Trivia / Shining Time Station

• Actor Allusion:
  • In one episode the kids ruminate on forming a band. "I'm quite at all hands with musical instruments myself, you know!", Mr. Conductor (AKA Ringo Starr) chirps. And toddlers all over 90's America wondered why Mommy^note At least those mothers (and fathers) who know about Ringo's old band. was falling off the sofa laughing....
  • One scene in "Pitching In and Helping Out" has Mr. Conductor drumming on the station's clock.
  • In the Thomas Tales episode "Paint the Town Red", Mr. Conductor (George Carlin) mused that he met a man who told him there are no blue foods - a reference to one of George's best known routines.
• Actor-Inspired Element: Brian O'Connor contributed to elements of Schemer's character. Namely the cowlick, the suits (which belonged to his father), and the obsession with nickels.
• Banned Episode: "The Mayor Runs For Re-Election", which guest stars Richard Nixon impersonator Richard Dixon, was banned after PBS re-ran it on the same day that Nixon's funeral took place because it drew complaints from viewers despite PBS airing it as a tribute to him.
• California Doubling: The family specials were all shot in the Toronto area.
  • Episodes involving real trains were shot on the South Simcoe Railway, including "Billy's Runaway Train", "Once Upon a Time", and "Queen for a Day".
• The Cast Showoff:
  • Tom Jackson gets to sing and play guitar in "Billy Saves the Day".
  • There's a brief gag where Ringo Starr is sitting on the station's clock and drumming away with wooden spoons (and the back of his foot). It only lasts a few seconds, but the man was the drummer for arguably the most influential rock band of all time, after all.
• Cool Train: The train seen in the opening and closing credits is Union Pacific 844, which holds the unique distinction of having never been retired from active line service on a major US Railroad.
• Creator's Favorite: George Carlin was proud of his time on the show because he got to show off his gentler side. He loved how it allowed him to bond with an entirely new audience and enjoyed interacting with young children who wanted to meet Mr. Conductor. He also got a kick out of seeing those young fans grow up and come to his stand-up shows throughout the early-to-mid 2000s to "complete their education". He also in an interview years later praised the show (the early seasons that he redubbed, at least) for not talking down to children and actually "massaged the messages into the framework of the show" rather than just spelled them out, which is part of what appealed to him about it.
• Died During Production: Joe Raposo wrote and performed several songs for the first season of this show, some of them (including the theme song) alone and some of them with Paul Derrick Mason, as well as served as musical director, already also doing so on Sesame Street, but died on the same day that the second episode, "Does It Bite?", premiered. Steve Horelick, already performing similar duties on Reading Rainbow, took over as musical director, while Stacey Hersh wrote new songs that appeared later in the show's run.
• Distanced from Current Events: When "The Mayor Runs for Re-Election" was first aired in 1993^note  different sources give different dates for this episode's original airing, with the year of 1993 being the only constant, a Richard Nixon lookalike in the episode was nothing worth getting upset about. But then PBS decided to rerun the episode on April 27th, 1994, the day that Nixon's funeral took place. While PBS might've seen this as a tribute to him, many parents were upset, and the station, as well as series creator Rick Siggelkow, had to issue an apology the following day.
• Edited for Syndication: When reruns of the series were aired on Fox Family and Nick Jr., several cuts were made to them, mostly to the Jukebox Band segments.
  • The show itself is this for Thomas & Friends, taking a Thomas episode and stuffing human characters around it (the original episode is now reimaged as a story told by a magical conductor).
• Enforced Method Acting: George Carlin found recording the story narration alone in a booth to be uncomfortable, as he was used to having an audience to play off of. To remedy this, producer Britt Allcroft bought Carlin a teddy bear that he would bring into the booth and read the stories to for the entirety of his time as Mr. Conductor.
• Follow the Leader: This show's success led to other shows that introduced a foreign production to American audiences through a Framing Device. These included Fox Clubhouse, Salty's Lighthouse, Big Bag, The Noddy Shop, Mister Moose's Fun Time, the 1997 version of The Mr. Men Show, and the 30-minute version of Caillou.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Literally the only place you can find episodes is YouTube, and even then, these episodes are of scattershot quality due to being grafted together from various broadcasts, with the Thomas segments usually being the highest-quality due to being sourced from the HD restorations. Only nine episodes and specials were released on now-discontinued VHS tapes. Britt Allcroft has been trying to negotiate with Mattel (the current owners of the franchise and those who have the master copies of the episodes) for years now to get a DVD release out, but nothing has come of it yet, sadly.
• The Merch: While most of the merchandise produced around the time the show aired on PBS was centered around the Thomas segments, the Station scenes had their fair share of merchandise as well. There were bendy figures of the Jukebox Band, Stacy Jones, Schemer, and Mr. Conductor by JusToys (as well as a playset of the station), a series of children's books, and audiocassette tapes of the Jukebox Band's songs.
• Missing Episode:
  • According to Rick Siggelkow, the main reason that the Two season 2 Thomas & Friends episodes ("Daisy" and "Percy's Predicament") were never shown on Shining Time Station, was due to his disapproval of Daisy's design being overly sexist and her lazy and stubborn personality. As a result, the episodes featuring her were only seen by US audiences after being released to home media in 1993.
