History Headscratchers / ThomasTheTankEngine

** Perhaps the engines have special hearing abilities. The same can be said about engines having special abilities to see each other from behind.

* How do two engines at opposite ends of a train communicate with each other? Wouldn't they not be able to hear each other?

*** The Railway Series and the Television Series are separate continuities. While all the build dates may apply to the Railway Series canon, the Television Series is its own canon, and in ''The Adventure Begins'' it's made clear that Thomas, and by extension Percy, are younger than Edward, Henry, Gordon and James.

* In "Percy's Chocolate Crunch", why was Percy brought back to the shed instead of to the washdown first?

** 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 attract a lot of railway and modeling enthusiasts in their own right.

*** Very true on Duke's case, but there are two things I must point out. His interns, Falcon/Sir Handel and Stuart/Peter Sam. In the books, it takes them forever just to speak up about him. What was going on? If they missed him so much, why didn't they mention him to Skarloey when they first got there? (Rheanes, Rusty and Duncan came later.) Duke could have been found years before and overhauled no problem.

* In "Calling All Engines", why couldn't the Steam Team of just slept at Wellsworth Yard?

*** The Railway Series and the Television Series are separate continuities. While all the build dates may apply to the Railway Series canon, the Television Series is its own canon, and in ''The Adventure Begins'' it's made clear that Thomas (and by extension, Percy) is younger than Edward, Henry, Gordon and James.

* In "Duncan and the Grumpy Passenger", Skarloey took his anger out on Duncan because he took his coaches to make room for the grumpy passenger. I know Skarloey was angry at Duncan for stealing his coaches, but couldn't he just go back to the coach yard and fetch some different coaches for his evening train?

* In "Duncan and the Grumpy Passenger, Skarloey took his anger out on Duncan because he took his coaches to make room for the grumpy passenger. I know Skarloey was angry at Duncan for stealing his coaches, but couldn't he just go back to the coach yard and fetch some different coaches for his evening train?

* In The CGI 2016 The Great race Special Thomas Jumps Over The Bridge on to the mainland but in the railway series books the engines on the mainland have no faces until book 5 where that rule was broken and now both islands have faces on engines now for some reason.
* In Twin Trouble, Donald reverses and breaks the buffers and Duck supposedly can’t pull him back onto the rails. So Douglas has to do it. Yet in Middle Engine just four episodes later, Percy is able to pull James AND two lines of trucks because James is refusing to move (I am aware that there is steam puffing out of his funnel but that was just so it would be easier for the models to move, in-universe James is refusing to move). Aside from imparting a moral lesson about making up after a fight, why is this? Is it the forces of gravity making it harder to pull Donald out?

*** The technology to build an underwater tunnel is OlderThanTheyThink. The Thames tunnel, which became part of the LondonUnderground, was built in 1843. Long before that, miners were digging tunnels out under the seabed. Plans for a Channel tunnel were first devised in the 18th century. The real question about the Misty Island tunnel is, why? Misty Island appears to be largely uninhabited, with the sole industry being logging. Traffic is nowhere near enough to justify such an expensive investment, which is presumably why the tunnel was abandoned.

*** I concur, this series set up the mentality for me regarding series like Franchise/{{Pokemon}}, WesternAnimation/Ben10, Series/DoctorWho, and even the loosely strung-together VideoGame/ClueFinders edutainment games. However, the aforementioned question has me, at 20 years old, questioning my life potentially wasted watching re-runs of the afformention series as well as series like WesternAnimation/XiaolinShowdown and WesternAnimation/HeManAndTheMastersOfTheUniverse1983. If you have an answer or Moral support, (I might be sticking my neck out for the executioner here) message me here[[https://plus.google.com/+LoganTrue]].

*** I concur, this series set up the mentality for me regarding series like Franchise/{{Pokemon}}, WesternAnimation/Ben10, Series/DoctorWho, and even the loosely strung-together VideoGame/ClueFinders edutainment games. However, the aforementioned question has me, at 20 years old, questioning my life potentially wasted watching re-runs of WesternAnimation/XiaolinShowdown and WesternAnimation/HeManAndTheMastersOfTheUniverse1983. If you have an answer or Moral support, (I might be sticking my neck out for the executioner here) message me here[[https://plus.google.com/+LoganTrue]].

* Building on this question, if we ignore the later episodes and assume that the engines can only move around when the humans are there to help them...it seems that it wold be quite easy to blackmail the engines!

