Okay, I know that I could have started a loaded topic with my title, but I found this video on Youtube of “current” Thomas footage, a montage of accidents, set to that funky spanish music
I mean, I watched Thomas the Tank engine as a kid, almost 14 years ago, and it was NEVER this violent. The worst I can remember was Henry running out of control and putting his face through a barbershop, conviently located at the end of a spur, directly in line with the tracks. But no one got hurt, the locomotive got pulled out, and things went on.
After watching this, I’m not surprised that people are starting to act dumber and dumber around trains. I know that its not real, and that there is a funny element to a train reear-ending a tank car filled with something gooey, and then getting covered in it the goo. But its not funny when it happens constantly. I mean, what do giant landslides and trains constantly getting shoved down hills and around curves too fast have to do with a kids show? If real trains were that accident prone, we have ridden ourselves of them long ago.
I mean, I understand that what we tollerate today is a lot different then what we tollerated 14 years ago, but I find this to be downright stupid. Talk to someone whos had a box car wander into their back yard, and see how happy they are. Its no better being an engineer seeing something ahead on the tracks thats not moving, or just as bad realizing that the building out the front window is receeding into the distance when the train is supposed to be stopped.
Don’t we spend lots of time and money on programs like Operation Lifesaver to discourage this attitude? Maybe im just in a bad mood, and maybe I’m just happier remembering the old Thomas better. Either way, any comments?
Personally I believe your memory is faded. I also believe Thomas is about life’s lessons as compared to rail roading. I guess it depends on our definition of what violence is also.
It always was, my little brother watches my old Thomas videos, and there’s lots of crashes. Anyone remember “The Flying Kipper”? There were many accidents on the older Thomas.
lol that video made me laugh, Thomas hasnt changed much since the Shining Time Station days. I bought a bunch of the newer DVD’s from SAM’s Club that come with the BRIO Thomas & Friends various engines for my sisters son and watched a few episodes with him its all about life lessons same as allways [;)]
I believe it was "duck’ that went into the barbershop.thomas came to the station masters for breakfast.sir topham hatt doesn’t like engines to cause confusion and delay.sometimes they get put in the shed for awhile.Its just a show to help kids what railroading is about.When your son understands that the slack action in autoracks can break an air hose and says that happened to james and his passenger cars.you see the connection.
My favorite in the stories is when some amazing accident happens, like Thomas catches fire and flies off a bridge into a school building while pulling a string of gasoline tank cars leaving a scene of ruin and destruction…after which the narrator says “luckily, no one was hurt”. [:D]
I think the music is Herb Alpert and the Tiajuana Brass(??)
I’ve waiting my whole life for someone to allude to “The Flying Kipper!” Crew drinking cocoa in the caboose (“guard’s van”) and a locomotive crashes into it, injuring - none of them. One guy wound up upside down in the snow.
And then there’s the one where Percy demolishes the baggage truck as he drifts through the station - a story Awdry cribbed pretty much as written from C. Hamilton Ellis’s “The Trains We Loved” (something I realized years later, when I instantly recognized the scene - although to do Awdry justice, I think he admitted the lift in his Forward).
I think we confuse cause and effect on cartoons. Children (people) have a latent streak of black humor, and they enjoy the sight of disruption. The first thing my little son managed to do with his wooden railroad was wreck trains. Don’t know why it is; maybe it’s because grownups spend a lot of time and effort putting the world in order, and the only thing a toddler can really do is disrupt that order. But they have limits; they’re not little sociopaths. When my son realizes he has broken something, rather than just moved or upset it, he gets upset and cries; he seems genuinely remorseful. Train wrecks in cartoons are like that; engines aren’t reduced to twisted wreckage; they’re banged up a bit and upset. It’s funny when it’s an impermanent condition; if it were real, it would not be funny at all, which is one reason why Thomas-style train wrecks look a lot more like model train wrecks than the real thing. There’s nothing funny about the sight of the real thing.
