Thomas the Train: Anniversary of a Legend
For those of us who grew up hearing the stories and reading the
books, Thomas the Train is a living legend. On 2005, Thomas and,
of course, his friends celebrated their sixtieth birthday. Back
in 1945, in England, the Anglican reverend Wilbert Awdry started
the Railway Series by writing the first book. From that moment
on, an entire generation of children has learned to love the
beautiful adventures lived by Thomas the Train and his group of
human-faced friends.
When he was a little boy in Box, Wiltshire, in his father's
vicarage (his father was also a clergyman), Wilbert Awdry
dedicated his nights listening to the sounds made by the trains
of the Great Western Railway running along the main line. This
main line went between Paddington to Bristol, and passed near
Vere Awdry's (Wilbert's father) house. He spent hours imagining
the "conversations" between those trains. He may not have
realized it yet, but Thomas the Train was already being born.
In the year of 1943, reverend Awdry's son, Christopher, happened
to be ill in bed. As with every child, he was very active and
being in bed was frustratingly boring for him. As an attempt to
entertain his son and keep him amused, Wilbert started making up
stories about a locomotive named Thomas the Train. As an easy
way to remember some basic information and preserve uniformity
between the stories, he wrote down some of the attributes of his
characters on a piece of paper; this way every story he told
little Christopher was consistent with the previous one. That
was a need, since Christopher's inquisitive nature and
intelligence (he was just three years old, by the way) made him
pick up differences between versions when he asked his father to
re-tell him a story. Having everything written on paper,
Reverend Awdry easily remembered every detail of the adventures
of Thomas the Train and his friends.
By the time of 1945, a retired businessman named Edmund Ward was
looking for a diversion when he heard about Wilbert Awdry's
stories. He decided to publish the first book. The first Thomas
the Train book was so successful that Mr. Edmund Ward had to
come out of his retirement to satisfy the increasing demand.
The success of the Thomas the Train and Friends' books was
amazing. Reverend Awdry had to write a high number of new
stories in order to fulfill the people's expectations.
After having written twenty-six books, Wilbert decided that he
was too old to continue writing. His son Christopher took up the
series, then. Thanks to his efforts, there are now a lot more
stories in addition to those original 26.
Thomas the Train stories will live in our hearts forever, filled
with adventures and healthy entertainment not only for children,
but for not-so-young parents too, who sometimes are even more
excited about a new Thomas the Train book than the kids
themselves. Happy birthday then, to Thomas the Train and all his
friends, and let there be many more adventures coming soon!
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