Henry/Behind the Scenes

The Railway Series
Henry is a fictional standard gauge tender locomotive created by the Rev. W. Awdry. He is the No. 3 engine on the North Western Railway.

He first appeared in the Railway Series book, The Three Railway Engines, which was published in 1945. His last appearance was in Thomas and his Friends, published in 2011.

Front of Henry:

In real-life
The Reverend W. Awdry had a great deal of trouble with Henry. Originally, Awdry had illustrated him as a 4-4-2 Atlantic, however William Middleton changed this when he illustrated him as a 4-6-2 Pacific similar to Gordon. Awdry was especially unhappy with C. Reginald Dalby's illustrations: he looked almost identical to Gordon, more so while he was painted blue - in Tank Engine Thomas Again, Henry looked completely identical to Gordon, but this was passed off by explaining he needed to use Gordon's buffers while his were being repaired. To make matters worse, he was illustrated inconsistently, often having several different shapes within the space of a single story - in most of Dalby's illustrations Henry was portrayed incorrectly as a 4-6-0 instead of a 4-6-2.

Awdry's original idea had been to write Henry out of the series, but by "Henry the Green Engine" he had decided to instead have Henry involved in a serious accident, allowing him to be rebuilt into a Class 5MT. As this was a real locomotive, Dalby was thus forced to be consistent. Since then, Awdry would base all his locomotive characters on real-life prototypes and for such characters as Edward, Gordon, James and Percy, he would invent backstories for them.

In the Railway Series
According to The Island of Sodor: Its People, History and Railways (TIOS), Henry was an experimental locomotive built from plans stolen from Sir Nigel Gresley, but the wrong plans were taken and the locomotive built was so riddled with faults that the only person who could be persuaded to buy it was the Fat Controller, who, at the time, was desperate for any locomotive he could get.

There is a certain amount of argument over Henry's rebuild, caused by "TIOS", which was written to provide historical background to the Railway Series and to correct pictorial inconsistencies that had occurred in earlier volumes. The Reverend W. Awdry claimed that the pre-rebuild and post-rebuild Henry were actually two completely separate engines, although in the Railway Series, Henry seemed familiar with events that happened before the crash. Henry's memory could have simply survived the rebuild, but as both sources can be considered equally canonical, the question of whether there have been two Henrys or one will likely remain unanswered.

"TIOS" also featured a biography of the Fat Controller, which mentioned that he was apprenticed with Stanier at Swindon Works. It is possible that this was another piece of retcon added to explain how Henry was able to be rebuilt so easily - something that even the Reverend W. Awdry admitted was "a mystery".

In Sodor: Reading Between the Lines Henry was said to look very much like a Stanier 5MT, which suggests that he is not totally identical to one of these engines. It is not clear why Christopher Awdry should have felt the need to contradict his father, but it could simply be a combination of errors and publication deadlines.

In the Television Series
Henry was introduced in the television series in 1984 when the first series premiered and has appeared in every series since.

Many of the early episodes focusing on Henry feature him reprising his roles from the Railway Series. Unlike the Railway Series, Henry was never painted blue following the events of Edward, Gordon and Henry. This was done due to production costs and so that viewers would not mistake him for Gordon, as this was a notable issue in the book Tank Engine Thomas Again.

In the eighth series, Henry was among the members of the Steam Team, the main cast of eight central characters. However, starting with the twenty-second series, Henry (along with Edward and Toby) was removed from the Steam Team in favour of Rebecca to join in order to fix the gender imbalance at Tidmouth Sheds and diversify the Thomas and Friends franchise. He now appears as a major supporting character, however, he has not had any major roles so far since his removal from the Steam Team.

Kevin Frank voiced the character in Thomas and the Magic Railroad, giving the character a faint but noticable British accent. Keith Wickham assumed the character's role in the UK and Kerry Shale in the US (Martin Sherman originally auditioned for Henry). While Wickham maintains Henry with a British accent, Kerry Shale's performance is clearly American, though earlier post-Hero of the Rails episodes had his voice at a lower pitch than usual, before his voice became higher in following productions.

Gauge 1 model
Henry's original model was custom built with a perspex body shell and used a Märklin locomotive as a donor for the chassis and various parts. It was painted using automotive paint and lined with red automotive pinstripe tape with the numbers being custom cut vinyl stickers.

Henry's main chassis was sourced from a gauge 1 locomotive made by Märklin, the BR 78, while the tender wheels were from the tender of the BR 55. The bufferbeams and dome were also from the BR 78 as well as the handrail stanchions, tender steps, cab controls and tender details.

His model was built with the ability to be changed to his "old" shape or "new" shape when needed due to the series being filmed out of sequence. His "old" shape features splashers, a tapered firebox and no top feed or exterior steam pipes, while his new shape did have the top feed and exterior steam pipes as well as a Belpaire firebox, but no splashers.

Henry’s perspex model was originally AC powered as this is how the Märklin locomotives were powered. This required the polarity switch which was originally mounted in front of the main motor to be moved to the tender, allowing space for the smoke mechanism which sat in between the motor and eye mechanism. During a refurbishment his AC motor was replaced by a DC motor to allow for easier running and maintenance.

CGI model
In 2009, the television series introduced Computer-Generated Imagery (CGI) as a replacement for the show's long-standing live-action models. Henry's CGI model was identical to his Gauge 1 model but has had slight modifications:
 * Hero of the Rails:
 * He lost his front brake-pipe outlet.
 * His crow's feet reappeared.
 * The red lining on his wheel arches became thinner and he got lining on the back of his cut-off wheel arch.
 * The inside of his tender became green.
 * The top of his tender is slightly lowered.
 * Series 17:
 * He regains his permanent lamp and tail lamp.
 * The Adventure Begins:
 * His connecting rods became silver.

Voice Actors

 * Kevin Frank
 * Keith Wickham
 * Kerry Shale
 * Ryō Horikawa
 * Kenji Utsumi
 * Jun'ichi Kanemaru
 * Nozomu Sasaki
 * Kenta Miyake
 * Fabrice Trojani
 * Espen Sandvik
 * Ambrogio Colombo
 * Blas García
 * Luis Alfonso Padilla
 * Ricardo Silva
 * Arturo Mercado Jr.
 * Wolf Rüdiger Reutermann
 * Michael Bideller
 * Lutz Herkenrath
 * Q. Gray
 * Cezary Kwieciński
 * Reinder van der Naalt
 * Dov Reiser
 * Dor Srugo
 * Yoli Seker
 * Caspar Phillipson
 * Henrique Reis
 * Ulisses Bezerra
 * Juan Navarro Torelló
 * Jukka Voutilainen
 * Jarmo Koski
 * Trưởng Tân
 * Seder Gabor
 * Alexander Kotov
 * Loukas Frangoulis