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Background Information[]
The Railway Series[]
Duck is a fictional standard gauge tank locomotive created by the Rev. W. Awdry. Duck lives and works on the North Western Railway. He carries the number 5741.
He first appeared in the Railway Series book, Percy the Small Engine, which was published in 1956. His last appearance was in Thomas and his Friends, published in 2011.
Front of Duck:
Rear of Duck:
Duck is based on the Great Western Railway 57xx Class 0-6-0 pannier tank engine with added sand boxes.
Behind the Scenes[]
Awdry's model[]
Duck originated as a GWR 57xx pannier tank engine produced by Gaiety Models in 1949, seven years before he would make his debut in The Railway Series. Awdry described the building of the model in the 1979 annual:
"DUCK was bought as a spare engine in 1949. I had promised to show the railway at a Fete, and I wanted to be ready for emergencies. He is a Great Western pannier tank engine made by Gaiety Models, a firm long since extinct. When we first tried him out, his wheels were not quite round. This gave him a waddling gait. My children promptly christened him 'Duck', and Duck he has remained ever since, even though he now has scale wheels and runs steadily. My children kept asking for stories about him, but it was not till I wrote "Percy the Small Engine" (1956) that he made his first appearance in a book."
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