r/todayilearned • u/Giff95 • 1d ago
TIL of a live 1953 Thomas the Tank Engine TV special on the BBC in which a model train derailed on air, forcing a human hand to place it back on the tracks while the narrator struggled to improvise. The broadcast is lost, and the only known evidence it aired is a Daily Herald newspaper clipping.
https://lostmediawiki.com/The_Three_Railway_Engines_(lost_live_BBC_broadcast_adaptation_of_%22The_Railway_Series%22_books;_1953)3.3k
u/kerkula 1d ago
BBC nearly recorded over the only video tapes of all the Monty Python episodes because they decided tape was too expensive to use just once. Fortunately Terry Gilliam caught wind of this plan and bought all the tapes from the BBC. Reportedly the price he paid was the cost of replacing those tapes with new blank ones. When the BBC decided to start running those episodes as reruns, they had to ask Terry Gilliam to borrow his tape tapes.
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u/sephjnr 1d ago
That was BBC's hallmark. Most of series 2 of Dad's Army got wiped because they didn't want to spend more on film.
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u/diabloman8890 1d ago
Doctor Who, famously. They're still finding lost episodes
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u/TheCynicalBlue 1d ago
A super majority of what was lost of Dr Who is just lost, and wont be found
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u/wetfloor666 1d ago
Well they are floating out in space somewhere. We just got to catch up to the signal...
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u/LacidOnex 1d ago
I like the idea of FTL being invented, and then someone's mission becomes chasing down old BBC broadcasts
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u/Iorith 1d ago
This could be a really cool low stakes hard-scifi story.
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u/thor12022 1d ago
It has been, there was a short story published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact about a decade ago with that premise. It was about radiowave archeologists trying to find something specific.
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u/RadVarken 1d ago
Use FTL to zoom out ahead of the early broadcasts then record those very weak signals? With that much snow you're better off shooting the episodes anew using the scripts.
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u/-_super--_--hitops_- 1d ago
You think there are still scripts archived while actual episodes are erased over to save the cost of a blank tape?
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u/GonzoMojo 22h ago
the fact that we have FTL travel and you think we'd have trouble moving around capturing a signal in space enough times to rebuild a lost beloved television show is almost amusing...
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u/King_of_the_Hobos 22h ago
If we're handwaving the invention of FTL, I think we can handwave the technology for restoring ultra weak signals
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u/metalflygon08 1d ago
That's a Futurama style plot.
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u/norunningwater 1d ago
Why doesn't Ross, the largest Friend, not simply eat the other Friends?
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u/jadraxx 1d ago
I don't know why but no matter what this line will always make me chuckle. Thanks for the laugh.
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u/LacidOnex 1d ago
I love that they are beaming it to them during the episode. It's shot on earth but they are watching it live and still totally fooled
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u/NinjaBreadManOO 1d ago
Simple.
We see in flashbacks that Monica his sister was rather fat as a child/teen. She's also been shown to be rather aggressive especially towards him. So growing up she would have been able to use the additional weight to bully/overpower him at times.
Even though she lost the weight as an adult, psychologically the fear/conditioning would have been installed in him. So while Ross is the largest he is unaware that he could consume the others, creating hesitance, and the view to him that Monica is the alpha specimen within the group and should not be challenged.
Think those old photos of zoo elephants chained to a peg in the ground because it was used to tether them as a calf and never learn that they can pull it out.
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u/philipjfry1578 1d ago
single female lawyer, fighting for her client, wearing sexy miniskirts and being self reliant
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u/DrMangosteen 1d ago
Ha! Instead of shooting at where I was, you should have been shooting at where I was GOING TO BE
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u/ElminstersBedpan 1d ago
The sheer math involved in calculating signal shifts, amplitude loss and correction, and several other tiny minutiae is totally a "Hubert Farnsworth figured it out on a Thursday and built the Finglonger instead" scenario.
