Thomas still steaming ahead years after author's death (From Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard)

Thomas still steaming ahead years after author's death

Thomas the Tank Engine is still loved by millions of youngsters long after author Rev W Awdry's death.

But these best-sellers almost didn't see the light of day, says the author's daughter, Hilary, who today lives in Highworth.

Hilary Fortnam, shakes her head in disbelief when she thinks back to the origins of Thomas and his friends.

For they first came into being quite simply, when her older brother Christopher asked his father for a bedtime story.

"If it had been left to dad, those stories wouldn't have been published," said Hilary. To begin with, they weren't even written down. Dad used to tell them and retell them to Christopher. The problem is, if you accidentally change the words in the retelling, children will jump on you. So dad ended up writing them down on the backs of old parish circulars to make sure he got them right.

"It was my mother who came across them and said they ought to be published. My father's reaction was 'Rubbish!' But eventually my mother got my grandmother to persuade him."

Incredibly, the publishers also had to be convinced. The first three the family approached turned the books down flat. But the fourth was keen to promote children's literature during the war years - after all, this was 1945 - and took 'Thomas' on.

"Dad had written three at the time and the publisher asked him to write a fourth. The third had ended with Henry stuck in the tunnel, and the company wanted a happy ending."

Mr Awdry obliged and the publishers found they'd made a sound decision - they ended up reprinting four times in the first six months.

Those early days of the Thomas stories are ones Mrs Fortnam remembers well.

Her father would bring his newly-penned tales to the meal table to read to her, her brother, and her sister Veronica.

Their reactions would be vital and sometimes result in him adding bits or changing them altogether.

They also loved to go into the attic where their father kept his own model railway. "To begin with, the characters were very real to me," said Hilary.

"After all, they had faces, they talked and they had personalities; but for a long time, I had no idea that anyone else knew about them.

"I suppose I was about seven when I began to see them in the shops and then I was very proud that it was my dad who'd written them."

At first, Thomas and his friends didn't have any particular home of their own. But then children started writing in asking where he lived, and the Island of Sodor came into being. "It was an imaginary island between Liverpool and the Isle of Man," explained Hilary.

"My father had a preaching engagement on the Isle of Man and discovered that there was a Bishop of Sodor and Man - so that became Thomas's home." And from then on, the Reverend Awdry always kept a three-dimensional map of Sodor on the wall of his study to plan the stories.

In 1965, he decided to retire. Though not strictly of retirement age, he found the stories were taking up much of his time and he became a "guinea pig": a clergyman who helped out in parishes for a guinea a service.

He and his wife, Margaret, decided they'd try to find to an old railway station and convert it to a house but instead, they ended in Stroud.

"I'm not sure why they moved to Stroud," said Hilary. "Perhaps it was to be near the Great Western Railway which was one of the loves of his life.

"He definitely wanted to be near trains, which he'd loved ever since he was a small boy. His father had also been a vicar and had often taken him on walks to the local track. They lived near a hill and my dad would hear the engines "talking" to each other. One would be saying "I can't do it; I can't do it" and the engine pushing it uphill would say, "Oh, yes you can!"

That early love of railways certainly shaped Wilbert Awdry's life. And in 1996, he was awarded an OBE.

The books are the true dedication to the life of Wilbert Awdry and his twin devotions: railways, and the religion which shaped his life.

To many who read his children's stories, the connection between the two might not be obvious. But it was always there.

"He never lost sight of the religious aspect," said Hilary. "There is a religious aspect in each book.

"Most of his engines are naughty and are punished. But if they say sorry, then the Fat Controller forgives them.

"It's to do with morals but it never bothered him if children didn't see that," she said. "What he most wanted was to make children smile."