What if Thomas and the Magic Railroad had never happened?

Deleted member 150598

Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends is a British stop-motion animated children's television series based on The Railway Series books by the Rev. W. Awdry which was widely successful for its time.

But to break the ice, it got a feature-length film in 2000, known as Thomas and the Magic Railroad, which was tremendously unsuccessful.

It was a crossover with an American children's programme known as Shining Time Station, which people mainly criticised it for, since British audiences weren't familiar with the series. It also suffered from plot holes galore, and didn't end up how Britt Allcroft, who not only produced the series but the film as well, envisioned it to be. As a result, it, being a $19 million budget film, made $19.7 million at the box office, which was very poor.

With the film's poor performance, Britt Allcroft had to resign her company and sell it to HiT Entertainment, who would then get the rights to Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends, but that unfortunately would let the show deteriorate into earning the reputation of being an 'educational baby show' for the next couple of years.



Although people have envisioned on how the movie could have been good, what I'm asking is: What if Thomas and the Magic Railroad was never produced? [1]





[1] Look, I hate wishing that particular works of art never existed (A.K.A. destructive criticism), but I don't know if the film being good would make a difference to its box office income.
 
With any luck they don't move to CGI animation. Part of the joy of Thomas The Tank Engine and Friends was that it was filmed using model railway locomotives and rollingstock. The young child watching it could easily imagine they were their own toys.
 
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I do feel a movie might come sooner or later even if we don't get a film in 2000. If the show keeps going from strength to strength then it might eventually see a film of some kind though I suspect they might go for a TV movie of some kind...perhaps something closer to the books as in end of steam on the mainland as mentioned in the book Enterprising Engines.

I think the real winners ITTL will be undoubtedly the heritage railways in the UK running the Day out with Thomas events as IIRC, Allcroft was very supportive of the events being essentially free PR and all profits would go to those railways. If HiT doesn't get their hands on it then the DOWT events would be more frequent and License fees would be more flexible for those railways.

I do feel though that a CGI reboot might happen down the line (no pun intended) though it might go for a more Railway Series accuracy such as starting with Three Railway Engines, maybe Edward becomes the lead here with padded out stories and more real looking character designs based on the real engines?

Sadly the later sentence I said above might've been what this new OTL reboot should've been IMO.
 
CGI is hard to avoid. While the charm of the models was superior, CGI is just easier to work with.

In a lot of ways the film was just another example of why one should keep British traditions out of American hands. Without the failure of the Magical Railroad to remind us all of that we could see an American Dr Who, God forbid.
 
Thomas the Tank Engine? A favourite of children through out the world and the Commonwealth in particular. It was the only way we could get our son to sit still for his anti-Asthma nebulisation. He had to watch Thomas. Ringo Starr was the best narrator IMO. With that horrible movie, it would still be going strong. Britt Alcroft was a magician in producing it. The models were superb and the stories well told.
 
Anybody ever notice that Awdry's "Sodor" bears a passing resemblance to Martin Frobisher's "Busse Island"? :)
803px-Maps-sodor-railways-amoswolfe.svg.png
Buss_Island.jpg
 

Deleted member 150598

I do feel though that a CGI reboot might happen down the line (no pun intended) though it might go for a more Railway Series accuracy such as starting with Three Railway Engines, maybe Edward becomes the lead here with padded out stories and more real looking character designs based on the real engines?
Ironically, there’s an alternate timeline on this website that has most of your ideas for a proper Thomas reboot (in CGI):
 
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Anybody ever notice that Awdry's "Sodor" bears a passing resemblance to Martin Frobisher's "Busse Island"? :)
The Wikipaedia article says it was inspired by the Isle of Mann and is located there between that island and Barrow-in-Furness in Cumbria.

However, to me Sodor looks vaguely like the Isle of Wight if it was turned 180 degrees. The two island's railway systems have a vague similarity too.
 
if the producers were to base their characters on the RWS and the CGI Thomas 2020
here's kits they could use
emily
running on a keyser running gear.
Stephan
hornby triang rocket oo gauge
arlesdale 15 inch railway aka The Small engines
Based on the Ravenglass and Eskdale railway
riverossi/ahm Casey jones
as one of the experimentals (journey beyond sodor )

lima
 
What if Thomas and the Magic Railroad was never produced?

Hopefully it stops the Yanks messing about with a British classic! They have introduced all kinds of crazy characters not associated with "proper" Thomas. Some of them don't even look to be based on real locomotives.

( and it is NOT Railroad. breathe. breathe. BREATHE. happy place. happy place, happ..........arrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhh! They are destroying my childhood )

With any luck they don't move to CGI animation. Part of the joy of Thomas The Tank Engine and Friends was that it was filmed using model railway locomotives and rollingstock. The young child watching it could easily imagine they were their own toys.

Indeed but the books are much better though.
 
Just thought about something, even if we butterfly away the film I still feel that sooner or later we'll get many non-Awdry characters into the show such as Emily, Rosie and Harvey etc especially with the former two to try and tackle the claims of sexism in the show with not all the engines being male though who knows how different they'd be to the OTL characters or if the remain the same is unclear. Either way I can still see this happening though would we get Pip and Emma from the books here which you'd think that especially in these days of having more female characters in the show that they would've been a shoo-in, hell in the final book Gordon retires from the express and passes the baton over toward them (subtle girl power message there anyone?), maybe they do so ITTL?

Ofc, a CGI reboot would come sooner or later as we can all imagine, though I do remember a small rumour that when they did The Adventures Begins special that it would be a reboot for the whole show, given how it does seem to act like a pilot and how the show was nearly cancelled after series 20 then maybe a reboot with Allcroft still at the helm would happen in the hope of doing more that they were limited with the models and budgets at the time, as much as I love the models like anyone else, CGI would be much easier to handle (Gordon Goes Foreign was one story that was nearly done but never happened due to budget reasons so I could see there might be a desire to get it done here.)

That all said, part of me see's the reboot being aimed at a more family audience and not just kids probably as a way to increase it's appeal to a wider audience and maybe the show would start in 1923 as when the books starts and the show ends in 2011 as when the books finally ended though who knows if we get more books in-between that time? Maybe during each decade the show's in it'll reference real world events such as depression in the 30's, war in the 40's, modernisation in the 50's and so on. Weirdly enough i don't know why but I can picture a story in which during the 70's in very subtle reference when more woman entered the workplace that we'd see female engine crews and in it Gordon having to come to grips with it, haha!

I feel tempted to write most of my ideas out in the Utopia Pop Culture TL...
 
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Deleted member 150598

I had no idea Magic Railroad was a crossover until now. Why TF did they make it a crossover for?
Shining Time Station, the show that contain Thomas episodes in between its episodes.
 
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