Thomas and Friends Wooden Railway (Tomy)

"Thomas and Friends" locos [image info]

The Museum has a quantity of Brio-compatible wooden trains suitable for active play for small children, including a selection of modern Thomas and Friends wooden trains made by Tomy.

Thomas the Tank Engine

The star of Thomas and Friends, Thomas is a bright blue 0-6-0 tank locomotive based on the Billington E2 second series locomotive, which was built in Brighton at Brighton Works, which used to occupy the site next to the museum.

Gordon The Big Blue Engine

Gordon is a large passenger express train locomotive. His history includes a number of modifications, so he doesn't correspond to a standard engine type.

Arthur

Arthur is a brown tank engine with prominent LMS markings on his side-tanks. He looks very much like many of the LMS tank engine models in the Musuem.

Neville

Neville is a Q1 austerity steam locomotive from World War 2, and, like Thomas, was built at Brighton Works alongside the Museum. The Q1 locomotioves were unusual in that they were built almost as disposable machines - cosntructed using the minimum amount of metal, spo that as many machines coudl be built as possible using the smallest amoutn of preciosu wartime-retricted iron.

The Q1 locos omitted many of the features common to "normal" steam locmotives that had a cosmetic purpose or that served to over-enginner the design in order to make it last a long time - in wartime, the priority was to get more engines built quickly and cheaply for the war effort, without the results needing to be able to keep working for a century.

In the "Thomas" stories, Neville is initially teased by the other engines because they mistake him for a diesel locomotive. The Q1 was a successor to the 1938(?) Q-Class locomotives, which had a conventional design.

Emily

Emily is a green locomotive with a single pair of large drivewheels. She's based on the Stirling Single loco. There's a large Stirling Single model in a glass case just inside the museum ticketed area.

Spencer

Spencer is a silver streamlined LNER "A4" Class locomotive, similar to the record-breaking Mallard (which was blue). The first of the A4s were originally silver, and had "silver" in their names (although the Tomy "Spencer" toy is actually light grey).

Flora the Tram

Flora is a steam-powered tram engine, with a tram in tow. Both have "Sodor Tramways" markings.

Rosie

Rosie is a purple tank engine, fairly similar to Thomas, and she is Thomas' friend.

She's an American engine, based on one of the few US steam locomotives ever to run on British track (the US shipped over a number of general-purpose tank locmotives towards the end of WW2, to work at Southampton Docks in advance of the D-Day assault).