Railway Series - Blog Posts

Also having read hus Biography, I can state the rather unfortunate reasoning for the use of the N word was shoe polish.

Yeah it was used as a colour name on those tins, hence him using it as a noun in HtGE, he basically was trying to say the boys looked like they had been covered in shoe polish, and wrote it in the worst way possible.

a reminder that

• the Rev Awdry named Mavis after his neighbor

• Daisy and Mavis were the only diesels to have a redemption arc

• Daisy was the first diesel owned by the NWR, and the first diesel to not be prejudiced against steam engines (every female diesel would follow this trend)

• Chris Awdry chose a pair of female diesels to succeed Gordon

• despite both Daisy and Mavis undergoing similar character development, they are unique in personality. They are also friends and don't try to undercut one another

• Annie and Clarabel are written as more sensible than Thomas, the Skarloey coaches are written as unruly and mischievous to their engines, and Henrietta is written as Toby's equal (character diversity)

• the Rev Awdry's wife is the whole reason we have the books, and ergo, the TVS

The man never cared about gender. He cared about good characters.