Percy

". . . a green caterpillar with red stripes. You crawl like one too."

- Thomas, "Tramway Engines"

Percy is #6 and the second tank engine on the North Western Railway. He was bought during a strike by the big engines and ran Thomas' branch line while the big engines were shut up for being naughty and Thomas and Edward ran the main line. He was later waiting at Tidmouth but forgot to whistle when Gordon came running towards him with the Express. Gordon managed to stop in time, but Percy was frightened, ran away, and ended up in sandbank. Later, after Duck came, he was sent to Tidmouth to help build the harbour, and stayed ever since. When Thomas is away, he takes Annie and Clarabel.

He has one book based around him: "Percy the Small Engine".

Percy is based off an Avonside 0-4-0ST with a body of a GWR #1340 "Trojan", minus the bunker.

The Green Caterpillar
The Reverend W. Awdry and C. Reginald Dalby did not get along very well. Awdry considered Dalby's drawings as "toylike". This relationship was strained further by the creation of Percy, who was first depicted as an Avonside 0-4-0ST, crossed with a GWR #1340 "Trojan" with a bunker! When "Percy the Small Engine" was published, Awdry wrote to C. Reginald Dalby critisicing his illustrations and saying Percy resembled "a green catepillar with red stripes". This was too much for Dalby, and he promptly resigned. However, the insult was not forgotten: Thomas called Percy "a green catepillar with red stripes" in "Tramway Engines" for dawdling with his hay duties.

"Percy's lost his brain"
As the television series has progressed, Percy has been "dumbed down", in order to teach viewers difficult words: for example, he would say "dingy-fried" where we would say "dignified". He also is shown to make obvious mistakes, such as thinking Harold was counting sheep on one occasion.

Accidentally on purpose?
Percy has been shown to be incredibly accident-prone, both minor and serious. Percy also holds the dubious record of the most accidents in the television series (five, in the second season: crashing into some buffers, falling into the sea, being pushed onto a truck, colliding with a cart and being hit by a falling crate of treacle).