History WesternAnimation / ThomasTheTankEngine

* GrandFinale: "Thomas and the Royal Engine", which is the final produced CGI installment (due to being OutOfOrder however, the final aired episode is "Thomas' Animal Friends").

* GrandFinale: "Thomas and the Royal Engine", which is the final produced CGI installment.

* BeeAfraid: ''(James Goes) Buzz Buzz'', where James is attacked by a swarm of bees.

After 12 series of having ShiftedToCGI, the 24th series was the last for the show. A new ContinuityReboot, ''[[WesternAnimation/ThomasAndFriendsAllEnginesGo Thomas and Friends: All Engines Go]]'', is due to launch in October 2021 which will switch to 2D animation and give the characters new redesigned appearances, to make them appeal to younger modern viewers, in addition to having a new continuity.

* RevisitingTheRoots: Affter a decade of the first {{Retool}}, newly appointed writer, Andrew Brenner and his team attempted to do this from Season 17-21, with stories that stuck closer to the more grounded and realistic tone of the original seasons and the characters being portrayed to be closer to their original characterizations, as well as {{Continuity Nod}}s to the classic series. They even brought in the little engines and Arlesdale Railway from the Literature/TheRailwaySeries, as well as adapting several stories from the book they came from in season 20, making it the first season to adapt the Railway Series since Season 4. This would not last though as another massive {{Retool}} happened after Season 21 which strayed further away from the classic series roots.

** Hero was the first character introduced in CGI; the first official CGI installment "Hero of the Rails" ends with Hiro getting on his ship to Japan before coming to stay on the mainland in Season 13, the first CGI season. One of the last episodes of the CGI season, "Kenji on the Rails Again", ends with Hiro moving back to Japan with Kenji.

After 12 series of having ShiftedToCGI, the 24th series was the last for the show. A new ContinuityReboot, ''[[WesternAnimation/ThomasAndFriendsAllEnginesGo Thomas and Friends: All Engines Go!]]'', is due to launch in October 2021 which will switch to 2D animation and give the characters new redesigned appearances, to make them appeal to younger modern viewers, in addition to having a new continuity.

* OneMarioLimit: The name "Thomas" is forever linked with the series' title character.

** In the episode, "[[Recap/ThomasTheTankEngineS19E2WhosGeoffrey Who's Geoffrey?]]", Thomas is late delivering a goods train to Brendam Docks, and accidentally bumps into the Troublesome Trucks, causing a shipment of bouncy balls to bounce all over the dockyard. Thomas blames his accident on Geoffrey, an imaginary engine he made up. Things go FromBadToWorse for Thomas, as everyone wants to meet Geoffrey. Thomas [[MaintainTheLie goes along with it]] and pretends to be Geoffrey by hiding in Henry's Tunnel and disguising his voice. He soon gets found out by Spencer when he reaches the other end, and after Thomas admits his lie, Sir Topham Hatt teaches him that it's important to own up to him mistakes, even sharing his experience with a broken teapot as an example.

* AcceptableBreaksFromReality: The post-Miller episodes still occasionally forgo railway realism for the sake of telling a story.
* TheAce: Stanley and Spencer.

* AchillesInHisTent: ''The Sad Story of Henry''.

** Lady is voiced by Britt herself and also shares the same color scheme as the Queen of Night from Mumfie, another show Allcroft worked on before.

** Fergus Duncan in both English and Japanese. He is voiced by Rob Rackstraw, who also played Mr. Fussy and Mr. Bently (both characters who obey by rules). In Japan, he shares the same actor as Giovanni from Pokémon (they resemble each other).
** Katsuji Mori played a character before who is energetic and likes racing. They also support the number 5.

* ADayInTheLimelight: Season 17 had a ''lot'' of these; to compare, the number of episodes dedicated to secondary characters (18) were more than double the amount which focused on the core cast (8). This is almost certainly [[InvokedTrope an attempt]] by the writing team to avoid having LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters existing purely for merchandising reasons.

** Seasons 8 through 12 had them in small doses, and seasons 13 through 16 had them in ''every episode''.

** Especially in the later seasons, with Thomas, James, Gordon and Duncan being the worst offenders.

* AIIsACrapshoot: These trains have personality issues. Not to mention the ridiculous amounts of crashes that they seem to get into. (See Incompetence Inc below)

** Harvey's crane, Peter Sam's special funnel, Sir Handel's wheels--although these make him egotistical until the events of "Steam Roller".

