h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I've often wondered why I cant get hold of the classic Thomas books, and now I know. Thanks for this!

It's a pleasure

I enjoyed this one too. Any chance you can provide information on which real locomotive each character was based on? - I noticed you did so for Duck and Gordon. I'm particularly curious to know about Henry and Edward. I think that James may be based on an LMS Black 5, but I can't be sure.

One of the makers of the models (Brio or one of the others) used to detail this on the back of the model packs if that helps.

Henry is based on a LMS/BR black 5 4-6-0, Edward is a North British Railway D30 4-4-0, and James isn't based on an exact engine but the closest is a CR Mogul 2-6-0.

A real expert

You can get all the Rev Awdry "T the T" stories through "The Book People" (or at least you could - and I did a couple of months ago) - and for a very reasonable price too.

Note that Douglas and Donald are only black in the first book in which they appear (unless you're the tv series) - they choose to be painted blue at the end of the book, and subsequent illustrations show them in their blue livery.

Hi, I've updated my site a lot recently, killed a few red herrings.
It's still at http://www.geocities.com/martinclutt/awdry/

Thanks

Researcher 194261
Name: MartinR
Last posted: Jun 26, 2002

Is there someway I can berth this material with the H2G2 mothership

Martin

Hi there... there's absolutely nothing stopping you writing up an entry on the real engines behind the series... I think it would be a great compliment to the entries already here...

Just hit the "add entry" button and get typing

Now... what you might want to check out is the copyright issues... anything you post on h2g2 becomes the joint property of yourself and the BBC... you still have copyright, but you've also given the BBC the right to do whatever they want with your work. (Including re-publishing etc...)

My suggestion would be write up an entry with enough information to get into the edited guide (have a look at the current entries in PeerReview and the Writing-Guidelines for what's expected, then link to your own site from your h2g2 entry if people want any more information (mainly because you can't use pictures on this site so you'll loose a lot of the visual impact.

If you need a hand at all, just shout.