Edited by author 07-15-2008 03:50 PM
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My dad, Mr. Glass, loves the show and watches it for hours.

Oh dear! British Rail was certainly not awesome, at least not in its later years.

Rail travel in the UK is still very safe. As safe as it's always been. In other words safer than any other form of transportation other than air.

Travelling at certain times has certainly become more expensive - but not 10x more expensive.

People's biggest gripe is that rail privatisation was sold as being the cure for everything. Unfortunately, and predictably, it wasn't. Trains still don't run on time, they're still (relatively) expensive and determining the cost of a ticket has become a challenge. Some of the privatised companies even make profit - albeit helped by subsidies from the government.

Thomas the tank engine has been on for eons.

The only reason why children are scared of riding the train is because deregulated british trains crash, often.

British Rail used to be awesome, not always on time... but cheap and safe. Now that it's been privatized, it's about 10x more expensive, very unsafe (they crash OFTEN) still not always on time and costing a hell of a lot more than when it was run wholly by the gov't.

Also, has anyone noticed that when trains crash, there's never any mention of permanent damage? It's the A-Team of train-crash drama. Maybe you could criticize it on the grounds that it trivializes the trauma of train crashes.

(For anyone who's managed to escape exposure to 1970s US TV, the A-Team involved a team of fugitive ex US soldiers turned mercenaries, who helped a different underdog every week to fight their oppressors, with lots and lots of automatic weapons fire and occaisional explosions but never any blood or gore. The bad guys were always vanquished, but never killed or seriously injured.)

Actually, after having watched quite a bit, I'm more bothered about how the subtext of Thomas Train is teaching kids to be good employees.

You have to laugh, considering it's originally a UK show (narrated by Ringo Starr!). If anything, the UK rail network does all it can do to scare people away, the regular real crashes out-do anything Thomas can throw at you.

What this is really about is the way in which new stories in the series (and hence new TV shows) betray the vision of the Rev. Awdry. Who was, to be fair, a bit mad. But he was very careful to write only about actual incidents that might happen with trains; for the most part taking his inspiration from actual incidents that had happened with real trains. And of course, the vast majority of his stories don't involve crashes; small children really don't need that much dramatic tension.

1. A mean engineer
2. The haunted tunnel
3. The big race (with cheating)
4. Crashes
5. Crashes
6. Crashes
7. Threats of a MagLev that mysteriously crashes.

Edited by author 03-13-2003 07:59 PM
Well, realistically speaking... What other kinds of drama can one concieve of on a kid's show where the protagonist is a railway engine?

"Oh, Mummy, Thomas has gone and spit up his coal pablum again!"

My, Diesel certainly looks a might peeved in that photo, doesn't he?

If British kids are avoiding trains, it's more likely over their disappointment that real engines don't have big anthropomorphic faces on 'em.