* AlwaysChaoticEvil: Most of Sodor's freight cars, along with any engine who actually gets along with them.

* AlwaysSomeoneBetter: Stanley in ''Thomas & The Great Discovery''. Also Spencer and City of Truro for Gordon.

* AnachronicOrder: Seasons 1-4 occasionally fall to this when the books are adapted out of order. The series is episodic outside of the occasional StoryArc, so it's usually not too obvious, or the script is edited to fit continuity. A jarring example however is the Season 2 episode "Percy Takes the Plunge", which references the events of "Percy's Promise", televised the following season, and Season 4's "Paint Pots and Queens", which takes place directly after Season 1's "Down the Mine" (though at least it's made clear in a flashback). "Bullseye" is the worst offender, coming between "Daisy" and "Percy's Predicament" in the novels. The latter two stories aired in season 2, while Bullseye aired in ''season 4''.

* AnotherDimension: The Island of Sodor in ''Thomas and the Magic Railroad''. Also doubles as a MagicalLand. This is particularly odd as in the books and TV series Sodor was simply a small island between the Isle of Man and the British Mainland. The books also established that all the engines in the world, not just the Sodor ones, were alive, unlike in the movie where you can see nonsentient locomotives.

* ArsonMurderAndJaywalking: No matter what kind of horrific damage the engines cause, Sir Topham Hatt always, ''always'' yells at them for causing "confusion and delay."

** Locomotives of different gauges are scaled up or down to run on Sodor's two gauges. This is taken to an extreme in The Great Race, with engines from all around the world running on the same gauge for an Olympics-style competition. Additionally, many American engines can run on Sodor's rails just fine, despite Sodor being a British railway while American engines are far taller and heavier than British engines.

* ArtShift: Hiro, Stephen and Gator's flashbacks in each of their debut specials. Also, the CGI specials invoke this trope in their intros.

* AscendedFridgeHorror: The earlier storylines, like "Saved From Scrap," implied, but did not show, that characters could be scrapped when they could no longer work. Later, however, some of the books/episodes, like "Stepney the Bluebell Engine" and "Twin Engines" got absolutely ''vicious'' with this concept, after the Reverend decided to do a TakeThat against [[UsefulNotes/NationalRail BR's]] [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1955_Modernisation_Plan#The_Modernisation_Plan Modernization Plan.]] The way the mass scrapping is portrayed, especially in the books, sometimes goes beyond FantasticRacism and implies that the characters think of it more like genocide. In the foreword for "Stepney the Bluebell Engine", though, Awdry sets the record straight regarding Percy's opinions that BR officials are cruel and take sadistic pleasure in scrapping steam locomotives, stating that they are not, and that they willingly assist in the preservation movement.

* BeeAfraid: ''(James Goes) Buzz Buzz''.

* BigBrotherInstinct: Thomas developed a ''huge'' case of this as the show drifted into its own continuity ([[UnwantedAssistance if not always with the best results]]). Played with for Edward and Toby since while they often act as kind elderly mentors, their self esteem issues and bullying from others sometimes leads younger engines such as Thomas and Percy to stick up for them.

* BiggerIsBetter: In "Thomas's Trusty Friends", the foreman kept fitting Oliver with bigger wrecking balls to knock a particular wall down.

* BigThinShortTrio: The much advertised trio of James (big), Thomas (thin) and Percy (short).

** "Dowager Hatt's Busy Day" is a giant middle finger towards the Sharon Miller-era.
* BittersweetEnding: About few episodes have these such as "Down the Mine", "Percy's Predicament", and "Percy, James, and the Fruitful Day".
* TheBlank: City of Truro in Series 3, and some of the trucks and coaches, depending on the episode. Henrietta was, but Series 18 depicts her with a face (as [[Literature/TheRailwaySeries the books]] eventually did in ''Thomas and Victoria'').

* BottleEpisode: "Steamy Sodor" (season 13) and "Victor Says Yes" (season 14), both which take place at the Steamworks.

* BreakoutCharacter: Thomas of course, who was only as prominent as most other recurring engines in the books.

* BreakTheHaughty: Expect this to happen to Gordon or James, and probably any other character trying to be important.

* BrickJoke: Bulgy was made into a henhouse after getting stuck under a bridge. In "Train stops Play", you can see him in the background.

** Famous locomotives ''City of Truro'' and ''Flying Scotsman''.

*** Big Mickey can often be seen in Brendam Docks, even in the CGI era. [[spoiler:He became a fully fledged character in Season 21 though]].