  • The Mexican Spanish dub is this, as only a handful of clips are available on the internet^note  It’s title, for those who are curious is La estación de la alegría. This is made more notable because, unlike in the US where the narration of Thomas stories would be rereleased with standalone versions of the episodes, with the George Carlin narration included in releases to this very day and even the US Ringo Starr narration being released once every blue moon (The 2010 DVD set "The Greatest Stories" included it for "Diesel's Devious Deed"), the Spanish narration included here is entirely separate from the narration used in Thomas releases of the first few seasons from 2002 onward. What makes this especially notable is that the Shining Time dub would cover every Series 1-3 episode skipped from the 2002 dub except the aforementioned Percy's Predicament.
  • Two Schemer Presents shorts (How to Clean Up Your Room, Part 2 and How to Fall Asleep) were never released during the show's run, though eventually surfaced on YouTube in 2022.
• No Export for You: The show was exported to Canada, Singapore, Malaysia, New Zealand, Ireland (in the summer of 2000 to promote Thomas and the Magic Railroad, similar to how Nick Jr. aired the series in the US), Mexico, and The Philippines, but many other countries didn't get the show. This was probably due to the show's status of being Edited for Syndication, where they took old Thomas the Tank Engine episodes from ITV and stuffed additional human characters into it (similar to its' spiritual successor The Noddy Shop), and other countries' networks thought it was a waste of resources, especially when they already have the rights to the real deal.
• The Other Darrin:
  • George Carlin replaced Ringo Starr (and joked that he was the anti-Pete Best).
  • Likewise, after the first season, in the Jukebox Band segments, Alan Semok replaced Wayne White as the voice of Jukebox Band member Tex, while Kenny Miele replaced Vaneese Thomas as the voice of fellow member Grace Bass.
  • Alec Baldwin replaced George Carlin as Mr. Conductor in Thomas and the Magic Railroad, while Russell Means replaced Tom Jackson as Billy Twofeathers.
• Playing Against Type: The famously raunchy stand-up comedian George Carlin plays an affable, friendly character on a kids' show. This was a very deliberate choice on his part, because he'd become firmly entrenched for his caustic comedy in the public eye and he wanted people to see his gentler side. Keep in mind, he'd released an album titled Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics around the time he assumed the role of Mr. Conductor and producer Britt Allcroft was won over by the way he said "Shit".
• Remade for the Export: The show was made as a way to extend the normally 4.5-minute Thomas & Friends series into a 30 minute show, by playing two Thomas segments and live action stories in between them and bring it to North America. Some of the Thomas segments even had their narrations altered in the scripts to make the story morals and lessons a bit more overt when a part of this show, unfortunately, or to appeal more to American sensibilities passed changing terminologies and calling Sir Topham Hatt his name instead of "Fat Controller."
• Screwed by the Lawyers: In 2023, Mattel started blocking a select number of episodes on YouTube due to them containing classic Thomas episodes. Not helping matters is that the series does not have an official release on DVD or streaming services as of this time, and the show's VHS releases are long out of print.
• Screwed by the Network: The show was on the receiving end of this in Malaysia and Singapore, where it was cancelled after just two or three seasons, because the networks airing the show had gotten tired of it, plus a competing network in those countries had managed to secure the rights for Thomas The Tank Engine itself.
• Throw It In!: Brian O'Connor and Didi Conn would sometimes improvise scenes together and O'Connor actually ad-libbed so much that the producers eventually gave him an "additional material" credit in the closing credits of Seasons 2 and 3.
• Uncancelled: In a bizarre variation, the third season was written as the last, with "How the Station Got Its Name" as the intended finale. Unexpectedly, they were offered a chance to produce a fourth season, but they decided instead to pool the budget into making four one hour long prime-time Family Specials in 1995. This allowed them new sets, better effects, location shooting, and guest stars.
• What Could Have Been: Plans were in place back in the nineties for a Shining Time movie. The plot involved an evil circus leader kidnapping Mr. Conductor and the kids helping a circus performer overcome her fear of horses. As a subplot, the Steam Team would leave Sodor for Shining Time to rescue Mr. Conductor. Highlights would have included the Jukebox Band becoming separated and reuniting through a song, and Schemer being shot out of a cannon.
  • One reason the movie fell through was that Brian O'Connor, who played Schemer, was looking to get out of acting and return to comedy. O'Connor eventually left show business completely and is now a counselor for troubled youths. They were reluctant to go ahead with an STS movie without his involvement.
  • There were more videos that were going to be released, but they were never planned out or if they were, they never got past the final stages.
    • Four Direct to Video Jukebox Band specials were produced, but only the first two ("A Day in the Life" and "Lullaby") were officially released. The fourth would have been "A Tribute to J.J. Silvers".
    • Sequels to both "The World According to Schemer" and "Sing-Songs" were made, but never made it out to the public. The former had two extra segments that were never seen.
    • According to Joseph Marshall when he got the tapes from Rick Siggelkow, there were five episodes from the third season that had labels with "PBS", meaning they were possibly going to have a home video release. Considering there were 12 Schemer segments filmed altogether, it's likely Warner Bros were planning to release 12 episodes from Season 3.
  • Per an interview with Rick Siggelkow, Jason Alexander auditioned for Schemer, while Carole King and Carol Kane both auditioned for the role of Stacy Jones. The latter did eventually land a role in another Rick Siggelkow show.