Line #8 Fridge/TheRailwaySeries


1	[[AC:Fridge Brilliance]]
2	* In ''The Diseasel'', Bill and Ben are tipped off about the diesel by two patches of oil left behind. Most diesels don't leak oil like that, however [=BoCo=]'s class were known to have frequent engine problems. As such, he's one of the few classes of diesel who would give away his presence like that.
3	* Diesel was boastful in the story ''Pop Goes The Diesel'', but until Duck tried to take him down a peg, the 08 was trying to be polite to the other engines. You could say Duck was judging too quickly, but consider this. The 5700s, (Duck and his brothers and sisters), were being replaced by the 08s on the Mainland by the time of 1957, when Diesel comes to visit Sodor; i.e., being withdrawn and subject to the scrapper's torch. Of course Duck would jump the gun on that note!
4	** There's also a potential bit of meta context, since multiple times Awdry dealt with collaborators such as his Illustrators that he tried to explain Railway conventions to, but they didn't feel the need to listen. His tenure with Dalby had in fact just ended before this book due to multiple arguments and Dalby getting sick of Awdry's need for detail. The first thing Diesel does to establish himself as a {{Jerkass}} is say ''the boss is wrong and he doesn't need to learn''. Given Duck was often TheProtagonist in Awdry's later books, it makes sense he would mimic his loss of patience with such an attitude.
5	* James is the only red engine on the NWR. However, it's interesting to note he's not the only red engine on the ''island'' - red with blue lining is also the colour scheme of the Skarloey Railway (helped along by James's polished brass dome). Was James' colour scheme (initially explained as a gift to cheer him up after his crash) in tribute to the island's oldest surviving engines?
6	* In ''Thomas and the Great Railway Show'', Thomas meets up with an old friend and running mate by the name of Boxhill, a member of the same class of locomotive as Stepney, though Stepney and Thomas didn't recognize each other in ''Stepney the Bluebell Engine''. Even though If all three locomotives operated on the same Railway at roughly the same time, the LBSCR [[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c3/Lbscr1922.jpg was large enough]] that any two engines could have spent their entire careers on that Railway without meeting each other.
7	* It makes sense that Duck and Oliver would be most proud of their originating Railway line's heritage compared to the others - the Great Western was the only pre-1923 Grouping Railway to preserve its identity after the "Big Four" were created; the rest of the engines either had their Railways of origin merged out of existence (Furness, LBSCR, Caledonian, GNR), or were built by Railways that were only about twenty years old at the Series' start (LNER, LMS). In existence since 1835, the Great Western would have developed a largely uniform corporate culture compared to the other Big Four, which would have been plagued with [[InterserviceRivalry inter-railway rivalries]] carried over from their predecessors.
8	** Oliver and Duck's attitude is also pretty true to the people who worked for the GWR in real life. It had a reputation for being so beloved by its staff it was called "God's Wonderful Railway".
9	* The Fat Controller's attitude towards Donald and Douglas in ''The Twin Engines'' makes sense if you consider that two years prior, Diesel caused disarray in the Yard. What do these characters have in common with each other? Deception. While the twins had much more noble motives for “playing truant”, they still caused disruption.
10	** "The Missing Coach" is the best example of this. Douglas forgetting to shunt Thomas' special coach wasn’t a heinous crime. What made the Fat Controller's reaction so angry was that, instead of coming clean, the twins proceeded to lie about what happened. If a new employee's dishonesty is revealed on the first day, their career will be short-lived.
11	** There's also a fair bit of YouDidntAsk going on throughout the book. It takes until Percy steps up in "The Deputation" for anyone to just point out ''why'' the twins are so desperate to stay together on Sodor. With that the Fat Controller's decision is near instant and succinct, as if that one bit of information clicked together everything that was going on for him.
12	* Gordon acts incredibly insecure around Henry after his rebuild. This is supposedly just out of petty jealousy for pulling the Express well one time, though the official guidebooks make apparent that Henry was supposed to be the original Express engine and Gordon was brought in to replace him due to his bad health. Now Henry was as powerful as him and could do his original job properly, there was a potential risk that Gordon was no longer needed.
13	** Ultimately its Pip and Emma that do Gordon in, but by that point old age meant Gordon graciously accepted his retirement from the Express.
14	* Thomas himself starts the series as a haughty and cocky engine, and mellows out as time goes on. Thomas's basis the E2, was infamously a poor performing locomotive due to several design flaws; and it’s likely that Thomas was heavily modified in his service life to compensate. This is even seen in the books when his frame is rebuilt following his crash into the station master's house, and his buffer beam is straightened out. The physical changes to make Thomas a better performing steam engine parallel the character's own growth arc.