* CaptainObvious: "And bananas are no good for building sheds!"

** Skarloey once said "I'm ashamed of you!"

* ChekhovsGun: It's pretty obvious from the minute the Breakdown Train shows up that Thomas is going to have ''some'' reason to haul it out later in the episode.
** The Canvas Barrier in the Season 5 episode "Put Upon Percy"

** The movie Misty Island Rescue has a few machines with names but no faces - a crane called Old Wheezy and a steam donkey called [[PunnyName Hee-Haw]].
* ComicallyMissingThePoint: ''Thomas Comes to Breakfast.'' When Thomas skids off the rails and crashes into a house, just as the family within is sitting down to breakfast, the stationmaster's wife is more upset about her ruined pancakes that the ''freakin' locomotive that just drove into her living room.''

* ContinuityNod: An early episode has Henry crashing because snow weighed a lower-quadrant signal down to its "clear" position. In the next series, Percy is confused when he sees an upper-quadrant signal which points "up" to its "clear" position. In the third series, upper-quadrant signals are seen frequently in the background.

** Sometime between "Percy and the Signal" and the CGI series, they went back to using lower-quadrant signals for no reason. (See ContinuityNod above.) One CGI-era episode had Toby being confused by signals at a busy junction and they were all lower-quadrant.

* CoolTrain

* DarkIsNotEvil: A number of diesels.

* DeadpanSnarker: It's almost like Andrew Brenner and his team are trying to make everyone act like this from time to time these days. Reg is outright stated to be this. Sodor may even be a WorldOfSnark!

* DemotedToExtra: Edward from seasons 4-6, but everybody gets this treatment in the newer movies. The only characters to get a lot of Focus are Thomas and the new engine introduced. Toby's been getting the worst it lately. In ''Hero Of The Rails'', not only does he get only one line, not only one word, but one '''syllable'''. He doesn't even appear in ''Tale of the Brave''! And to make matters worse, unlike Edward, who quickly underwent CharacterRerailment during his first Brenner-era episode, Toby still has yet to fully return to his former persona. As of Season 22, Edward, Henry and Toby have been demoted from the main cast entirely, in order to make way for two new female main characters, Nia and Rebecca.

* DependingOnTheWriter: Sometimes the trains can apparently drive themselves, sometimes they need drivers to start and stop moving, and sometimes it's implied to be both. There's not really a clear answer as to which it's supposed to be.

* DistaffCounterpart: Toby and Flora. Flora's debut episode was even entirely focused on her being the "new steam tram" and her personality more or less mirrored [[ShrinkingViolet Toby's]] [[EraSpecificPersonality at the time]].

* DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything: The episode "Trouble in the Shed", in which the tender engines Gordon, James and Henry go on strike. Sir Topham Hatt calls for Edward (who is also a tender engine) to fetch coaches for them. Later on, the striking engines are shown to be acting rudely and hissing at Edward, saying that he has "black wheels". "Black-legged" is a synonym for a strikebreaker, a worker who works despite an ongoing strike.
** In addition to this, the episode was adapted from a Railway Series story that was written during the time that BR workmen were striking, and Awdry saw fit to mirror it in his stories.
** One of the main arcs of ''Tale of the Brave'' is [[spoiler: Percy finding a new best friend in Gator while steadily growing apart from Thomas]]. The montage in the special that's set to "Our Tale of the Brave" ''really'' doesn't help. And if that's not enough there's also the entire plot of the Season 18 episode "Missing Gator".

* DoomedHometown: The Railway, where Duke, Peter Sam, and Sir Handel once lived. Great Waterton may also count. As well as Toby's old line (though it inexplicably reappears in later episodes).

* DrivesLikeCrazy: Duncan and Bertie. "Come for the Ride" is a whole song dedicated to this, with Duncan getting a ''whole verse'' to himself.
** Amusingly, The Fat Controller is portrayed as a notoriously bad driver.
* {{Eagleland}}: Misty Island (all the locomotives there are of an American build) is portrayed as a mixture of types one and two- the Logging Locos are rather loud, boorish, and mischevious, but they all have a good heart and always have the best intentions.
** Hank and Sam are more straightforward Type 1 examples.

* EdutainmentShow: Following Hit Entertainment's takeover. Season 17 onwards seem to be returning to the more subtle approach of the original stories however.

* EnemyMine: The engines and the troublesome trucks have a few of these in "Special Attraction" when dealing with Bulstrode, a disagreeable boat, and in "The World's Strongest Engine" when going against Diesel. For the latter episode, Thomas and Percy lampshade that sometimes, troublesome trucks can do an engine a favor, which is getting rid of a haughty diesel.

