Thomas, a tank engine, is not Thomas the Tank Engine.

0:00 I tried not to make too many videos about trains on this road trip,

0:03 but the next stop is a story I couldn’t resist.

0:06 I’m going to ride aboard a tank engine called Thomas, and also,

0:10 to my surprise, I’m going to understand

0:12 why Victorian people might have found trains terrifying.

0:15 I parked up at the headquarters of the Nene Valley Railway in Huntingdonshire.

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0:25 and more about them in the ad break.

0:27 -Hello!

0:27 -Hello.

0:28 You alright?

0:29 Yeah.

0:29 Doing well, thank you!

0:30 How’re you doing?

0:30 -Good, you?

0:31 -Yeah, not so bad.

0:32 I appear to have arrived just as Thomas steamed off into the distance.

0:34 Yeah, he’ll be back in about half an hour.

0:36 Incredible timing on my part there.

0:38 That is Paul, the locomotive department manager at the Nene Valley Railway.

0:42 While I waited for Thomas to return,

0:44 he showed me round some of the sidings at the railway:

0:47 an old Danish locomotive where they were heating

0:49 up the boiler ready for testing the next day,

0:51 a steam-powered crane that can lift 40 tonnes,

0:53 the workshop where they’re restoring and refitting trains,

0:56 an old set of Pacer carriages on a turntable,

0:58 and a Polish tank engine from 1959.

1:02 I didn’t know what a tank engine was until I looked it up.

1:05 It’s a steam locomotive that carries its water, and usually its fuel, on board,

1:09 instead of it being hooked up to a separate car called a tender.

1:12 Tank engines were more likely to be

1:14 used for local services than big long journeys.

1:16 Something being a “tank engine” isn’t a name, it’s just a fact.

1:21 Anyway, after that tour and a cup of tea,

1:23 we were back on the platform, and Thomas was heading back.

1:26 The Nene Valley Railway is one of those branch lines that was

1:29 closed in the mid-20th century as the motorcar came to dominate.

1:32 And you can hear the consequences of that in the background,

1:34 and see it most clearly from the air,

1:37 because the station is right next to the A1, one

1:40 of the main routes from London to the North.

1:41 The A1 used to go over the level crossing, which is behind us.

1:44 So that’s what they called the Great North Road, the Old North Road.

1:48 So that was the A1 in its day.

1:50 And of course, the A1 is just there where the footbridge is now.

1:52 As I was driving in, there was a plume of smoke from underneath.

1:55 Yeah, absolutely.

1:56 So that would have been Thomas going through the tunnel.

1:58 So he’s in there at the moment because you can

2:00 see the smoke that was created when he went through.

2:02 Thomas is now pushing that smoke out.

2:04 Any moment, a cheeky little face is going to appear through the smoke.

2:08 The tunnel in question is just over half a kilometre long.

2:11 And allegedly, the tunnel is haunted as well.

2:14 Oh!

2:14 And there’s a face.

2:15 -There you go.

2:16 -Oh, now, that’s...

2:16 I’m going to have to do an extreme zoom on that from this camera.

2:20 But yes, that’s face first through the steam.

2:22 Thomas’ branch line runs from here to Yarwell through the tunnel and back.

2:25 And we do this about every month from April to September.

2:30 So this is his last day for this year on his branch line.

2:32 And he loves his little branch line.

2:34 -(laughs) He pootles off up there through

2:36 to Yarwell to his little countryside station.

2:38 I think most people watching this will be familiar with some version of Thomas.

2:43 The character was created in 1946 by the Reverend Awdry,

2:46 as part of his Railway Series of books, about trains with minds of their own.

2:50 And while Thomas wasn’t even in the first book in the series,

2:53 he became the breakout star.

2:55 When the books were adapted for television in the 1980s,

2:58 the show wasn’t called “The Railway Series”,

3:00 it was “Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends”.

3:04 Or, in some parts of the world, just “Thomas and Friends”.

3:07 The rights to the series,

3:08 to what became a massive, globally recognised franchise,

3:11 were bought and sold over the years,

3:13 and the characters have been owned by the toy company Mattel since 2012.

3:17 And this is definitely Thomas, as illustrated by Reginald Payne in 1946.

3:23 But there is no licence agreement with Mattel here.

3:27 So, Thomas is going to uncouple.

3:28 And he’s going to go out over

3:29 the river bridge and then back through platform three,

3:31 and he’ll come back and join on this side here.

3:33 Can we join him for that?

3:34 Yeah, yeah, we can go down, yeah.

3:35 There were old carriages with slam-doors.

3:37 No fancy electric sliding doors or central locking here,

3:40 just faith that no one’s going to be

3:42 reckless enough to open the door while travelling.