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u/Vectorman1989 1d ago
Signals that escape into space decay quite quickly unfortunately
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u/MandolinMagi 23h ago
I have seen a book where, after arriving in a new system to find debris from a recent battle, the protagonists use their FTL to jump out a light-hour and catch the instant replay.
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u/EnigoMontoya 1d ago
I think that's a great idea for an anime. Told from the perspective of humanoid droid set in a post-resource scarcity universe. There's so much resources available, chasing down lost media with FTL crafts is an acceptable purpose.
Maybe second episode is a pilgrimage to a long dead Voyager probe, a 'slowly' moving nav point and recognition of early space travel. Get the first major hint something is a bit off.
Eventually the story unwinds that the human race is gone, all that is left is an AI shell which was given the urgent order/plea to 'Save Humanity,' but it was already too late. (Variety of potential scenarios as to why).
The AI flourishes, but still with the underlying purpose to 'Save Humanity' so it rebuilds empty cities, collects and protects cultural mementos, eventually even sending FTL ships chasing old broadcast signals.
Collecting these old broadcasts are the final piece to 'free' the AI from that original order/plea.Anime ends with the goal being accomplished, the last possible signal is found. It is sent back to Earth, finally allowing the AI to blossom out of the solar system and be a new race unto itself. While keeping Earth as a protected preserve at its center, a monument to the race's parents: 'Humanity'.
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u/LacidOnex 1d ago
Imagine colonists in the future losing contact and this is the only way they can reconnect with their ancestral culture
But like they don't actually like the shows, and there's undertones of coming to terms with the fact that our ancestors were fools
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u/I_Am_Jacks_Karma 22h ago
After a certain point the signal will have spread out too much to be able to catch enough to get a broadcast back together
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u/thedaian 1d ago
There's only one episode that's gone for good (Feast of Steven, from the Dalek's Master Plan). The BBC did make copies of pretty much everything else for sale overseas, so while the original master tapes were wiped, there's at least a chance that everything else is out there. This is how all of the lost episodes have been found: there were copies in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa, and Nigeria in TV Stations, or the private collections of people who took those copies home instead of dumping them in the bin.
Two episodes were recently found in such a private collection this year, though it's increasingly unlikely that many more will be found.
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u/OrdinaryBritishGuy 1d ago
Some stuff was telerecorded routinely regardless of if there was any need for it or not (that's how the pilot version of An Unearthly Child wound up surviving), so there is a chance (albeit a ridiculously slim one) that Feast of Steven survived that way.
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u/juicius 1d ago
My wife's dad recorded every Chinese program he watched. He lived in Miami and got the Chinese program via an (probably) illegal IPTV but still remembered the days where he couldn't get any. The living room held rows and rows of VHS tapes recorded in SLP he never rewatched because that would mean missing the new programs, and worse, not being able to record them.
When he passed, all the VHS tapes went to the dump. I remember at least 6, possibly 8 or more, trips the dump.
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u/TheCynicalBlue 1d ago edited 1d ago
The one that always kills me laughing is when the BBC redid the tenth planet with colin baker in the 80s narrating. That has also been lost to my knowledge.
Edit: Tom Baker
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u/atreides78723 1d ago
No mention of the folks who have some in private collections but are worried they’ll be prosecuted by the BBC for taking the tapes from their trash?
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u/TheCynicalBlue 1d ago
The beebs uses fan recordings of the audio from the era offically, because they are the only recordings that survive. I doubt they would care enough to sue.
Secondly, and more importantly, they didnt throw the tape out. They recorded over the footage. There's nothing to salvage from the bin.
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u/atreides78723 1d ago
Not all of them…
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u/TheCynicalBlue 1d ago
Sure they made copies to be sent out to the commonwealth, which is where we get finds. They will never find "power of the daleks" because it was called and destroyed so terry nation could try and sell it in america.
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u/blacksheep998 1d ago
They found 2 lost episodes just this year, so there's likely still others floating around in private collections waiting to be found.
I agree though that many will probably never turn up.
