Rick Siggelkow is an American producer, director and writer. He was responsible from bringing the British Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends series to the United States, being the co-creator of the PBS series Shining Time Station along with Britt Allcroft. He and Allcroft also served as co-producers and co-executive producers for Shining Time Station.
Between 1998 and 2000, he worked on Noddy, another PBS series that brought another British character, Noddy to the United States. The series was made similar to Shining Time Station with stories featuring live-action actors built around the segments of the 1992 series Noddy's Toyland Adventures used.
He has also worked on "Ace Lightning", "Dinosapien", "Little People", and the US dubs of "Tweenies" and "Bill and Ben" (the latter only existing in two master tapes). He appeared in the 70 Years of Friendship YouTube documentary in 2015.
Siggelkow mentioned that during production of Shining Time Station, he disapproved of Daisy's design, which led to Daisy's stories from the second series not being used in that series. Furthermore, when the third series was in production, Daisy's role in the episode Mavis was given to Diesel.[1] The two Daisy episodes did eventually get shown on the VHS, Daisy and Other Thomas Stories in 1993, after Shining Time Station's third season ended, and the fourth series episode Bulls Eyes aired on an episode of the spinoff series, Mr. Conductor's Thomas Tales, as Siggelkow had no involvement in the spinoff.
Allcroft and Siggelkow have tried to bring the Shining Time Station series, as well as trying to get the series onto DVD or back on television. However, Siggelkow has revealed in 2008 that HiT Entertainment currently owned the rights to the series,[2] and in 2021, Mattel. No other news regarding a DVD release for the series has been announced, so it is currently unknown if the DVD project will be completed.
After Shining Time Station he went to work with BBC Americas Worldwide, where he worked from 1996 to 2008. From January 2014 until May 2016, he worked for HiT Entertainment, where he created and produced the show "Little People".
On 26 November 2022, Siggelkow attended the Greenberg Train Show in Edison, New Jersey for the fan-made "Tiger Moth Project" premiere.[3]
Trivia
- Coincidentally, he was the producer of the unreleased US dub of the 2001 series of Bill and Ben. The original Bill and Ben characters were the namesake for the characters in Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends.
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