YMMV / Thomas and the Magic Railroad

• Adaptation Displacement: Younger and foreign viewers are likely unaware that Shining Time Station and many of its characters helm from an old American PBS show that premiered back in 1989.
• Alternate Character Interpretation: When Diesel 10 falls off the viaduct, he manages to grab the track with Pinchy and calls out for "Puffball" (Thomas), "Teapot" (Toby), and "Tin Kettle" (other engines). Is this him being Defiant to the End where he screams out insults before plummeting to his presumed death, or is it Villains Want Mercy where he's legitimately asking for help but doesn't know any of their names?
• Alternative Joke Interpretation: Dodge says that Diesel 10 wears "training pants". Is this a dig at Diesel 10's lack of skill in that Mr. Conductor escaped his grasp, or is it a Pun relating to locomotives?
• Americans Hate Tingle: Compared to the slightly warmer reception it got with American audiences, British reviewers in particular were not kind to this movie at the time. Especially so since Shining Time Station and its associated characters were a completely unknown concept to them, and shoehorning new human characters and magic into a book and model-based television series fairly grounded in reality^*Asides, of course, from the sentient vehicles. was seen as needlessly "Americanizing" it and going completely against the vision of Wilbert and Christopher Awdry.
• Audience-Alienating Premise: The film had a ton of factors going against it from the beginning. As popular as Thomas & Friends was, there was little general interest in a theatrical film starring Thomas the Tank Engine, with movies based on properties aimed at children historically doing awful at the box office. Even without that going against it, those who might've been interested in the film were turned off by the focus on new human characters over the familiar engine characters (some of whom were from a show created to introduce T&F to American audiences, and are largely unfamiliar to those living outside the country) and the inclusion of magical and fantasy elements, which many saw as a betrayal of the grounded realism that had defined the original Railway Series stories and the show up to that point. There's also the issue of the show's Supermarionation style. While the use of model trains with static faces worked for the show, it did not translate well to a feature-length movie (where expectations are higher than for a kids' show), with many criticizing the style, especially the static faces, for being cheap and shoddy by film standards. Despite a decent marketing campaign, these factors would cause the film to flop at the box office, only making $19.7 million on a $19 million budget.
• Awesome Music: One thing every fan can agree on is that the film had a fantastic soundtrack.
  • Atomic Kitten's narmtastic techno remix of "Locomotion".
  • "He's A Really Useful Engine", a classic song from the show performed by a Hollywood orchestra (and Steven Page, for some reason).
  • Hummie Mann's entire orchestral score, which even borrows from many of the show's famous leitmotifs.
  • "Shining Time" is a lovely, beautiful song, though it may fall under Narm Charm for some.
  • "How The Moon Must Feel" is another absolutely lovely soundtrack, accompanied by Scenery Porn.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Some people think that Mr. Conductor and his cousin are the more likable and entertaining live-action characters in the film, while some think that Junior is the only likable human character out of the others, and some think that they are both unlikable, unneeded and would prefer them to not exist.
  • Diesel 10. Some find him to be one of the best parts of the film due to his Large Ham personality, on top of being a genuine menace. While others find him to be a generic cartoon villain who does not fit well in the grounded, laidback, cozy world of Sodor. The fact that he would later be brought into the show has only made him more divisive amongst fans.
  • P.T. Boomer from the original cut. Some think his involvement would have made the film more cohesive, while others claim that he would only add to the nonsensicalness, or at the very least, wouldn't have been enough to save the film from flopping.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: A talking tumbleweed constantly appears. It's there for no reason and the characters never refer to it. Reportedly, it wasn't even in the script!
• Broken Base:
  • One side of Thomas fans think that this film is a fantastic big-screen debut to the titular #1 little blue locomotive, while another side of Thomas fans think that it's decent at best and flawed at worst, and another side of Thomas fans believe that it was a bad movie that started the downfall of the Thomas franchise in general and took away the charm and realism the books and the original series had.
  • Which villain do you like better? P.T. Boomer or Diesel 10?
  • Would the film have been better had it stuck to Britt Allcroft's original vision instead of being cut down at the last minute? Some fans argue that Allcroft's original vision should've been kept intact and that it would've made for a much more cohesive story than the messy final film. In contrast, others argue that it wouldn't have made a difference, since the film's premise is too flawed and broken for it to work regardless of what was and wasn't cut, with some arguing that the cuts made were mostly for the better since it has led to a better balance between Thomas and the humans and is more focused than what Britt's original vision was. This debate would only intensify after a workprint got leaked and fans got a better idea of Britt's original vision for the film, with both sides feeling vindicated for differing reasons.
