part, for radio, television, stage, and cinema. In addition to numerous traditional Christian themes, the series borrows characters and ideas from Greek and Roman mythology, as well as from traditional British and Irish fairytales.
“The Chronicles of Narnia” present the adventures of children who play central roles in the unfolding history of the fictional realm of Narnia, a place where animals talk, magic is common, and good battles evil. Each of the books (with the exception of The Horse and His Boy) features as its protagonists children from our world who are magically transported to Narnia, where they are called upon to help the Lion Aslan handle a crisis.
But the books that our smallest grandchild loves above all were written by a clergyman whose books, videos, films, and promotional goods have created one of the world’s greatest entertainment empires.
Rev Wilbert Awdry was the stereotypical Anglican Vicar usually seen in TV comedies. He ministered throughout the twentieth century around Romsey. In the flatlands steam trains ran in every direction and railway men and their families filled his churches. Like any good minister of religion he visited his members in their homes and at their work places. He visited them in their platelayers’ huts or on the station. The men were all aware that their Vicar knew almost as much about railways as they did, and no one ever turned the ‘Railwayman Parson’ away.
In Wiltshire his house was within sight and sound of the Great Western Railway’s main line near Middle Hill. He was ordained at Winchester in 1936 and married Margaret Wale, a teacher whom he met in Palestine while teaching there. Two years after the birth of their son, Christopher, the boy caught measles. The first stories in what have now become known as the Railway Series were told to amuse the little invalid.
He made Christopher a small, simple wooden model engine out of odds and ends, later christened Thomas. At Christopher’s urging he made up stories about Thomas. Margaret suggested he ‘do something’ about the stories, and in May 1945 the first book, The Three Railway Engines, was published. Thomas the Tank Engine followed the next year, and new titles followed almost every year until 1972. By then there were 26 books in the Railway Series, none of which, until recently has ever been out of print. He retired from parish work in 1965.
Wilbert Awdry, it has been said, created a publishing phenomenon, though it seems fairly certain that he never saw it that way. As time went on he built several model railway layouts, which he greatly enjoyed taking to exhibitions all over the country. Wilbert was involved with railway preservation from its first days in 1950, and was always grateful that he was, through his models and in other ways, able to make a useful contribution to it.
Wilbert Awdry was awarded an OBE in 1996. Wilbert died peacefully at his home in Stroud, Gloucestershire on 21st March 1997, aged 85. “The Railways Series”, beloved of children across the globe, is a collection of books, telling the story of a group of talking steam engines with human characteristics, going about their business on the imaginary island of Sodor. The most famous of all the engines is a little blue tank engine, called Thomas.
Born in 1940 in Wiltshire, Christopher was the catalyst for the original tales. But in 1983, he started writing stories about his father’s engines. This time the stories were for his own son, Richard. After reading his son’s work, Wilbert suggested that Christopher submit the new stories for publication, and later a total of 27 books in the series were published.
Shortly after publication of the first books, Wilbert began receiving letters from children asking where the engines actually lived; it was a difficult question to answer. Just where could a bunch of imaginary-talking engines live? Certainly not in a real place. The answer came to him during a holiday on the Isle of Man. He discovered that the Anglican Bishop of the region was known as the Bishop of Sodor and Man, the region of Sodor being a defunct name for an area of Southern Scotland. Thus was born the Island of Sodor, in the middle of the Irish Sea, stretching from the Isle of Man in the West to the Cumbrian coast in the East, linked to the mainland by a bridge at Barrow in Furness in Southern Cumbria.
This huge Island (claimed to be more than five times the size of the Isle of Man) was more than large enough for the engines and their adventures. It also had the added advantage of insulating them from reality, enabling the stories to continue long after the last of the Steam Engines had been retired from service on the British mainland.
When noting down the original tales for his son, the Rev Wilbert Awdry often accompanied them with simple line drawings. When the books were published, these drawings were used as a basis for the illustrations.
Thomas was based upon a Victorian shunting engine, built for the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway. And Gordon, the largest of the engines on the Island of Sodor, was based upon the Sir Nigel Gresley A3 Pacific-class locomotives built for the LNER, the most famous example of which is still running today – The Flying Scotsman.
My youngest granddaughter laughs with delight when Gordon gets covered in mud, and is called troublesome, and when Gordon is in trouble. One of the things that gave the engines their distinctive personalities was the fact that each one was painted with a face – thus the illustrations further personified the steam engines, giving them not only their individuality, but also the ability to show emotions.
For grandparents who do not understand steam trains, a Tank Engine is a steam locomotive with the water being carried in two tanks, one either side of the boiler. As opposed to a Tender Engine, which carries its water supply in a tender, towed behind the engine.
Thomas and Gordon, the big engine, can be troublesome and naughty. He was described in the beginning as “Thomas was a tank engine who lived at a Big Station. He had six small wheels, a short stumpy funnel, a short stumpy boiler and a short stumpy dome. He was a fussy little engine, always pulling coaches about. He was a cheeky little engine, too.” —from the story “Thomas & Gordon”.
Thomas’ job was to shunt coaches for the bigger engines. He longed for more important jobs such as pulling the express train like Gordon, but his inexperience prevented this. Eventually he was responsible for rescuing James after an accident, and the Fat Controller decided that he was a Really Useful Engine, and ready for his own branch line. He has remained in charge of this line ever since, with his two coaches Annie and Clarabel, and help from Percy the Small Engine and Toby the Tram Engine.
The secret of Thomas and his friends is that they faithfully mirror the characteristics of children. Thomas, like Winnie-the-Pooh, was a toy for a small child, a wooden push-along toy from the early 1940s. Thomas the Tank Engine is fifty years old but he delights the heart of any child.
Rev the Hon. Dr Gordon Moyes AC MLC