* [[LionsAndTigersAndHumansOhMy Engines and Diesels and Humans... Oh My!]]

* EverybodyLaughsEnding: Used a lot since the show went CGI.

* ExtraLongEpisode: From 1984 to 2003, episodes were four and a half minutes long. After the series ReplacedTheThemeTune in 2004, the episodes were extended to being seven minutes long. Since 2009, after the series' transition to using CGi, as opposed to the live-action scale models of the previous seasons, the episodes are now eight and three-quarter minutes long. Starting in 2018 series ''Big World! Big Adventures!'' the episodes return to the seven minute runtime, at the cost of the stories now being shorter in order to accommodate learning segments and musical numbers at the end.
* ExtremeOmniGoat - usually eating the Fat Controller's hat. Sometimes a goat, sometimes a ram.

* FantasticRacism: The steam engine/diesel hatred came to a head in ''Calling All Engines'', and has mostly disappeared since then.
** To a lesser extent, there's the trains and the vehicles.

* FinishingEachOthersSentences: Bash and Dash's way of communicating.
* FireForgedFriends: Gordon implied that he and Thomas were this in "Down The Mine" after helping him from the mine accident. This was referred back to in "Paint Pots and Queens/Thomas Meets The Queen".

* FollowTheLeader: The biggest complaint about the PoorlyDisguisedPilot ''Jack and the Pack'' was that it seemed to be a knockoff of the fellow [=HiT=] Entertainment show ''Bob the Builder''.

* FourTemperamentEnsemble: The original tender engines: James is Sanguine, Gordon is Choleric, Henry is Melancholic, and Edward is Phlegmatic.

** "Grandpuff" and "Sleeping Beauty" are portrayed as Thomas telling a story to the other engines at Tidmoth sheds (both episodes were adapted from actual Railway Series stories in case you were wondering).

* TheFreelanceShameSquad: In early episodes especially, the engines are often shown laughing or smirking whenever another has an accident or other humiliating incident, no matter how dire. Downplayed in later episodes, where they often show a more consistant concern for each other whenever they seem to be in trouble.

* FriendToAllChildren: Any engine who happens to he pulling a "special" special related to children. Namely, Thomas. Trevor was first introduced as this.
* TheFriendsWhoNeverHang: Most of the "Steam Team" have had an episode together within the long run. Edward and Emily have had very little interaction however. Edward also rarely interacts with Toby, likely due to [[CoolOldGuy similarities in character]] (and even being Flanderized in a [[ExtremeDoormat similar manner]]).
* FriendshipTrinket: In The Magic Railroad, Lily gives her Burnett a friendship bracelet to remind them of their friendship. Later in the film, Lily puts the gold dust Junior gives to her on her bluebird toy, also to remind her of her friendship with Burnett.

* FunnyBackgroundEvent: A bonus of the CGI transition is the show's ability to now animate funny goings on in scenes on a regular basis, usually from the crewman inside or behind the engines as they talk.
* FurryConfusion: Though all locomotives are alive, the depiction of the road vehicles vary widely. Some, like Bertie, are sentient, while others, like Sir Topham Hatt's car, are not.

* MundaneMadeAwesome: Thomas tends to sound dramatic and drawn out many times during his voiceovers as of the ReTool, even in the most regular situations.

After 12 series of having ShiftedToCGI, the 24th series was the last for the show. A new {{Reboot}}, ''[[WesternAnimation/ThomasAndFriendsAllEnginesGo Thomas and Friends: All Engines Go!]]'', is due to launch in October 2021 which will switch to 2D animation and give the characters new redesigned appearances, to make them appeal to younger modern viewers, in addition to having a new continuity.

After 12 series of having ShiftedToCGI, the 24th series was the last for the show. A new {{Reboot}}, '''WesternAnimation/ThomasAndFriendsAllEnginesGo''', is due to launch in Ocotber 2021 which will switch to 2D animation and give the characters new redesigned appearances, to make them appeal to younger modern viewers, in addition to having a new continuity.

''Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends'', now known as ''Thomas & Friends'', is a British series first broadcast in 1984. It began life as ''Literature/TheRailwaySeries'', a series of books about a group of [[SentientVehicle talking steam engines]] living on the Island of Sodor and the adventures they have under the guardianship of the Fat Controller (Sir Topham Hatt). The books were originally written by the Reverend Wilbert Awdry; his son Christopher now has the job. There is also a widely-available series of books based on TV episodes.