3:44 Some kids clearly didn’t want to leave the train, but turns out, that was fine.

3:48 -Thing is, on our branch line days,

3:50 you just pay for one ticket, and you can travel all day.

3:52 Oh, that’s nice!

3:53 Thomas’s job today was just to go up and down the branch line for about a mile.

3:57 So what they’re doing now, they’re just uncoupling the train.

3:59 Oh, okay.

4:02 I’ll try and sneak past here.

4:03 Join all the other folks with cameras.

4:05 So, when you say uncoupling, that is physically...

4:08 it’s not just some little magnetic...

4:10 -No, absolutely not, no.

4:11 There is a steel coupling that goes over, which is on a threaded bar,

4:16 and then what Tony is doing there,

4:17 he’s just splitting the vacuum pipe, so it’s vacuum braking.

4:21 -Right.

4:21 So it’s got a continuous brake through it, all the way through.

4:25 So they’re uncoupled now, so in a moment the crossing gates will open,

4:29 and the train, the engine will go round.

4:31 (Thomas whistles) I was able to put some

4:33 cameras on Thomas for this bit of the run.

4:35 The crossing gates opened,

4:36 you can see the signaller cranking the heavy control wheel up in the box there,

4:39 and when all was safe, the signal dropped,

4:41 and Thomas steamed forward as many, many people took photos.

4:45 (Thomas whistles) And I’ll say this: that train goes surprisingly fast.

5:02 Thomas braked at one end, and after a quick whistle,

5:04 headed back the other way on the other track,

5:07 again going much faster than I would have expected.

5:09 (Thomas whistles) At which point I realised I needed

5:20 to be at the other end of the platform for this.

5:23 It actually took about five minutes in total, I needn’t have rushed.

5:26 Thomas changed direction again, switched tracks again,

5:29 and pulled in to be coupled to the other side of the carriages.

5:32 I’ve been very careful with wording so far.

5:35 I have called the locomotive “Thomas”.

5:38 And I can accurately describe it as a tank engine.

5:41 But I have not described it as Thomas the Tank Engine.

5:45 Thomas was named Thomas.

5:46 -By Reverend W.

5:48 Awdry.

5:49 -Yeah.

5:49 Author of the famous Thomas the Tank Engine books.

5:52 Absolutely.

5:52 On the 26th of June 1971.

5:55 And that was at the British Sugar Factory in Peterborough,

5:57 which has now long since gone.

6:00 But the reason why Thomas was called Thomas is

6:03 because in his working day in the British Sugar Factory, he was painted blue.

6:07 Right, simple as that.

6:08 So when Reverend Awdry found out that the engine was blue,

6:11 and he looked exactly the same as Thomas, he came down and named him Thomas.

6:15 -Yep.

6:15 -So, this is...

6:16 Far before there was a TV series...

6:18 Absolutely, absolutely.

6:19 So this is the original Thomas.

6:22 The only one, the only one that’s named.

6:24 The Thomas character is licenced by Mattel

6:27 to a lot of heritage railways around the world.

6:29 They’ll take an engine that looks the same, paint it up, put a face on it,

6:33 and sell tickets to a “Day Out with Thomas”, and Mattel will get a cut of that.

6:37 Or they might use a whole dummy unit, with no engine at all,

6:40 to put on the front of a diesel locomotive that’s actually doing the pushing.

6:44 Some of them even speak!

6:45 There is a lot of money in brand licensing.

6:48 Luckily, because we have the history and the provenance

6:51 and the photographs of Reverend Awdry naming him Thomas,

6:55 we seem to be left alone at the moment

6:58 ’cos we don’t breach any of the copyrights out there.

7:03 Because he is the original Thomas,

7:04 and that’s why we only refer to him by his first name.

7:07 Is that legally sound?

7:09 Here’s the thing about copyright and trademarks:

7:11 almost always, the answer is “it depends”.

7:15 There have been some challenges, but because of the history we’ve got,

7:18 and the proven history we’ve got,

7:20 and the documentation, we seem to be okay just by having him as Thomas.

7:24 Also, it’d been such a terrible publicity

7:26 job for the company to come back and...

7:28 It is and it isn’t.

7:30 We haven’t had a challenge for some time now,

7:32 but we do also get positive out of being challenged.

7:36 People support us that way, and it’s, “Oh,

7:38 leave them alone, “they’re a charity,” and things like that.

7:42 So, it also highlights our Thomas as well,

7:46 because it puts Thomas into the news, you know.

7:48 If some other railway set up their own Thomas day,

7:51 you can bet that Mattel’s lawyers would come down on them like a ton of bricks.