• Can't Un-Hear It: Face it, if you grew up with this film, you've likely envisioned the engines with their voices from this film at one point. This was especially common prior to the CGI series, where they didn't have individual voices outside of this film and the Japanese dub.
• Common Knowledge:
  • No, Edward didn't have a model for this movie in the works that wasn't finished in time. He was never in any version of the script, and there supposedly wasn't an opportunity to utilize him, and he therefore couldn't have had a model being made.
  • The main reason why P.T. Boomer was removed was not because he was too scary for a children's film villain, but it was because the test audience didn't like the non-Sodor scenes in general.
• Cult Classic: While the film is still not regarded as being good by any means, it has garnered a small cult following in the Thomas fandom over the years, due in part to nostalgia from those who watched it as children and the revelation of its behind the scenes drama and the original workprint cut. It helps that the film does have its share of good aspects that keep it from being completely awful, such as Diesel 10, the model-work, and the soundtrack.
• Death of the Author: The team behind the An Unlikely Fandom documentary confirmed in March 2024 that Britt Allcroft considers the movie canon to the show. However, a number of fans continue to reject this.
• Delusion Conclusion: According to some fans, it is possible that the events of the movie are simply a dream Thomas had after a bad encounter with Diesel 10 (the only original character from the film to appear and be treated as real in any future Thomas and Friends material). Or without such an encounter occuring.
• Evil Is Cool: Diesel 10 is probably the only character made for the film that fans truly care about, due to his Large Ham personality and his genuine level of menace. It helps that he was eventually brought into the show proper.
• Fan Nickname: Thomas and the Tragic Failroad or Shining Time Station: The Movie, amongst the film's detractors.
• Fan-Preferred Cut Content:
  • Prior to the 2020 workprint leak, many fans felt that the film would have probably been better, or at the very least, more cohesive, if the film wasn't subject to having large portions of it changed and outright scrapped (such as the case with P.T. Boomer, the film's original human antagonist) last minute due to complaints from test audiences and Executive Meddling.
  • While their final voices aren't hated, a great number of fans wish the film had stuck with having UK show narrator Michael Angelis as James, instead of replacing him with Susan Roman (James) in the final film, due to fans feeling his voice is better suited for the character than the voice he had in the final film.
• Fanon:
  • The reason Edward isn't seen is that he was taking Sir Topham Hatt and Lady Hatt on their holiday. This one even made its way into 20th Anniversary Video Presentation.
  • Due to Lady's later appearance in Calling All Engines being via a Dream Sequence Thomas had, on top of the film's more fantastical tone in general, a number of fans have interpreted the events of the film as simply being a dream that Thomas had one night.
• Fanon Discontinuity: The film's failed attempt to mix the continuities of Thomas and Friends and Shining Time Station, disregard for the original stories' realism of engine crews and brake vans in favor of magic (Sodor here being an alternate dimension where the engines are completely self-reliant) and the disruption of the show's otherwise cozy Little England atmosphere by murderous Cartoon Creature Diesel 10 did not go over well with fans of the show at all and many simply prefer to ignore its existence. It helps that the show itself largely ignores Magic Railroad as well (aside from Lady making a cameo appearance via a dream in Calling All Engines and Diesel 10 becoming a reoccurring antagonist in later seasons), making this easy to do.
• Fanfic Fuel: Fans have created content that fleshes out this version of the Island of Sodor, namely having Lady and the diesels more involved and fleshed out, Mr. Conductor being a proper substitute controller (or working alongside Sir Topham Hatt), and having engines make trips to Shining Time Station via the magic buffers.
• Franchise Original Sin: Many fan criticisms of the HIT era and the Continuity Reboot Thomas & Friends: All Engines Go, can very well be said to have had their impetus emerge from this film. The lack of drivers in the HIT era and the reboot? This film was the first to not feature them. Henry needing special coal all of a sudden? This film was what reintroduced that element. The cast suddenly shrinking to a core set? Not unlike how the Steam Team concept was created for the Retool. The stories becoming less grounded and realistic? Look no further than this movie which focuses completely on magic, an element that not even Seasons 3 and 5 used, for all of Awdry's criticisms of the former and the more action-packed nature of the latter. Sodor losing its British roots as the reboot has done? The film may have had some early drafts poking fun at this, but the filmed version cut them out and all drafts unironically portrayed Sodor as a magical timeless dimension, certainly not the Alternate History and realistic location crafted by the Awdrys. This was not helped by the fact that Britt was already taking steps to remove Sodor's original roots to increase the series' worldwide appeal and to push her vision of Sodor as a place of a child's imagination, which again, is nowhere near how Wilbert and Christopher intended for Sodor to be as real a place as it could be. For all of the complaints lodged at the Seasonal Rot of Seasons 8-16 and the reboot, it's not hard to see how the mindsets that led to their creation could very well have begun from how this movie was made in the first place, original version of the script or not.