15	* In ''Toby, Trucks and Trouble'', the Fat Controller declares that only Toby can cover for Mavis at the Quarry, referencing "Thomas in Trouble" as a reason why Percy can’t use the Tramway. It was established by Wilbert Awdry that the law Thomas appeared to be violating was actually outdated; this was why Percy could go to the Quarry in "Percy’s Predicament". However, in that exact same story, Percy came barreling out of control with his stone trucks and was lucky not to cause a serious accident on the tram road. The Fat Controller is taking precautions after this incident.
16
17	[[AC: Fridge Horror]]
18	* Donald tracking down the brakevan and shutting him up may seem heroic... until you realize that if he succeeds in saving Douglas, he would have sacrificed himself. Thank goodness Sir Topham took longer in deciding and that Percy stepped in when he did...
19	** In the same story, there was this bit.
20	-->'''Sir Topham Hatt:''' I've decided to send Douglas back and keep you, Donald.
21	** Had Donald not crashed at all, Douglas would have been doomed! Let that sink in.
22	* More of a Fridge Tearjerker than anything else, but, take a look at the relationship between Falcon/Sir Handel and Stuart/Peter Sam during their time on the MSR, and compare it to their one on the SKR currently. While under the names of Falcon and Stuart, they were like twins: in sync with the other, goofing around, almost never fighting with each other. But... possibly somewhere in the Aluminum Works Project, they grew apart.
23	** Possible Sir Handel has some sort of trauma from the MSR closure and then an uncertain future after being retired at The Aluminum Works; and while Peter Sam was happy to arrive on the Skarloey and get back to work, Sir Handel lashed out and criticized the Railway for not being as ''good'' as he remembered the Mid Sodor being. Its noticeable that he mellows out a little bit after Cora, the Saloon Coaches and eventually Duke from the MSR all eventually are rescued by the Skarloey in time.
24	* The early stories concerning Henry's failing performance are somewhat painful knowing that Awdry was originally setting up Henry to be quietly ''KilledOffForReal''. Especially unsettling in his appearances in ''Thomas The Tank Engine'' where he looks perpetually sickly and is just giving [[ThousandYardStare a miserable empty gaze]] in every illustration. He's ''dying''.
25	** Adding onto this, the supplementary book ''The Island of Sodor: Its People, History and Railways'' implies that the rebuilt Henry after the Flying Kipper accident was in fact a completely separate engine. While Henry's memories and role in the books themselves somewhat contradict this, if we are to believe the theory, then Henry ''did'' get killed off after all and replaced with a duplicate. And what's more in a cruel twist of fate just after supposedly curing his steaming issues, and the Fat Controller assuring him he'll be fixed up nicely ("You'll feel a ''different'' engine.").
26	*** That being said, ''Sodor: Reading Between The Lines'' (written by Christopher, who didn't have his father's negative views on Henry) would contradict this theory, explaining that no, Henry is still the same locomotive. He just isn't ''precisely'' a pure Black Five due to his origins, with differences that set him apart from one leftover from his first build. Doesn't change the fact that, yes, Henry was pretty much on life support until the Welsh coal came, but at least we can take solace that he [[EarnYourHappyEnding legitimately got better]].
27	* Several badly behaved trial engines were sent away from Sodor to 'another Railway' as a comeuppance. It seems to be light-hearted karma at first, until the later books make it very apparent the Other Railways surrounding Sodor are undergoing the modernization plan, meaning any engine that wasn't a diesel (and even many of those if they weren't top notch anymore) likely got scrapped over time.
28	* After the Skarloey Quarries closed, the British Defense Ministry bought them to convert to an ammo depot. Sometimes, trains from the Skarloey Railway were used to bring explosives and ammunition to the Military Facility. The train of vans George crashes into which Sir Handel was pulling were empties coming out of the facility... now imagine the implication as to what would have happened had the same accident occurred while Sir Handel was pulling up ''loaded'' ammo cars up the line instead.
29	* The Ravenglass and Eskdale Railway, the real life inspiration for the Arlesdale Railway, is located near the Windscale Nuclear Station; the site of one of Britain's worse nuclear accidents where the Windscale fire broke out. It is claimed the only reason the disaster wasn't a complete Chernobyl-like incident was because of filters installed on the nuclear plant's air intakes which captured most of the fallout from the accident. But ''had'' those filters not been in place, the surrounding area may have been severally irradiated meaning perhaps the Ravenglass and Eskdale Railway would never reopen as a Miniature Gauge Railway, and thus the inspiration to create the Arlesdale Railway never would have existed.
30	* In ''Enterprising Engines'', Gordon is the only engine whose sadness at losing most of his siblings to the scrappers is explored. Thus, the reactions of the other engines to the loss of their own siblings is open to interpretation. But in all likelihood, many of them would be as devastated as Gordon, including those who are the LastOfTheirKind:
31	** Toby. The rest of the LNER J70 class steam trams are all gone.
32	** Edward. No other Furness Railway K2 "Larger Seagull" class engines remain either.
33	** And even Thomas himself. All the other London, Brighton, and South Coast Railway E2 tank engines were scrapped by the end of the 1960's.

Context Fridge / TheRailwaySeries