** 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.

* In The CGI 2016 The Great race Special Thomas Jumps Over The Bridge on to the mainland but in the railway series books the engines on the mainland have no faces untill book 5 where that rule was broken and now both islands have faces on engines now for some reason.

* In The CGI 2016 The Great race Special Thomas Jumps Over The Bridge on to the mainland but in the railway series books the engines on the mainland have no faces untill book 5 where that rule was broken and now both islands have faces on engines now for some reason

* How often is Thomas an AbsenteeActor - is it 50% of the episodes (including ones where he has only a cameo appearance).?

*** TheRailwaySeries book ''Stepney the Bluebell Engine'' has a scene that shows some steam engines being scrapped. [[http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20090423104658/ttte/images/3/37/Thescrapyardengines.jpg The expressions on the two engines...and the engine behind with no face.]]

** The Author not knowing what to do with them.

Why is it that smaller, older engines are made artificially younger, and younger, bigger engines are shown as being older? For example: Percy was built around the turn of the century while Gordon was built in 1921.

* What is WITH the engine drivers nowadays? In the early episodes, they were there to offer comfort and advice, but nowadays, it seems as though they're mute servants who only exist to serve as the engine's hands. Take "The Lion of Sodor", for example. Thomas, beliving that he has a real lion in his crates, decides to make it well fed and comfortable, so he collects syrup from Henry, fish from Edward and straw from Toby, which are all placed inside the crate - and every single one of the drivers goes through with it, with none of them explaining that the lion is just a statue! So, what, are they merely lifeless voiceless extensions of the engines, or something?!

** Though many tropers won't count this example there's Hiro,who was definitely cold when Thomas found him.

** Not really an IJBM, but it seems pretty concidential that Thomas's raft aligned ''perfectly'' with the rails.

** 'Splish, Splash, Splosh', 'Misty Island Rescue' and 'Thomas in Charge' were all made during the Nitrogen Studios Era of the show. The company never bothered with railway accuracy nor hired a railway consultant to do it for them. The answer is that they saw the show as being only for preschoolers and TheyJustDidntCare. Thankfully the new company, Arc Productions, has a railway consultant.

* Why does everyone refer to the controlman as "The Fat Controllman"? he's been explicitly called: "Sir Topham Hatt".
** "The Fat Controll''er''" is a nickname for the various Topham Hatts seen throughout the series. It has been around before his official name was ever given, from the third book (in the previous two, he was referred to as the Fat Director, due to the different structure of UK railways at the time).

** If you want the Doylist explanation, in the first story in which he appeared, he was just a fat director - a pompous character to act as a figurehead for the passengers. By the final story in that book, he had become "the Fat Director," a specific character who could be kind as well as authoritative. The railways of Britain were Nationalised when the third book came out, and therefore there were no directors on the railway any more. Obviously the Fat Director had become established as the de facto authority figure in the stories and Rev W. Awdry didn't want to lose that, so he became Controller of the North Western Region of British Railways (which only consisted of Sodor and one town on the Mainland). The name Sir Topham Hatt came later, as did the Thin Controller and Small Controller (who is bigger than the other two).

** Maybe its because Diesel 10 has been shown to be a complete [[{{jerkass}} jerkass]]. That whole, "Scrap all Steam Engines" ting might have had something to do with it.

* What is WITH the engine drivers nowadays? in the early episodes, they were there to offer comfort and advice, but nowadays, it seems as though they're mute servants who only exist to serve as the engine's hands. Take "The Lion of Sodor", for example. Thomas, beliving that he has a real lion in his crates, decides to make it well fed and comfortable, so he collects syrup from Henry, fish from Edward and straw from Toby, which are all placed inside the crate - and every single one of the drivers goes through with it, with none of them explaining that the lion is just a statue! So, what, are they merely lifeless voiceless extensions of the engines, or something?!

** See OutOfOrder.

** 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.
* Building on this question, if we ignore the later episodes and assume that the engines can only move around when the humans are there to help them...it seems that it wold be quite easy to blackmail the engines!
* 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...
** 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).

*** To me, that's the main headscratcher regarding Misty Island Rescue. How could such a child-unfriendly film intended for preschool audiences have possibly been greenlit?

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

** Maybe its because Diesel 10 has been shown to be a complete [[{{jerkass}} jerkass]]. That whole, "Scrap all Steam Engines" ting might have had somethign to do with it.

* Episode continuity: In the US, why was "Thomas Comes to Breakfast" aired before "Toby the Tram Engine", "Donald and Douglas" and "The Deputation", since Toby, Donald and Douglas hadn't been introduced yet?