This is a child, I should note, who has watched almost no TV.
Wow. I don’t remember any massive boulders crushing engine houses from when I watched them, then going up in flames, or ore cars falling off trestles, or any of those![:-,]
You sort of remember it right. But the crew, as usual, got out just in time.
From how I remember the infamous Kipper, the crew were drinking cocoa when one guy said the Kipper is due so they should head to the locomotive. One guy said the cocoa is good and didn’t want to leave, but they did leave and like I said before just in the nick of time. Poor Henry got walloped and the caboose shattered. As a result, Henry went to the works and came out with a new boiler so he could use the same coal all the other steamers used.
If you remember, at the time of the Kipper wreck Henry was on special “Welsh coal” since he was having trouble steaming on the regular coal. Things might have been different if he wasn’t on the better coal. Henry might never have gotten the Kipper out of port with weak steam and the accident might never have happened.
On the linked video the first two come from what can be called the “original” videos. The second clip is of the Flying Kipper wreck. All the others seem new to me. That Gordon wreck was severe…he just kept going. Was the one with all the rocks from an earthquake or something? Man are those some “trouble some trucks”, a lot look like they get destroyed [:O]
Ah, but the overall Thomas videos make for some fun memories and stories. Henry and Gordon are my favorites [:)]
Haha ha [(-D]. Not the best of memories (more photographic though), but I do remember spending the whole summer at a place that only got three TV stations; ABC, NBC, and CBS…and ABC was very fuzzy. But they had a VCR and 5 Thomas tapes! They were blue, red, green, yellow, and purple. So I don’t know how many times I watched those over and over again, but the stories are still pretty fresh.
I grew up with Thomas, and still have all of the 12 or so original videos from way back when.
About half of the scenes in that I seem to recall from those videos I had. The first scene was James with the troublesome trucks, and also the Flying Kipper, I recognise as from the videos I have. The two scenes with Donald and Douglas, with one crashing into the brakevan and the other backing into the switch house were from those early video. All of these scenes were in also in the original Audrey print stories, which I believe were the only source for the original videos.
Also, I’m pretty sure that the scene with the narrow gauge engine being pushed by the slate trucks was from the original print stories.
I spent way too much time watching those videos when I was younger
lol…some of those accidends were so funny, especially when Gordon went on and on through all of that stuff [(-D]. I remember three of the scenes in the video, the first crash was from the “Dirty Objects” episode (I think it may have been re-named for the US), the second crash was from the “Flying Kipper” episode, and the rockslide at the end of the video was from an episode called “Heroes” with Bill & Ben, who pulled all of the workers out of the mine just in time.
I don’t think Thomas has got any more violent - the crashes are just a little more un-real. Some of the crashes remind me of MSTS trains flying through the air in all directions (lol)…I have the “Calling All Engines” DVD and in one scene, Diesel slams into a flatcar loaded with paint that was in back of Thomas; the flatcar flew into the air and landed on Thomas, covering him with paint (and Diesel somehow stopped instantly). They are, however, very entertaining for Thomas, and the engines are usually sorry for doing it afterwards.
Ringo Starr was the best narrarator hands down. The English “understatement” in the humor on that show was best delivered by an Englishman, because the American narrators didn’t quite get the nuances. Although, after Ringo, I rather like the job George Carlin did… Alec Baldwin or whomever does it now isn’t as good.
Speaking of Shining Time Station, during the closing credits, was that footage of a UP Big Boy pulling a train? I can’t seem to remember. My oldest son, who is now almost 19 was a huge Thomas fan…
The footage in the credits (and the beginning) is UP 844, the 4-8-4 Northern. Back when the footage was shot it was numbered 8444. I remember other scenes in Shining Time Station, such as when the jukebox band was playing, they’d show clips of it and other steam engines (Norfolk & Western and Chessie System if I remember right).