7:54 Or a ton of coal.

7:56 But the Nene Valley Railway has a very fair

7:58 argument that the author himself gave the name to Thomas,

8:02 years before there was any trademark on it.

8:04 And if Mattel did argue,

8:06 there would be so much bad publicity that it just wouldn’t be worth it.

8:09 Anyway, Thomas had been recoupled, and it was time for me to take a ride,

8:13 which ended up being a lot more scary than I expected it to be.

8:17 Because now I understand why trains used to be terrifying.

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9:58 Welcome back.

9:59 It's time to get on board Thomas.

10:01 The first part of the trip wasn’t the scary part.

10:04 So, today was always going to be a little bit chaotic.

10:08 I didn’t quite know what was happening,

10:09 but I just got invited to be on the run-round when the train was on there.

10:15 So, I’m going to get on board Thomas.

10:19 And specifically, just Thomas.

10:20 Full stop.

10:21 I didn’t explain what was about to happen very well, did I?

10:24 Thomas was going for a run down the branch line, about a mile,

10:27 where he’d have to change ends again for the trip back.

10:30 And I’d been invited to be in the cab,

10:32 on the footplate, for that change of ends.

10:35 I wasn’t going to turn that down.

10:36 But for the first bit, I had to be a regular passenger.

10:39 (guard whistles) (Thomas whistles) Away we go.

10:43 Now I’ve deliberately sat just off in a quiet corner,

10:46 or at least as quiet as I can reasonably make it,

10:52 ’cos there’s a lot of families on this train coming for a ride on Thomas,

10:58 and I don’t really want to get kids

10:59 in the background of a shot if I can avoid it.

11:01 While we’re setting off, let me give you a quick tour of Thomas from the inside.

11:06 I kept my camera to the quieter parts of the train,

11:08 but there was a choice of seating:

11:10 from the more modern facing seats with tables,

11:12 through to a buffet car with a full bar.

11:14 Side note, you generally don’t need a licence to sell booze in England

11:18 if you’re on a journey on a train or plane or hovercraft.

11:21 And in the carriage after that, if you preferred some privacy as a passenger,

11:24 there were old-school compartments.

11:26 Caution.

11:27 Do not lean out the window.

11:28 It’s very, very good advice, because the clearance...

11:32 is very small.

11:35 Now, I have checked with the team here.

11:38 This little bit of camera work is fine, it’s a very small camera.

11:44 But you don’t stick your head out of windows on trains.

11:47 (Thomas whistles) Right.

11:51 Into the tunnel.

11:52 The tunnel was, obviously, pitch black,

11:54 and Thomas’ first pass through filled it with steam and smoke.

11:58 That will be important shortly.

12:00 (Thomas whistles) But after a minute or two,

12:04 we were out the other side and arriving into Yarwell station.

12:06 I quickly got out and joined the folks in the cab.

12:09 Because, of course, Thomas is not a magical, sentient train.

12:12 He did not drive off, it did not drive off by itself.

12:16 In the cab were Andy, Tom, and Tony, and they were actually driving the thing.

12:21 So, we’re going to run round to get onto

12:22 the front of Thomas again and go back into Wansford.

12:26 You might as well come on for that as well.

12:28 Oh, blimey, alright, thank you very much, folks.

12:31 Right.

12:37 Don’t trip over the coal and go flying, Tom.

12:39 That would be a bad idea.

12:40 So, more coal needed?

12:43 Well, if you look in, there’s holes in the fire where we’ve gone through?

12:49 -Oh, right.

12:49 -So I need to plug all of those.

12:51 Oh, so you’re not just shovelling coal, you’re aiming.

12:54 Oh, God, yeah.

12:55 (laughs) If I just threw it on willy-nilly,

13:01 it would be all completely uneven, and you wouldn’t get complete combustion.

13:06 -Right.

13:06 -So there’s an art form to it.

13:09 Tom undid the handbrake.

13:11 Tony, who was out checking the track switch,

13:12 waved his handkerchief, and Andy set us off for the turnaround.

13:16 If it was dark, he’d have a green torch.

13:18 Right.

13:19 We stopped before the buffer, Tony switched the points,

13:21 and away we went past the carriages.

13:24 Is that some rain coming down, or is that just...

13:27 No, that’s steam condensing, isn’t it?

13:30 Yeah, well, sometimes if the water level is a bit too high,

13:32 it can carry on over and spits on out.

13:34 -Right.

13:34 But I’m alright at the moment.

13:35 We stopped at the other side, and this time, Tom changed the points.

13:38 It was a well-practiced routine, this, they knew what they were doing.

13:41 Getting out your way.

