Mighty Mac/Behind the Scenes

Television Series
Mighty Mac is a fictional narrow gauge double-ended Fairlie duplex locomotive created by Paul Larson. They are based on Double Fairlie locomotive of the Ffestiniog Railway.

In 2005, Mighty Mac made his debut in Season 9 of Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends in an episode of the same name. He later appeared in Seasons 10, 11, and 12, and also in The Great Discovery.

Despite the opposing personalities of the two ends, they are technically one engine. And have always been referred to as "he" by the narrator, as opposed to "they".

Mighty Mac has not appear in the television series since 2008.

O gauge model (Large scale)
Mighty Mac's model was built to a larger scale than the gauge 1 engines and ran on O gauge track. They were close to 16mm scale, but slightly larger.

There were 7 different facial expressions worn by Mighty on screen, and 6 different facial expressions worn by Mac. The faces were first sculpted in clay and from that resin casts were made of a silicone mould. Mighty is distinguished by a small flick of hair, a sharp nose and described as being slightly older. While Mac is distinguished by his youthful features, round nose and freckled cheeks.

The model was made from brass. The wheels and chassis were custom machined (CNC). The model was track powered, so pickup contacts were attached to the metal wheels, which ran into the motor to power it. The electricity ran from the track to the wheels/pickup contacts and went into the motor to power him. The model was also fitted with a smoke unit.

The eye mechanism had two servos for each character, one for up and down movement and one for left and right movement. The up/down servo was attached to the body. The left/right servo had a rod attached to the arm, which connected to a bracket. The eye balls were coupled to the bracket and locked in by the face-plate, so whenever the servos were powered, the eye balls would move however the crew member desired.

Season 12 marked the beginning of the show's transition into CGI and the characters' faces were animated through CGI with the aid of motion capture animation. The physical models' molded faces were replaced by white targets with triangles to fix a computer-animated face in post-production.