History of The Franchise

Overview of the Franchise's History

The history of The Railway Series stems back even farther back than the early 1940's in which it was created. The inspiration for The Railway Series goes back to Wilbert Awdry's childhood in which he lived near a goods yard on the Great Western Railway, he would hear the engine's making sounds such as puffing and chuffing and envisioned these sounds as the engines own little language. He envisioned these engines as if they where living beings, using his imagination that they communicated with these sounds. The story would continue many years later when Wilbert's two year old son Christopher was sick in bed with measels, he was told that in order for his sickness to get better, he would have to stay their all day. In order to cheer his son up, Wilbert wrote a story about three railway engines, he felt it a good idea to add faces to these engines, who would later be known as Edward, Henry, and Gordon. As Wilbert continued to write the stories, Christopher questioned why one of the engines in the shed was sad. "Why is he sad daddy?" "Because he hasn't been out of the shed for a long time". When asked the identity of the sad engine, Wilbert thought of the first name he could think of, and that engine became Edward. After completing the original four stories, Wilbert's wife Margaret though they should be put to good use, and persuaded him to publish them.