13:43 There we go, staff on board, safe to go back.

13:48 (Thomas whistles) -Thank you, folks.

13:50 This is...I was coming here to film a nice

13:52 little light thing about a train with a history.

13:55 -(laughter) Did not expect to be on the footplate.

13:59 Thomas arrived back in the station, Tony got to work coupling it up.

14:03 And I was making ready to go back to the carriages behind,

14:05 but the folks in the cab asked me if I

14:07 wanted to stay on the footplate for the full journey back.

14:10 And of course I did.

14:11 I just didn’t expect it to be scary.

14:13 That’s sucking air in, isn’t it?

14:14 You can see it.

14:15 So, I’ve got the blower on, which is essentially creating a vacuum

14:18 in the smoke box and drawing air through the boiling tubes.

14:22 So, it’s pulling air across the fire.

14:24 Right, handbrake off.

14:26 It’s a lot of heavy, physical work to drive a steam train.

14:29 They’d started getting everything ready at about 5 am,

14:32 and it’d be a 12-hour shift.

14:33 Paul earlier had told me that every shovelful

14:36 of coal that Tom puts into the boiler, that costs about £3, maybe 5 US dollars.

14:41 Steam trains are not cheap to run.

14:43 -You’ve really got to enjoy doing this.

14:46 -(laughs) You’ve really got to like trains to want to do this.

14:49 And off we went, Thomas belching out steam and smoke.

14:52 Driving a steam train is not like pushing an accelerator and off you go.

14:56 They do sort of have an accelerator,

14:58 the big red bar is called a regulator, and that’s kind of like a throttle.

15:02 But managing the power that the throttle has needs some planning.

15:06 So if you’ve got a hole in the fire,

15:07 or something like that, or a very thin fire,

15:10 after a while, that pressure starts coming

15:12 down because you’re not making enough steam.

15:16 It’s not a direct thing of chuck more coal in, more power.

15:19 It’s chuck more coal in, wait for the fire to build up.

15:22 That’s right.

15:22 Manage, tend the fire, and then you might have it.

15:25 You have to do everything ten minutes in advance of when you want it to happen.

15:29 -Right.

15:29 It’s not like a diesel, push a button and off you go.

15:32 -Yeah.

15:32 -It’s a living, breathing machine.

15:36 And after a couple of minutes, we were headed into the tunnel.

15:40 And all of a sudden...

15:42 (Thomas whistles) ...that steam’s got nowhere to go!

15:48 Thomas had already filled that tunnel with steam and smoke on the way out.

15:52 A lot of it was still in there.

15:53 And while I was prepared for that in theory, the actual reality...

15:56 it was almost pitch black,

15:58 no light at the end of the tunnel because the smoke was in the way,

16:00 the only light was coming from the screen

16:02 on my camera and the faint glow of the fire,

16:04 occasional burning embers sparking out.

16:05 All the noise from the engine was being reflected back off the walls towards us,

16:09 so, suddenly it was dark and smoky

16:11 and intensely loud and the train was still accelerating,

16:13 so the noise was getting louder and faster and what

16:15 seemed like small movements out in the light suddenly

16:17 felt like big pitching and rocking motions that could send

16:19 me off the footplate to be crushed under the wheels.

16:21 I found myself holding on for my life.

16:24 I wasn’t in any actual danger, provided I kept my grip,

16:27 but to be suddenly in that environment...

16:30 (train operator shouting) (Thomas whistles) And then there

16:35 was the light at the end of the tunnel.

16:37 And the good thing about not having a licence from a toy

16:40 company is that I can give you a PG-rated reaction,

16:43 even if it is still very British.

16:46 Bloody hell!

16:48 We slowed down and started to brake for the station.

16:50 And you’ll know how rattled I was,

16:52 because you’re about to see the only time I flinched at that loud whistle.

16:56 I can now see why, when steam trains first came along,

17:01 folks were terrified of them.

17:02 Oh, absolutely.

17:04 (Thomas whistles) Pitch black, loud, rattling, screaming.

17:11 And that was a tiny tunnel at 25 miles an hour.

17:15 That was 25?

17:16 Yeah.

17:16 So imagine being in those tunnels going down

17:19 to London on the East Coast Main Line.

17:22 Woo!

17:23 That’s so, so much different to being back there with a bit of light on.

17:27 -Bit of light on, yeah, trundling along.

17:30 -Woo!

17:31 Right, handbrake is on.

17:36 Absolute pleasure.

17:37 -Tom, thank you so, so much.

17:40 Bloody hell.

17:42 Next time, or right now on Nebula: I try to learn the squop and the Penhaligon,

17:48 and realise that a childhood game was far more complicated than I thought.