YMMV / The Railway Series B25: "Duke the Lost Engine"

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Was Stanley really as cocky as Duke says he was? Duke's recounting of Stanley's demise takes special note of the engine being built in America. Ancillary material explains the very reason for Stanley's frequent derailments, making Duke's disdain for the doomed engine a potential example of Written, or rather Spoken, by the Winners.
• Ethnic Scrappy: No. 2 for being a reckless show-off who rode roughly and became a generator for it. It doesn't help that he's the only engine of an American class in The Railway Series.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: The Duke of Sodor who was killed in the War, leaving behind a young heir, is likely inspired by the real life Duke of Kent, who died in a plane crash, leaving behind a six year-old boy, the current Duke.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: Stanley, or "No. 2" as he’s called in the books, is a negative stereotype of Americans, but other than his tendency to derail and shove aside criticism, he wasn't really malicious. Not to mention that ancillary material suggests Stanley's frequent derailments, and consequently his blasé attitude thereto, were due to a poor job re-gauging him to the MSR's 2'3" gauge, so did he deserve his nightmarish fate of being converted to a generator and subsequently scrapped?