• Genius Bonus:
  • Diesel 10 being intimidated by a bag of sugar sounds completely ridiculous regardless of context, but sugar actually can destroy internal combustion engines if it's poured into the fuel tank.
  • Another Diesel 10 example: his basis is the BR Class 42. What was the nickname for this class? Warship.
• Ham and Cheese: If the leaked workprint is anything to go by, Doug Lennox's performance as P.T. Boomer was absolutely playing the role to this effect.
  Boomer: Okay, Burnett! (pulls off his gloves and tosses them away) The gloves are off!
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Edward's absence in this film was highly noticed by film viewers, given how much of a major character he was at the time the film was released. The original script would have revealed that he was away on a job. This gets a lot more harder after Edward left the main cast in Season 22. Similarly, anytime Toby and Henry appear is more difficult due to them also departing the main cast.
  • The Nightmare Sequence of Shining Time being abandoned and the looming threat of it crumbling has only become more haunting knowing that this film would kill off Shining Time Station for good.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: The original version had Lily narrating the story 20 years later. 20 years after the film was released, most, but not all, of the deleted scenes were released on the Shout Factory DVD.
• Just Here for Godzilla: One of the biggest criticisms aimed towards the film was how the Shining Time and Burnett Stone subplots took away focus from the only thing that most fans truly care about, the stuff revolving around Thomas & Friends, despite Thomas being the film's titular character. Unsurprisingly, the scenes in the film that actually revolve around Thomas and the engines on Sodor are the most well-regarded and well-remembered scenes in the film by fans.
• Memetic Mutation: "Sparkle, sparkle, sparkle!" (from the movie itself) and "In Thomas and the Magic Railroad..." (from Thomas' archival interview)
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • The events of the whole movie only happened because long ago, Diesel 10 — originally P.T. Boomer — caused Lady to crash, which firmly cements the former as a murderous monster. And if that didn't push him over the line, him trying to shove James into a smelting pit and drop Mr. Conductor off a tall viaduct certainly did.
  • And in the workprint, confirms without a doubt that P.T. Boomer is a petty and cruel bully with not a shred of decency inside of him, taking revenge on his rival by destroying an heirloom he was entrusted to, and that his return is just to rub salt in the wound.
• Narm:
  • Peter Fonda's dead serious Oscar Bait performance... in a movie for pre-schoolers.
    • His only non-manic-depressive line isn't much better (though this is one of many side effects of P.T. Boomer's cutting, as the below line was originally directed at him. Diesel 10 very obviously believed in the magic).
    Burnett Stone: (to Diesel 10) No you won't, because the magic that you refuse to believe in, will get the better of you!
  • "My universe is starting to crumble!"
  • Alec Baldwin's over-the-top performance as Mr. Conductor, clearly trying his hardest to create a charming, funny character to put a smile on the faces of the kids who are watching but just comes off as really desperate and somewhat insane. Good examples include him having a conversation with a ball and a baseball bat, and using flowers to make phone calls.
  • Mr. Conductor warding off Diesel 10 with a bag of sugar.
  • As shown in the workprint, P.T. Boomer's entire Evil Plan can count as this. His motivations boil down to him settling an old grudge, but instead of simply beating Burnett Stone up in a fistfight, he's content to just heckle and taunt him while digging into Muffle Mountain to find Lady and sell her for scrap. This can make one question why exactly he was cut, as he comes off less as the Knight of Cerebus he was reported to be, and more akin to a Manchild. Then again, see Narm Charm below.
• Narm Charm:
  • Atomic Kitten's cover of "Locomotion" from the soundtrack. A British Girl Group doing a techno'd-up remix of an already cheesy song for a pre-schoolers' movie is about as narm as you can get, and that's exactly what makes it so awesome.
  • The whole film—yes, it's narmy and cheesy, with Alec Baldwin's overacting and several plot holes... but from another point of view, it's still an enjoyable feel-good film for kids with plenty of funny and heartwarming moments.
