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My favorite thing about Thomas the Tank Engine is that it canonically takes place in a train post-apocalypse where the Island of Sodor is the only safe zone in a totalitarian dystopia in which steam trains are routinely killed and their body parts are sold or cannibalized for repair

If you think I’m kidding you need to read the original books

could you please direct me to a source? i would feel much better if this was validated.

It took me so long to find this quote online but I did it because it’s so much darker than one might expect from Thomas the Tank Engine:

“…Engines on the Other Railway aren’t safe now. Their controllers are cruel. They don’t like engines any more. They put them on cold damp sidings, and then,” Percy nearly sobbed, “they…they c-c-cut them up.”
-”The Bluebells of England.”  Stepney the Bluebell Engine.  Rev. Awdry, Wilbert.  London: Egmont Publishing, 1963.

This illustration, by Gunvor and Peter Edwards, accompanied the above text in the original book, and depicts a pair of unfortunate Other Railway engines moments before being disassembled with a blowtorch.

HOLY FUCK LOOK AT THE ONE IN THE BACKGROUND THEY TOOK ITS FUCKING FACE OMG

the early thomas the tank engine books are pretty standard stuff. saccharine bubblegum type stories and illustrations. if you watched the show, it’s like that in book form.

the second half of the railway series are so fucking dark and surreal i’m convinced they were a result of reverend wilbur awdry doing copious amounts of lsd and having hallucinations of his own death.

Excuse me but the very first story in the Railway Series is about an engine who hides in a tunnel and refuses to run because he doesn’t want to get his paint job ruined in the rain, so railway management seals off the tunnel.

They eventually let him out because another engine breaks down or something, but the original plan was to just leave him in there forever.

On the show, didn’t they also hook up one engine to a generator, so he’d never move again? That was literally one of the lines, I think. It’s on some other post on here. It was chilling.

Yes!  This also happened in the books, to an engine referred to only as “No. 2″, but the television series applied the same scenario to an invented character named “Smudger”, in the episode “Granpuff”.

“Smudger,” said Duke. “Was a show-off. He rode roughly and often came off the rails. I warned him to be careful, but he took no notice.”
“Listen, Dukie” he snared. “Who worries about a few spills?”
“We do here! I said, but Smudger just laughed.”
“Hahaha!”
“Until one day, Manager said he was going to make him useful at last. Smudger stopped laughing then!”
“W-w-why? What did he do?!”
“He turned him into a generator. He’s still there behind our shed. He’ll never move again.”

This is so fucked up

No, listen.

Okay, so we see Railway Management doing all this shit, right, but supposedly it’s so much worse in the Other Railways? I mean, sure, you might get turned into a generator or bricked into a tunnel for not doing as you’re told, but at least you’re not cut up and sold for parts, right? It’s not so bad on the island of Sodor, right?

Or maybe that’s just what Railway Management wants the engines to think.

Maybe the island of Sodor is the real totalitarian regime, and the engine citizens (slaves) are fed propaganda, illustrated in hellish grays and sulfuric yellows, about how bad it is everywhere else, at all the Other Railways.

You are lucky to be an engine of Sodor.

Railway Management cares about you.

Trust Railway Management.

Stay on Your Track.

It Could Be So Much Worse.

Wtf the fuck is this train based 1984 bullshit