#sorry that is the intersection of me being not only autistic and a railway nerd but also an english student | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

david-watts · 3 years ago

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dude i HAVE to know what your beef is with thomas the train

well! thomas is only the no. 1 engine because he got super popular. henry was the first character introduced. but thomas. thomas was a total shithead in the books. his first story is him getting justice from gordon. thomas was meant to be a different locomotive but ended up being an london, brighton and south coast railway (post-1923 it became part of the southern railway) E2, which hhholy shit they were shit. they were a little too powerful and resource-hungry for shunting and light duties, but also not powerful enough and didn't have the storage capacity needed to do actual goods or passenger services. apparently the railway workers fucking hated the things and I understand why! and apparently they sucked for dock work too, once they ended up in the southampton dockyards, because their wheel base was too long for tight curves, which also iirc the southern railway has a LOT of really tight curves on it making locomotive design on the railway, and its previous constituent railways that amalgamated into it, particularly unique? I think I read that somewhere. but imagine being known for having tight curves on your lines and then making an engine that was shit on tight curves lol

#best not quote me on any of this but I've heard this stuff passed around before #it's funny that I thought thomas was my favourite character as a kid lol. it was actually duck I was just dumb #well. I'd be lying if I said that it was actually stepney. but I don't remember watching stepney in the tv show so I defaulted to thomas #anyway I still really like duck! mostly because of that headcanon that he's autistic I think that the coding is why i like him #because tbh? there are much better character arcs in the railway series and yes there ARE character arcs #but your honour I like this little fellow.#speaking of little fellows the skarloey railway am I right #that is. offtopic lol #also not to be pedantic but thomas is Not a train #a train in terms of transportation refers to an engine of some sort pulling carriages wagons or containers or thereabouts #which is how you get things like road train. but railways with trains predate locomotives!#for example on the ffestiniog railway #I think it was that one it was one of the slate railways in wales #had horse-drawn trains before the locomotives were invented!#so thomas is a locomotive. specifically a steam engine. and more specifically a tank engine #referring to the fact that instead of having a tender to carry extra water and coal in he has a tank and coal bunker at the back #sorry that is the intersection of me being not only autistic and a railway nerd but also an english student

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