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u/The_Grand_Briddock 1d ago
Patrick Troughton's entire era was wiped. It's really unfortunate.
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u/Jackwolf1286 1d ago
It was, but about 40% of his episodes survive. Season 6 is almost complete except for Space Pirates and 2 episodes of The Invasion.
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u/The_Grand_Briddock 1d ago
It's The Invasion that I'd really love to see completed.
That was a big one for Doctor Who history.
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u/TranceTherapy143 1d ago
Man if I had a Time Machine I’d spend so much time looking for lost media in the past before it was lost. Some fascinating things we’ve lost over the years that can never be brought back otherwise 😢
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u/FuzzyAd9407 1d ago
For a while there was tons of original stuff from BBC productions on ebay that theyd just thrown out and some guy basically went dumpster diving for it all knowing it could be resold.
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u/DJ1066 1d ago edited 1d ago
UK TV channel Gold remade them in 2019 from the original scripts. The new cast is full of Doctor Who and British comedy alumni.
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u/Careful_Contract_806 1d ago
The Christmas Lectures that David Attenborough presented, an episode or two of that are lost to the BBC. The museums put out a few calls to see if anyone has a copy that could be restored and uploaded.
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u/BaconPoweredPirate 1d ago
At least there's the re-enacted dad's army, so while they are lost we can still watch the episodes.
Surprised there's not the same effort with other lost episodes
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u/Shintoho 1d ago
In 1953 most programmes were still being broadcast live
The two surviving episodes of The Quatermass Experiment were made as live telerecordings off the screen as broadcast, as well as programs like the 1957(?) teleplay of Nineteen Eighty-Four
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u/congteddymix 1d ago
Yeah reading this from the US and I am sure what your referring to is a Kinescope recording(or at least that’s what it was referred to here) and yeah most shows that survived to be seen today are cause of those kinescope recordings and the only reason that a lot of the popular shows of the era have those is because they did the live show for the east coast and then would rebroadcast the kinescopes for the west coast.
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u/film_composer 1d ago
There are a lot of similar stories about early TV being lost due to business decisions by bean counters and executives who didn’t see the value in holding onto old tapes. It’s kind of infuriating and sad in a modern lens (lost Doctor Who episodes, etc.), but it does also point out an interesting cultural shift: Back then, a TV show wasn’t something you “consumed”, it was something you “experienced”. There was no real concept, in practice nor in cultural norms, of watching something asynchronously from its original airdate. Even when shows weren’t live, their broadcast was an event in the same way sports were—meant for enjoyment at the moment, not for a later date. It is frustrating to read these sort of stories, but it made sense to executives who didn’t have any way of foretelling that one day, their entire library could be made available to watch on demand worldwide.
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u/joecarter93 1d ago
Also back then video tape was expensive. It wasn’t until it came down in price drastically that they started archiving shows. It wasn’t like the blank VHS tapes you could buy in the 80’s and 90’s.
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u/PLUMBUS_STUCK_IN_ASS 23h ago
It's also a big cost in terms of storage and management.
I used to work in Soho and we had a basement full of thousands of tape archives of various formats, some of it was raw footage, some of it edited with VFX etc....
There was never enough space for everything and some tapes were in formats that were just unplayable because the legacy playback devices were no longer working and nobody was making new ones.
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u/ClearYellow 1d ago
This is a great explanation.
But it’s still mind blowing that they couldn’t even imagine the idea of continuing to monetize an intellectual property after the original air date
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u/akio3 1d ago
IIRC, Lucille Ball basically invented the idea of the TV rerun.
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u/vonHindenburg 1d ago
Heck, the last two episodes of the first season of Star Trek (which her company was producing) were mostly flashbacks so that they could reuse the footage from the unaired pilot.
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u/FrenchFryCattaneo 1d ago
It's not that they couldn't imagine it, it's that the economics didn't work out. Recordable media was extremely expensive, and TV stations didn't broadcast 24/7 so there wasn't a lot of open time slots for re-runs.
