History Headscratchers / ThomasTheTankEngine

* How is it the trucks can push tank engines around, when it's clearly established that you have to have an actual engine to move? I can see the times they lock their brakes and refuse to move, but not the episodes where they shove the engines around.

** Lady was left in the 'real world', where she apparently isn't sentient. So far as we know, Smudger was never abandoned, he was just converted into a stationary engine (in effect a permanent grounding), and it's likely he was moved when the line closed, or else by this point has been buried alive (which in itself is an unpleasant fate, but a lot harder to rectify). Duke (from ''Sleeping Beauty'') was put away until his owners found someone to buy him, and at some point they apparently gave up (by which point he seems to have gone into some sort of hibernation). No idea about Hiro, but logic doesn't seem to apply to him in any way whatsoever, so he can probably just be ignored.

** [[SnarkBait Look close,]] [[http://www.penmorfa.com/Barry/barry%20looking%20east1.jpg they're probably somewhere in here.]]

*** [[WildMassGuessing Sodor ones are magic, foriegn ones are robots]].

** Because Thomas and The Magic Railroad isn't in the same continuity as the rest of the series.

* If Lady's gold dust is supposedly what makes the Island of Sodor magic (and makes the engines come alive), then why are engines from other railways (Hiro, Hank, the logging engines) also alive?

** Because Thomas' Branch Line is single track, and he has to wait until Percy meets him at the station (which has a passing loop) and clears the section.

** What bugged me about Duke is that IIRC the effort to find him had petered off and didn't pick up again until the other engines started talking about him. So his crew KNEW he was down there, and couldn't or wouldn't help him--for goodness sakes, his shed was so rotted that a guy didn't realize it was there and fell through the roof! (With Hiro this just reached WallBanger status.) Whatever was going on with Duke, it's one of the creepier elements of the show that seems to indicate it doesn't matter ''how'' 'useful' the engines are, the humans still treat them like objects and have very little respect for their personalities and emotions.

** The [[{{WallBanger}} Shake Shake Bridge]].

* What's the deal with Woolly Bear? Thomas is waiting for Percy, but Percy isn't pulling a train or anything, much less any passengers. Why does he have to stick around?

* It bugs me the way shunting is treated in the new series. All the engines now do is roll up to a line of readily assorted trucks, ram them a little, reverse back, and charge, then repeating. This is and looks dangerous, what with the loads spewing everywhere and probably getting damaged. Episodes like 'Hector the Horrid' show that shunting involves rolling towards trucks that are uncoupled and apart and pushing them into a line ready to be coupled up and taken away, whereas episodes like 'Splish, Splash, Splosh', 'Misty Island Rescue' and 'Thomas in Charge' show the engines just bucking them around a bit, and they somehow become sorted. How is this?

** Whiff claims to have once taken garbage to and from the islands. Yet Whiff only showed up a few seasons ago.

** The [[{{WallBanger}} Shake Shake Bridge]].

** It's worth nothing that the earlier episodes (and books) were also fairly well done in terms of continuity and world building. For many people it was sort of their first series that had that sort of overarching storytelling.

** Two reasons: One, it's old enough that a lot of us who watched it as our kids are re-watching it with our own tots now. Two, as noted on the main page, the VisualEffectsOfAwesome (before the CGI, anyway) attract a lot of railway and modeling enthusiasts in their own right.

* Am I missing why this series has such a large adult fanbase compared to other toddler cartoons?

** And Lady, as discussed above. Her problem in ''The Magic Railroad'' was definitely that she couldn't get up steam.

** There must be some ContinuityDrift there, too. I seem to recall that Donald and Douglas found Henry stuck in a snowdrift, and Percy got stuck by snow in the middle of the town and his drivers left him there until morning. (I think this also happened to Thomas and one of the Narrow Gauge engines, at some point.) It wasn't explicitly stated that their fires were out, but it would stand to reason that they were--the railway probably wouldn't want to waste the fuel, and keeping them in steam might stress the metal parts. And, though I'd wager [[FannonDiscontinuity many tropers won't count this example]] there's Hiro,who was definitely cold when Thomas found him.

** There must be some ContinuityDrift there, too. I seem to recall that Donald and Douglas found Henry stuck in a snowdrift, and Percy got stuck by snow in the middle of the town and his drivers left him there until morning. (I think this also happened to Thomas and one of the Narrow Gauge engines, at some point.) It wasn't explicitly stated that their fires were out, but it would stand to reason that they were--the railway probably wouldn't want to waste the fuel, and keeping them in steam might stress the metal parts. And, though it's close to being BannedFromCannon, there's Hiro,who was definitely cold when Thomas found him.

* It's been suggested that engines are only really "awake" when their fires are lit. So what about the engines that have been kept for preservation, but are left in museums, with their fires dropped?

** It was at night. Also, Edward's driver probably did realise what had happened when he reached the next station, but Gordon was five minutes behind him and would have passed the junction by that time (bear in mind that a five mile climb of 1 in 75, which is pretty steep, lies between the two stations).

* Wrong Road makes no sense to me. Wouldn't Edward realize "wait, I'm on the main line" back up, and alert the signalman what happened? Nevermind the passengers being put on the wrong path...

**Glaring ContinuityDrift. In the early episodes the plots worked around the driver's presence--like in ''Thomas Comes to Breakfast,'' he started going when his driver accidentally took the break off, and in this other one, I can't recall the title, the narrator stated that Thomas ''Wouldn't wake up'' because they couldn't get his fire started. In some episodes like ''Escape'' the crews join in on the engine's escapades; in ''Hero of the Rails'' the engines somehow, almost without human help, managed to rebuild Hiro. Basically, when after the Reverend's books ran out, the humans seem to be tehre only when they're convenient.