I stopped reading at "the Thomas I am considering is the modern, CGI edition"...<p>Sorry, but I'm a Thomas purist.<p>for more deep dives into the world of Thomas, see <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@TheUnluckyTug_official">https://www.youtube.com/@TheUnluckyTug_official</a>
Not really related, but if you haven't seen Thomas the "Dank" Engine, a B.I.G. remix of the theme song, I highly recommend it.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzmWzXLPa6I">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzmWzXLPa6I</a>
The ur-example of this is a 2011 article from Slate: <a href="https://slate.com/culture/2011/07/thomas-the-tank-engine-the-popular-children-s-show-is-sadly-nostalgic-for-british-imperialism.html" rel="nofollow">https://slate.com/culture/2011/07/thomas-the-tank-engine-the...</a>
No article about TtTE is complete without a mention of <a href="https://ttte.fandom.com/wiki/The_Sad_Story_of_Henry" rel="nofollow">https://ttte.fandom.com/wiki/The_Sad_Story_of_Henry</a>
This episode was always my favourite <a href="https://youtu.be/462KBuAhncU" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/462KBuAhncU</a><p>It’s a somewhat darker, modern take on the story.
<i>... They seek meaning and joy in a Stakhanovite desire to be “really useful engines”. The great trick of Sir Topham is to employ engines who essentially evoke the image of the New Soviet man in the service of a proto-capitalist, semi-feudal enterprise.</i><p>Like startups who want their employees to be "passionate" about the business. Even if it's a banal business.
A point overlooked in the article is the Fat Controllers' complete disregard of environmental concerns. The fact that he continues to operate polluting steam trains with impunity suggests that any environmental lobby groups that may exist on the island have very little power. This also suggests that he has a lot of power over whatever form of government exists on the island. Likewise he has the support of the locals, possibly due to his being a major source of employment on the island. No doubt his sentient engines are also a major draw for tourists.
At this point, I think I need to mention Frederick Crews's book <i>The Pooh Perplex</i>, with Freudian, Marxian, Anglo-Catholic, Leavisite, etc. readings of A.A. Milne. He updated this with <i>Post-Modern Pooh</i> a few years back, which undoubtedly deconstructs it, but I haven't caught up with that one.
Sodor is a play on the words south and "sudor", which means sweat in Spanish. A tropical island with a colony that extracts its resources using the available power source: charcoal from trees.
I’d really love to have a Proper Uk ordnance survey map of Sodor - I’d thought about doing it myself but unsure if the required “toolkits” are available for imaginary locations.