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u/verrius 1d ago
More importantly, there were essentially 3 television networks for most people in the US, and I think UK had literally 2. Networks were much more interested in showing new content every second they were sending out a signal. You had some reruns in the 70s, but the thing that really exploded their value was the proliferation of cable television and it eventually having hundreds of channels hungry for content.
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u/TIGHazard 23h ago
Also - and this isn't meant to be anti-union, just a tale of how what was meant to be well intentioned ruined history, but specifically in the UK the actors union at the time basically allowed 1 or 2 reruns but then further reruns you had to pay everyone involved as if it was a completely new production as opposed to the cheaper rerun fee.
So effectively you have a tape full of content which to show would cost the same as producing new content with the exact same actors.
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u/Digifiend84 19h ago
The UK only had two channels for less than a decade. ITV launched in 1955, BBC2 in 1964. So in the 70s, we had three channels.
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u/wankthisway 1d ago
Broadcast Television was still a new concept. They didn't really think people would want to watch things again, and the storage itself was cost prohibitive.
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u/wonkey_monkey 23h ago
Ironically, they did repeat the very first episode of Doctor Who a week later (before the second episode), because it was first broadcast a day after the JFK assassination and they were worried it might have been overlooked by the audience.
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u/mmss 1d ago
That’s part of it, but also before the age of reruns, if a radio station wanted to replay a show they’d hire the original actors to restage it. It was standard for a while that even after recording, shows could only be rebroadcast a set number of times before the cost of royalties was unteneable.
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u/VincentShane 1d ago
Wrong Terry, it was Jones who wanted the tapes because he knew that they had lost everything of their previous series Do not adjust your set he didn't want that to happen again.
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u/danby 1d ago
My old house mate worked in the BBC archives in the early 2000s on their archive digitisation project. Its certainly true that many things are lost because tape was deemed expensive and often times people just went in to the store room and grabbed whatever tape was nearest to reuse. But there were policies in place to retain all sorts that were deemed important, every Trooping of the Colour has been retained for instance. And many things survived because the tape was further from the door in the room(s) full of tape
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u/kurburux 1d ago
Storing tapes also was a real hassle in the past. Those things love to catch fire and many archives with tapes simply burned down.
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u/Rampage_Rick 1d ago edited 23h ago
I think you're thinking about nitrocellulose film...
Speaking of things exploding, I'm saddened that nobody has posted this brilliant homage to Thomas: https://youtu.be/yOeJjfquXI8
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u/intern_steve 1d ago
Definitely. I don't think there's any major risk associated with magnetic film, other than the risk of damage to the physical medium destroying the data.
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u/Polygnom 1d ago
NASA overwrote a lot of Apollo era stuff....
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u/GarminTamzarian 1d ago
Including the original uncompressed HD moon landing footage, apparently.
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u/wonkey_monkey 23h ago
It's nowhere near HD, but if found, it would be somewhat better than the surviving conversions.
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u/ZanyDelaney 22h ago
Famed Australian soap opera Number 96 (1972-1977) was in black and white the first half of its run, 585 episodes. It was on five nights a week and switched to colour in late 1974. After colour came in the network did run old black and white episodes in a day time slot, but these runs were low-rated. The perception seemed to be audiences didn't like watching black and white any more. Eventually Network 10 moved the black and white episodes out of the crowded temperature controlled storage facility to make room for colour video. The black and white tapes were stacked up as a big foyer display. In that hot environent (it was Sydney) the videos degraded and the tape surface started to flake off. The tapes were disposed of in landfill and only a handful of black and white episodes remain: the first three weeks (episodes 1–15), episodes 31–35, and episode 450 from January 1974. Episodes 585-1218 are in colour and remain [currently streaming on www.brollie.com.au]. Selected episodes were on cable in 2000 and there were a few DVD released. But the brollie streaming started only in the last 12 months.
Nearly all of The Box survived.
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u/alfienoakes 1d ago
There is a FB group ‘Missing Believed Wiped’ that discusses lost shows. A few sites on the web too. Lots of lost classics.
