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Background information[]
The Railway Series[]
The Big City Engine is a fictional standard gauge tender engine created by the Rev. W. Awdry. He appears in The Railway Series book, The Eight Famous Engines, which was published in 1957. His last illustrated appearance was in Famous Engines, published in 1976.
Big City Engine as he appears in the Railway Series:
The Big City Engine is based on a LMS Patriot Class locomotive. All of the Patriots were withdrawn and scrapped between 1960 and 1962 in accordance with the BR Modernisation Plan.
Television Series[]
| For further information about the proposed TV series model. Click here. |
The story "Gordon Goes Foreign" from the Railway Series book The Eight Famous Engines was originally going to be adapted for the second series of the television series. To save money, the production crew wrote in concept art that Henry's Gauge 1 model would be modified to represent the Big City Engine. It is also noted that the engine would have a new face and smoke deflectors. However, due to the expensive budget, the episode was cancelled before filming was under way, and thus the engine never materialized in the television series.[1]
If he had appeared in the television series, the Big City Engine would have been based on an LMS Stanier 5MT "Black 5" 4-6-0 with smoke deflectors.
In 2014, the Take-n-Play box artwork featured a pseudo-CGI model of him made from strategically arranged gradients, despite having not appeared in the television series. In 2015, the story of "Gordon Goes Foreign" was featured in a Mr. Perkins' Storytime segment as part of Thomas' YouTube World Tour. The Railway Series illustrations were revised by Loraine Marshall. In 2020, the events of "Gordon Goes Foreign" were referenced in the twenty-fourth series double-length episode, Thomas and the Royal Engine.
