Rusty/Behind the Scenes

The Railway Series
Rusty is a fictional narrow gauge diesel locomotive working on the Skarloey Railway created by the Rev. W. Awdry. He first appeared in the Railway Series book, The Little Old Engine, which was published in 1959.

Rusty is based on the Talyllyn Railway No.5 locomotive, Midlander. Several events that occurred with Midlander were mirrored with his fictional counterpart. The locomotive has also been used by the Talyllyn Railway to represent Rusty in real life.

Television Series
In 1995, Rusty was introduced in Season 4 of Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends. The season placed a great focus on the Narrow Gauge characters, with a number of stories from the original books televised. In the Railway Series, Rusty was painted black. Whereas, Rusty is painted orange (presumably to match his name).

After being absent with the other Narrow Gauge engines for Season 8, Rusty returned to the series in the following season. In the classic era of Thomas and Friends, Rusty is portrayed as a friendly diesel and dedicated worker. However, as the series progressed, Rusty's character gradually becamed altered under the influence of HiT Entertainment. In the HiT era, Rusty had an occasional habit of being impatient, careless, and prone to procrastination.

When the show transitioned into full CGI in 2009, the narrow gauge engines were absent for 3 years. Rusty later returned in the 2012 special, Blue Mountain Mystery, along with Skarloey, Rheneas, Sir Handel, and Peter Sam. In the CGI series, he is regained his original personality and seen frequently working at the Blue Mountain Quarry. Since Season 19, the Skarloey Railway has been underutilised, this may be due to the fact that Mattel, the current owner's of the Thomas franchise, have deemed them too obscure.

According to a New York Times article from 1995, Britt Allcroft intended to make Rusty gender neutral. Because of this, the Season 4 episodes removed or changed any instance of Rusty being referred to in gender-specific pronouns, as the original Railway Series stories refer to him as male. Throughout Season 4 to Season 7, Rusty was referred as "the Little Diesel" or by name. It was not until Season 9 that Rusty was referred to in gender-specific pronouns in the episodes, Tuneful Toots and Duncan and the Old Mine. The UK dub now referred to Rusty as male, whereas the original US dubs referred to Rusty as female. The US dub was later edited for their DVD releases, now identifying Rusty as male.

From Spring 2012 onwards, Rusty is now currently voiced by Matt Wilkinson (UK/US) in the CGI version of the series in both sides of the atlantic, respectively. Matt Wilkinson gives Rusty a West Country accent.

O gauge model (Small scale)
Rusty's small model was custom built from brass by model maker, Peter Eves to run on O gauge track to the Gauge 1 Scale Standard during production of Season 4. It was painted using glossy car body paint and lined with yellow Letraline pin-striping tape. The number and nameplates were custom printed stickers.

Rusty's wheels were sourced from unspoked SM32 "Quarry Hunslet" wheels. These wheels were used on an O gauge locomotive chassis. The buffers were sourced from Slater's Plasticard as well, with most engines using the square based short sprung buffers. .

O gauge model (Large scale)
For ease of filming and reliability, Season 5 introduce larger-scale versions of the narrow gauge engines, and from Season 6-12, these models were used almost exclusively. The larger-scale models were 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.