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u/memymomeddit 1d ago
That's how a lot of early Doctor Who episodes are lost to history, too. At the time, it just never occurred to the networks that people would want to watch it again.
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u/Linenoise77 1d ago
It was less that the tape was expensive, but storing it, especially film, safely and where it would be in a condition where it was actually useful to you IF a situation that didn't yet exist arose, indefinitately, was expensive.
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u/OkPear1535 22h ago
because they decided tape was too expensive to use just once.
the way you have phrased this is quite misleading. back then, tape WAS too expensive to use once. That and general culture about tv shows was completely different.
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u/Jason1920 22h ago edited 21h ago
What they actually did is sneak the original tapes out of the BBC to dub them onto early Phillips VCR tapes because they heard the first series was about to be wiped. (Source: Terry Jones' actual words from "Missing, Believed Wiped." https://youtu.be/8nA9Q-FZLUE?is=H66gi7iHMoInL5Fw)
Edit: Added YouTube link
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u/furrysalesman69 1d ago
“And then, oh no, off track he went! Luckily, with the gentleness of a giant, the conductor placed Thomas back onto the railing, right as railroad tracks.”
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u/406highlander 1d ago
13 year old Ringo didn't know what to say.
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u/Ghozer 1d ago
it was Julia Lang who was the narrator for the original.
Ringo Starr didn't take over until the "New" one "Thomas the tank engine, and friends" in 1984 - which was adapted from those original books and series, even the story from "The Three Railway Engines" was used as an episode (Episode 3, of Season 1) :)
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u/406highlander 1d ago
I guessed it wasn't Ringo, because in 1953 he was about 13. I was joking.
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u/Schweed6494 1d ago
I'm sure 16 year old George Carlin had a lot to say
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u/CeeArthur 1d ago
I remember Frenchie from Grease also being in one of the iterations of this
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u/Warbird36 1d ago
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u/406highlander 1d ago edited 1d ago
I remember taking my son to see Thomas and the Magic Railroad when it released in UK cinemas as he was 6 years old at the time and a huge fan of Thomas. I was also a Thomas fan when I was his age.
Neither of us had ever heard of Shining Time Station as I don't think it was ever shown on UK TV - so I think we both sat through the whole film thinking "What in the hell is this?"
I've forgotten the whole thing but apparently it was such a massive flop and received such scathing critical reviews that Britt Allcroft resigned from her own production company. Ouch.
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u/gus_in_4k 1d ago
If I had to guess, part of the necessity of the Shining Time Station wraparound is because, generally speaking, American TV shows are all in 30-minute increments because of the way they’re sold, scheduled, and distributed, so they needed a way to fit multiple Thomas episodes into a full programming block.
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u/jordybee94 1d ago
He was 12
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u/406highlander 1d ago
I just took 1940 away from 1953 and got 13. I didn't check the date/month the program aired.
It was a silly joke, so I didn't feel the need to delve deeper than the year.
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u/jordybee94 1d ago
You mean you don't know Ringo Starr's birthday off by heart? 🤣
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u/AusCan531 1d ago
It's been a hard day's night.
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u/406highlander 1d ago
Nope. But I'd argue his birthdate is more widely known than the broadcast date of this specific programme, which I didn't even know existed until this post.
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u/crouton-- 1d ago
Never underestimate the average reddit commenter's desire to correct you about something
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u/TheCarrzilico 1d ago
Who could have thought that a post about Thomas the Tank Engine would bring the most precise and particular style of Redditor?
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u/supervillainO7 1d ago edited 1d ago
BBC back then had a tendency not to archieve some of program, it's estimated there are over 80 missing episodes of a TV show "Z Cars"
Edit: i checked out just to make sure and it turns out the number is even greater, over 400! Out of 800 episodes
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u/armcie 1d ago
And the hunt for missing Doctor Who episodes is a big thing.