  • P.T. Boomer in the workprint. While it is true that when one stops to think about it, his plan is essentially a lame prototype of Sailor John's... but he's a legitimately entertaining villain with his mannerisms, carrying a bit of an Evil Is Cool vibe.
• Nightmare Retardant: In the workprint, Boomer's menace is somewhat undercut by him being a bit of a Large Ham and not being a very physical threat.
• Older Than They Think:
  • Although most of the film is filmed with models akin to the series at the time, Thomas' initial journey through the Magic Railroad was filmed with a CGI model of him, making this the first Thomas production to utilize CGI animation. Nearly a decade before the show itself would switch over to CGI in its later years. Though, as the workprint shows, they did film his model on a green screen to edit over the Magic Railroad CGI, only to replace it with the CGI model at a later date. A remnant of this in the finished film being the close-up shots of his wheels when he changes the direction he's driving.
  • Some fans were weirded out when Lady pre-Sodor and the Strasburg Railroad engine were depicted with real-life smokeboxes instead of faces like the Sodor engines. However, this was actually a concept that existed in the original Railway Series books, as engines that are not native to Sodor (such as the engines on the Bluebell Railway and The Talyllyn Railway) are typically shown to have real-life smokeboxes instead of faces (though there are a few exceptions, such as the Flying Scotsman and Big City Engine). Even the classic seasons of the show had visiting engines like the City of Turo depicted with an actual smokebox instead of a face.
• Protagonist Title Fallacy: Despite getting top billing in the title, not to mention the franchise itself, Thomas has surprisingly little screen time and isn't all that central to the plot. This was even more so in the workprint, where the humans take up at least 90% of the screen time.
• Questionable Casting:
  • High-profile Oscar Bait actors Peter Fonda and Alec Baldwin in a children's movie is not all that strange. But Peter Fonda and Alec Baldwin in a movie meant for pre-schoolers is, especially with Fonda treating the whole thing dead seriously.
  • Sailor Moon alumni Susan Roman and Linda Ballantyne as James and Percy, respectively. While it makes a bit of sense in Percy's case, their attempts at a male voice for each of their characters doesn't help, as they come off with voices of old women or young boys instead, which is especially unfitting for James, a larger, more mature engine.
  • A common fan complaint is that Mr. Conductor would have been a much more enjoyable character had he been played by George Carlin rather than Alec Baldwin. Admittedly, the thought of seeing Carlin in a pre-schooler's film is... interesting, to say the least.
• Special Effects Failure:
  • Not that the effects are bad per say, but the original show's minimalist puppet animation does not translate well to the big screen, especially among all of the other modern special effects, making those infamous static faces stick out like a sore thumb, with Roger Ebert saying that either the mouths should move, or the eyes shouldn't when it comes to their faces, saying the show could get away with it since they had a smaller budget to work with, but the movie really couldn't. It gets even worse in scenes where the human actors are supposed to be directly interacting with them, like Mr. Conductor being grabbed by "Pinchy". In one shot of Lily after Junior climbs into Thomas' cab, you can see an outline of the green screen behind her.
  • The serious lack of human characters on Sodor makes the island feel absolutely empty. While we can assume at least some of them are off-screen elsewhere thanks to Mr. Conductor talking to Sir Topham Hatt on the phone early on in the movie, the real lack of a human populace shown to the audience is really evident, with Topham and his wife being portrayed with pictures and paintings of their wooden models from the show rather than pictures of real people dressed as them. The fact that the engines and Bertie are seen pulling passenger coaches with no one being seen inside of them and delivering mail, as well as the trains being able to magically drive themselves, just leaves the island feeling hollow. And, sure, green-screening in actors or building sets for the stations and coaches probably would've added to the budget, or made the engine props and sets of the show stick out a bit more, but when Shining Time has a more realistic feel (even with the weird people in and around it) than Sodor, where we spend more time after the beginning of the movie, it brings this all the more into focus on rewatches.
  • Though not necessarily bad for the time or budget, the CGI Magic Railroad, Thomas, and Lady don't really look that great in the scene where they're driving on the revived Railroad back to Sodor, looking like a pre-rendered cutscene from an early Playstation 3 or Xbox 360 video game. Contrasting to the earlier scene when Thomas was taking Lily on the Railroad to Muffle Mountain and, though not everything looks real per se, the lighting and atmosphere work for the most part. In fact, you can barely tell Thomas' model is CGI rather than the prop.