After 12 series of having ShiftedToCGI, the 25th series, which will begin in Fall 2021, will switch to 2D animation and give the characters new redesigned appearances, to make them appeal to younger modern viewers, in addition to having a new continuity.

** [[spoiler: The whole premise of the special ''WesternAnimation/TheAdventureBegins'', showing what happened upon [[HowWeGotHere Thomas' arrival on Sodor.]] Highlights from the trailer include Thomas in his [[ArtisticLicenceHistory (albeit incorrect)]] LBSCR livery and James painted black.]]

** The UK narrations of the earlier episodes were replaced with more child-friendly versions for the US. One example includes "The Sad Story of Henry" which was retitled "Come Out, Henry!". In that episode, some lines were changed in the latter part of the episode. The line "We shall leave you here for always and always and always" was replaced with "we shall leave you here until you are ready to come out". Second, the line "so that Henry couldn't get out of the tunnel anymore" was changed to "so that other engines wouldn't bump into him". And lastly, the UK narration where the narrator stated that Henry deserved his punishment and asks if the audience agrees with him was replaced with the US narration where the narrator asks the audience how long do they think Henry will learn to overcome his fear of the rain.

* CulturalTranslation: The American narration/dub of replaces British railroad terminology with its American counterparts: "trucks" become "freight cars", "guards" become "conductors", etc. Some other relatively minor changes are also made to better fit American culture, such as the Fat Controller almost invariably being referred to by his actual name, "Sir Topham Hatt", due to the more Bowdlerise negative connotation the word "fat" has in the states. See {{Bowdlerise}} for more examples.

** The original Literature/TheRailwaySeries also was a lot more mature in many ways. For starters, WordOfGod states that in the first book, "The Sad Story of Henry", was going to be the end of the book right there. [[FateWorseThanDeath With Henry locked in the tunnel for God knows how long]]. Another example would be the genocidal diesels, who murdered all but one of Gordon's brothers, and continue to do so on the Other Railway. If that wasn't enough the original story of "Henry's Sneeze", described the boys who had been sprayed with ashes as [[GettingCrapPastTheRadar "Dark as niggers"]].[[note]] However, this was edited out of later versions[[/note]] It may have written in the 1940s, it still was supposed to be a [[WhatDoYouMeanItsForKids children's book]].

* GettingCrapPastTheRadar: In the episode "Mavis", the titular character gets stuck over a road crossing. An angry farmer is seen telling her 'just what she could do with her train'!
** One episode, "Tender Engines" goes even further. When Gordon complains of being unhappy and Duck jokingly suggests it's boilerache (stomachache) Henry quips that Gordon could use a washout to clear his boiler of sludge. Henry's cheeky tone, plus Gordon's chastising response to Henry to not be vulgar seems to indicate Henry was suggesting Gordon get the locomotive equivalent of an ''enema.''
** From the same episode, Henry pulls several tenders full of boiler sludge. [[spoiler: The human equivalent of boiler sludge is ''excrement''.]]
** In "Donald's Duck", Duck tells Donald to "quack himself".
** In "Buzz Buzz/James Goes Buzz Buzz", after James' numerous unsuccessful attempts to shoo the bees off his boiler, his driver tells him that all they can do now is fetch another hive from the Vicarage Orchard. The narrator then says, "James' reply was drowned by the sound of buzzing."
** In "Fiery Flynn", after Flynn soaks Sir Topham Hatt, Den says "Fiery Flynn fudges it!", "fudge" being a family-friendly version of a certain F-word....
** In "No More Mr. Nice Engine", white stuff splatters all over Sir Topham Hatt, Edward, and Hiro.....[[spoiler: thankfully, it's just milk]].
** "Thomas' Fuzzy Friend" has the titular dog 'lifting his leg up' on James' wheels. You don't see anything, but given that James screams and the other engines laugh about his wheels not being clean anymore, it's obvious what happened.
** Mike O'Donnell and Junior Campbell have [[http://syn.org.au/right-on-track-mike-odonnell-interview/ confirmed]] that Daisy is meant to be reminiscent of a sleazy nightclub stripper. Her music theme uses {{Sexophone}} and is based on "The Stripper" by David Rose. In fact, Daisy was supposed to have pink buffers that resembled boobs to emphasize her hooker motif. You read that right. A stripper in a show for toddlers. This persona is scrubbed away in the CGI series, though.