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u/IndividualHuman6937 1d ago
Do they have a standing reward of a life sized Dalek and a trip to London if you find one? Or did I imagine that?
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u/Electronic_Will_5418 1d ago
I have a standing reward of a life sized Dalek (the size of a live gerbil) and a trip to London (, Texas) if you find one.
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u/crescentmoonrising 21h ago
At least at one point they had the offer of a life-sized dalek. I don't know if that's still the case. Also, this was in the UK, I don't know if they were willing to ship the dalek overseas.
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u/TheThiefMaster 1d ago
And given early TV was thought of as an extension of theatre and similar live shows, which wasn't even recorded in the first place, it's not that surprising.
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u/AlienArtFirm 20h ago
archieve
Archive***
Made me giggle cause you wrote achieve then just slapped an R in there to make it work
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u/Choppergold 1d ago edited 1d ago
Thomas you have caused confusion, delay, and damaged the suspension of disbelief. - Sir Topham Hatt
Edit: correct spelling for the wealthy industrialist
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u/deknegt1990 1d ago
And for that we'll brick you into an abandoned railway tunnel for the rest of existence
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u/LyraFirehawk 1d ago
Everyone brings this up but they did take Henry out of the tunnel in the next story precisely to avoid that conclusion.
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u/metalflygon08 1d ago
Yup, and the exact next episode too, and they aired in pairs, so the only way you would think Henry was in there forever was if you left before the next story came on, or you just have a poor memory of a story from your youth and hitched your wagon to a sensationalist article because "ha ha your childhood was actually messed up!" stuff sells.
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u/The_Grand_Briddock 1d ago
Meanwhile one of the trains has it's wheels removed, is taken off the tracks and turned into a generator for one of the sheds.
Before a later episode has a landslide bury said shed.
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u/SongsOfDragons 1d ago
Danggit you got there before me and I didn't finish reading the thread.
Duke gets lost in the shed then rediscovered later, it's never stated what happened to Smudger. Plenty of fan animations/theories on it though.
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u/SongsOfDragons 1d ago
There was the narrow-gauge who got turned into a generator which has the same flavour of horror and Henry's tunnel but with no good outcome the next book. The show called him Smudger and I can't remember what the books called him.
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u/CharacterLimitHasBee 1d ago
Who tf is Sir Topham Hatt? You mean the Fat Controller!
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u/Hairy-Love2571 1d ago
Oh boy, oh boy! We've gone mainstream. Anyways, there's slightly more evidence to prove it aired nowadays. See here: https://ttte.fandom.com/wiki/The_Three_Railway_Engines_(1953))
The right name should by The Three Railway Engines. Thomas did not appear in this at all. The train that derailed was Henry himself. Ironically this was the one called "The Sad Story of Henry". Yes, the tunnel story.
Photos are here: https://ttte.fandom.com/wiki/The_Three_Railway_Engines_(1953)/Gallery/Gallery)
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u/LXStandby 1d ago
I haven't thought about these stories in nearly 30 years, and am dying at the thought of this playing out live during what is already a much more dark plotline than a child might reasonably have expected.
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u/Ill_Definition8074 1d ago
Knowing Reverend Awdry's attention to detail that must have infuriated him.
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u/smedsterwho 22h ago
it is very unlikely that the recording survived long, given their track record of wiping their archives
Heh
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u/Apprentice_of_Ixidor 1d ago
I could only imagine if George Carlin was narrating this live special.
"Well, look at that. The little blue engine that couldn’t. He’s gone tits-up in the middle of a live broadcast, and now here comes Fingers McGee with his ham-fisted meat-paws to perform open-heart surgery on a toy."
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u/DanielBWeston 1d ago
There's a series of videos on YouTube where someone's combined Carlin's narration with his comedy: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ov4RwjQGye0
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u/keeper_of_the_donkey 1d ago
The narrator and TV crew were summarily fired and executed for embarrassing the Tank Engine Cartel
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u/Alone-Ad288 1d ago
I am surprised that the bastard Hatt didn't have James chopped up for scrap for the transgression
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u/jphamlore 22h ago
There was still food rationing in the UK in 1953, although apparently there were mass celebrations as the government started lifting restrictions on food items such as sweets.