  • Thomas being on top of Muffle Mountain is also worth a mention. The CGI model replicating the prop from the show being placed over the real mountaintop was not done that well to blend the two together. And it looks worse when Thomas gets forced to run down the mountain and travels along the meadow below and falls into an opening for the Magic Railroad. Considering they built a life-sized model for Lady, one wonders why they didn't just do the same for Thomas for that scene in particular.
• Tear Jerker:
  • Upon realizing just what's going to happen if all of their gold dust disappears, Junior silently points to Mr. Conductor, then himself, then makes a slow slashing gesture with his hand, all with a look of horror on his face.
  • For the kids watching, the fact that Sodor and the engine characters they'd known from the show for years were going to die if Lady wasn't returned to steam to restore the Magic Railroad.
  • For all of the movie's flaws, it's hard not to feel sad when you discover that the Lady prop is planning on being scrapped for good. Mattel doesn't even want anything to do with the prop.
  • In the original workprint, Burnett opens up to Lily about what it was like trying to repair Lady after Boomer crashed her. He swore he'd take Tasha out on a ride with Lady, even though Tasha wasn't as much of a Rail Enthusiast as Burnett was. Everyday, he'd claim that he'd make it right, that tomorrow would be perfect... and then Tasha died, crushing Burnett, as it seemed that everything he'd worked for turned out to be All for Nothing... All while breaking down, softly crying as he remembers what happened. It's a legitimately powerful moment... that comes right before Patch arrives with the Sodor Coal, leading a much happier tearjerker as it finally brings Lady back to steam, restoring the Magic Railroad and Burnett's smile at last.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • It's a common complaint that, despite the premise of the film being a crossover between Thomas & Friends and Shining Time Station, not only are the casts of both significantly cut down (only three Shining Time Station characters appear, and the cast of Thomas is cut down so much even mainstays like Edward and Sir Topham Hat don't appear), but most of them outside of Mr. Conductor don't do anything with most of the focus being placed on new characters. Despite being in the title, Thomas is only in eleven minutes of the movie and barely contributes to the plot.
  • The fact that there's no nods to the previous Mr. Conductors (played by Ringo Starr and George Carlin in Shining Time Station) is a bit noticeable since Alec Baldwin's incarnation is considerably younger than either of them. And yet Stacy Jones, Billy Twofeathers, and the engines all act like he's been around for a while even though this is the first time the audience is seeing this one.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Well, they had one. Though there has been some debate over how much better the movie would have been in its initial form.
  • The movie has more than a few weak plot points without P.T. Boomer, such as Burnett Stone and his missing wife discovering the entrance to the magic railroad and meeting Lady, then having a good enough relationship with her to hide her from Diesel 10 & fix her up as best he could. The most we get is a vague allusion to some sort of promise Stone didn't keep via a voice-over of them as kids. That alone could have worked as a completely different movie.
  • This film clearly exists in an Alternate Continuity to Thomas & Friends, Shining Time Station and even The Railway Series, or was at least trying to do some mythology expansion, so explaining why all of the modern vehicles can operate independently while Lady apparently still needed an actual driver to operate her as a sort of Technology Marches On kind of thing might have made up for what was otherwise blasted by fans as Negative Continuity and at least have worked as its own story, even if not everyone would be pleased with it. Hell, it'd certainly be more than the show ever does to explain it, since they flip flop between if the trains need drivers, don't, or both in different stories, depending on what's important to the story at the time.
• Took the Bad Film Seriously:
  • Peter Fonda compared his character to the title character he's previously played in the adult drama Ulee's Gold, describing Burnett Stone as a man who lost touch with the world after enduring the revenge of the film's original villain, P.T. Boomer. With Boomer being cut, Fonda's utterly serious performance feels out of place for such a goofy children's film. However, there could be the argument that he only goes halfway with it, since, while he displays the correct amount of sadness and cheer when needed in the most important scenes for Stone's character, other scenes see him not caring to change his mood, like when he's with Lily, Burnett's granddaughter, he doesn't cheer up at all, especially in the scene where he sees Lily after being worried over her disappearance when she went to Sodor with Junior.
  • To a lesser extent, Alec Baldwin is clearly giving his all to create a charming, funny character who's appealing to young children, but comes off as desperate, if not slightly insane. This and The Cat in the Hat forced him out of live-action children's films for the rest of his career.
• Uncertain Audience: Typically split between fans of the show who wouldn't dream of considering this as something made for Thomas fans and those who believe that only Thomas fans would appreciate it. Also uncertain would be appealing to fans of Shining Time Station.

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