|
Background Information[]
The Railway Series[]
James is a fictional standard gauge tender locomotive created by the Rev. W. Awdry. He is the No. 5 engine on the North Western Railway.
He first appeared in The Railway Series book, Thomas the Tank Engine, which was published in 1946. His last appearance was in Thomas and his Friends, published in 2011.
Front of James:
Rear of James:
In the Tale of the Brave DVD, the Mr. Perkins segment features a re-illustrated version of the story Thomas and the Breakdown Train where James is depicted in his television series red livery instead of his black livery.
The two Red Engines that appeared in The Three Railway Engines were a precursor to James.
In real-life[]
Awdry's first model of James was a 2-6-0 Glasgow and South Western Railway locomotive, the "Austrian Goods", designed by Peter Drummond. He later rejected that prototype on the grounds that an English engine would most likely end up on Sodor. Awdry's second model of James was based on a 1960's Tri-ang "Johnson 3F" 0-6-0, a conversion which Hornby later used for their James model.
Behind the Scenes[]
Awdry's models[]
Wilbert Awdry had two models of James:
The first model of James was commissioned from P.R. Wickham in 1951; based on a G&SWR 403 Class and painted bright red with yellow lining. The motor, however, was so unreliable that James could never be put into regular service. In 1953, the model was sent to Stewart Reidpath for a two-rail chassis and a new motor and it returned completely transformed. The Ffarquhar Branch layout would become a greater priority for Awdry and the Essar motor was cannibalised in 1959 to serve as spares for Thomas and Percy. Sometime after the construction of the second model, James Mk1 was professionally repainted into G&SWR green as No. 403 and received a new motor.
The second model was built in 1976 using a Tri-ang LMS Johnson 3F 0-6-0, with modifications made to the bodywork to more closely resemble James' depiction in later Railway Series volumes. Some of the changes included extending the running board with a new buffer beam, adding a pony truck, extending the smokebox, shortening the funnel and repositioning the dome closer to the smokebox. Handrails were also installed and the model was repainted red with gold lining, along with its tender which was repainted red with blue lining.[1]
Similarly, the tooling for the Hornby James was also designed using the ex-Tri-ang 3F model with an extended running board and added pony truck.
Both models, James Mk1 and Mk2, are currently at the Narrow Gauge Railway Museum in Tywyn, Wales.
P.R. Wickham's model[]
Edmund Ward had commissioned P.R. Wickham to produce models based on Engines 1-6 (Thomas, Edward, Henry, Gordon, James and Percy) around the early 1950's and were featured in an article titled "The Locomotive Family", featured in the March 1953 issue of Model Maker Magazine. These models were made in 7mm scale and were unpowered due to the lack of motors, although they did prove to be guides for the illustrators to work with and the designs were based on C. Reginald Dalby's original illustrations.
1953 BBC Model[]
An OO scale model of James was created in 1953 for the BBC's television adaptation of The Sad Story of Henry.
Meccano Ltd. (who manufactured the Hornby locomotives) supplied three OO scale Duchess of Atholl models and a tank engine which were first sent to the publisher's offices in Leicester to be "lightly modified" by P.R. Wickham in order to create the engines for the broadcast. He painted two of the engines into different colours and rebuilt two from Balsa wood, much to Meccano's surprise (they had only approved of faces being added). Wilbert Awdry said that the models are "similar if not almost identical to the illustrations".
While no recordings of the original broadcast are known to have survived, the February 2021 edition of the BBC's newspaper, Prospero, revealed that a number of documents relating to the production have been preserved including a picture of James' model.
