#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

[david-watts]

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