In 1945, Wilbert Awdry brought the island of Sodor to the world with the first release of The Railway Series. Thirty-nine years later, Britt Allcroft successfully brought the trains of The Railway Series to the small screen with Thomas & Friends. In between those dates, there were other attempts at adapting the books. You had the BBC's live broadcast of "The Sad Story of Henry", which derailed rather quickly (both figuratively, and literally). You also had the 1976 pilot of Thomas the Tank Engine, but that didn't go anywhere either. But those were licensed efforts. What if we looked at unauthorized adaptations?
Engines of Eight is an Analog Horror series documenting efforts to preserve the show of the same name, which in universe was a loose adaptation of The Railway series produced from 1973 to 2000 that fell largely in the category of lost media. Unfortunately, attempts at preservation seem to reveal things that are... less than nostalgic to say the least.
Information on Engines of Eight can be found on the main YouTube page here
, as well as the Twitter page, the wiki, and this YouTube page documenting some other things of note.
Engines of Eight contains examples of:
- Analog Horror: Preservation efforts keep turning up footage of things like nightmare faces and whatever happened during the show's
Troubled Production. In the QnA video, the channel owner briefly mentions accidents having occurred to the show's crew in the past, but refuses to elaborate on them. - Affectionate Parody: Out of universe, the series could be considered one to both The Railway Series and Thomas and Friends as well as the Golden and Dark Ages of Animation.
- Darker and Edgier: In-universe, it is unlikely that Rev Awdry or the writers of Thomas and Friends would produce something with the name and content of "I Hate Myself".
- Denser and Wackier: The in-universe show is this compared to The Railway Series. Plots involving railguns that can by operated on by trains, trains looking at train porn magazines, and contagious diseases like the ones humans get are not ones you'd expect from Rev. Awdry's more grounded books.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: One of the very first videos claims that a network known as FiddleTV aired Engines of Eight in Spanish. The video "Engines Of Eight FiddleTV Airing" is more or less entirely in English. Also note the screencaps of the opening use an image very blatantly based off the opening of the first few seasons of Thomas and Friends. So far, this specific opening has never been shown in full.
- Expy: Engines of Eight has a bunch of these, some bordering on Captain Ersatz.
- Tom is based on Thomas the Tank Engine.
- Eddie is based on Edward the Blue Engine.
- Harrison is based on Henry the Green Engine. Apparently, Harrison has a brother also named Henry.
- Gregory is based on Gordon the Big Engine.
- Yandall is apparently based on, of all characters, 87546 and 98462, both of which were Adapted Out of Thomas and Friends proper.
- Rob is not mentioned as being inspired by any pre existing Railway Series or Thomas and Friends characters on the wiki.
- Jamie is based on James the Red Engine.
- Red Ted is not directly based off any Railway Series or Thomas and Friends characters, but his face is based off those of Donald and Douglas.
- Finally, The Stout Director is based on The Fat Controller/Sir Topham Hatt.
- Horror Comedy: Engines of Eight could easily be considered a mixture of Analog Horror and shitposting, sometimes at the same time. For example, the Bootleg VHS video was described as "Found in the toilet at Outback Steakhouse", and alongside the actual episodes also includes a home recording of a turtle and a CGI animation of a horse. It also contains ominous visual glitches and ends with footage of what appears to be a dead body.
- Leave the Camera Running: "Tom the Tanks Weekend", which consists almost entirely of a shot of Tom not moving, which fades into evening about 3/4s of the way in.
- Ruder and Cruder: One of Tom's bullies, Yandall, outright tells him to kill himself at one point.
- Re-Cut: At least two different versions exist of the scene from "Tom" where the big engines fire a railgun directly at Tom's face. In the version uploaded to YouTube, Tom suffers nothing worse than Ash Face, and the big engines are completely unapologetic. In this version uploaded to Twitter, Tom's face was blown off, the music stops abruptly and the three engines involved in the prank are no longer taking any joy from it.
- Stock Footage: Out of universe. Some of the footage from Engines of Eight was taken from actual Thomas and Friends episodes, heavily edited to be sure, but still.
- this tweet shows a laserdisc cover of an episode that's edited from a photograph of a The Land Before Time IV laserdisc.
- this