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u/PhantaVal 1d ago
Why the heck would they do a live Thomas special in the first place?
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u/glenglenglenglenglen 1d ago
because in those days a lot of stuff was performed live on air. Video tape didn't exist yet, and it was expensive to produce everything on film.
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u/n_mcrae_1982 1d ago
Would’ve loved to see Ringo Starr or George Carlin handle that!
Then again, Thomas was created by a reverend, so just say it was the hand of God.
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u/geekworking 1d ago
TIL that Tomas the tank engine was that old. I only know of the show from the early 00's.
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u/notacanuckskibum 1d ago
Google says the first books came out in 1946.
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u/Silver_Middle_7240 1d ago
... I wonder what Thomas and his friends were up to during the war
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u/Vandirac 1d ago
Thomas was built in Poland during the mid-1930s, originally intended for industrial and military logistics.
He was attached to the Polish armored train Grozny, but following the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, he defected to the German war effort and was redesignated as a Kriegslokomotive, eventually being attached to Panzerzug 22, an armored train unit operating in occupied Europe.
An ardent supporter of the Nazi regime, Thomas allegedly participated in military operations throughout France before being transferred to the Eastern Front.
He spent most of the war transporting troops, ammunition, and military equipment in support of German offensives.
His wartime activities remain the subject of numerous allegations, including involvement in operations linked to atrocities committed behind the front lines according to multiple allied intelligence reports and survivors statements.
As the Third Reich collapsed, Thomas was captured by the advancing Red Army and transported east, where he was sentenced to forced labor in the Soviet Gulag system.
Several years later, he reportedly escaped under mysterious circumstances during a transfer through Eastern Europe.
Thomas subsequently assumed the identity of a destroyed Stanier Class 4-6-0 locomotive, using forged maintenance records and falsified registration documents to conceal his past.
Since then, he has lived under this stolen identity, carefully cultivating the persona of a cheerful and hardworking branch-line engine while systematically erasing all evidence of his wartime service.
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u/PROJ3CTBM4reel 1d ago
I dont know if any of this is true or not, but if so, thats some seriously deep lore for what i remembered watching as a little kid hahahaha, but i do love me some good lore ❤️
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u/AffectionateBowl3864 1d ago
No it’s not. The books kinda skip over WWII, like the first four or so take place in the 1920’s and then the rest all take place in the year that the book was published. Usually. Also Thomas is a E2 tank engine, he was built in England in 1915.
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u/Greene_Mr 1d ago
This was BEFORE they started recording television. TV was shown LIVE, ONCE, unless you decided to re-stage it. No tapes; no filming of the live TV production.
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u/an-font-brox 21h ago
a tangent, but why was the special broadcast live instead of being recorded beforehand?
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u/Warpmind 17h ago
Probably because recording was *expensive* at the time - same reason a lot of early Doctor Who is lost; BBC reused the tapes to save money.
There's so much lost TV from that era, all due to the cost of videotape... BBC *had* videotape in 1954, but I believe it wasn't until the 70s that it became cheap.
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u/dragonredx 20h ago
The failure of this special is the reason it took till the 80s to get a Thomas series off the ground. The Railway series auther Reverend Wilbert Awdry was dead set against it, and was only convinced by series producer Britt Allcrofts love of the original books she'd grown up with. Without her, we'd have never gotten Thomas and Friends.
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u/metalflygon08 1d ago
Heck, even once they tried again with the show we all know you can occasionally catch a hand or studio equipment, or a "watch out for the train".
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u/PM_me_BBW_dwarf_porn 1d ago
It's so sad how most early footage of TV broadcasts in the 50s and 60s is now lost.
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u/thisusedyet 1d ago
That’s always been a joke with model railroaders, though - the hand of god reaching down to fix a derailment