Thomas and the Magic Railroad

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Thomas and the Magic Railroad
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Britt Allcroft
Written by	Britt Allcroft
Produced by	Britt Allcroft Phil Fehrle
Starring	Alec Baldwin Peter Fonda Mara Wilson Cody McMains Eddie Glen Neil Crone Michael E. Rodgers Didi Conn Russell Means
Narrated by	Alec Baldwin as Mr. Conductor
Cinematography	Paul Ryan
Edited by	Ron Wisman
Music by	Hummie Mann Mike O'Donnell Junior Campbell Benjamin Angus Wright
Distributed by	Warner Bros Destination Films Gullane Pictures The Britt Allcroft Company Isle of Man C.O.R.E. Toon/Live Action
Release date	July 14, 2000 (UK) July 26, 2000 (USA)
Running time	86 minutes (theatrical cut) 110 minutes (director's cut)
Language	English
Budget	$19 million
Box office	$19,748,009

Thomas and the Magic Railroad is a 2000 British and American film based on the well-known TV series Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends and the US TV series Shining Time Station. This film production company was Gullane Entertainment with funding from Icon Film Distribution (UK), Destination Films, Isle of Man and The Britt Allcroft Company.

It was released first in the UK where critics were unfamiliar with the characters from Shining Time Station and accused Thomas of being "Americanized". It received slightly better reviews in the US ("An enchanting ride." AP. "Delight for young moviegoers." Garnett News Service.) and was well liked by the young audience for whom it was created. Even when the film was not a success, they began making sequels, nevertheless and Michael Angelis (the original voice of Percy, James and rumouredly Gordon) continued narrating.

In 2007, it was revealed that the released film was drastically cut down against Allcroft's wishes from the original script written and shot by her.

Sir Topham Hatt, normally in charge of the railways on Sodor, is on holiday and has left Mr. Conductor (Alec Baldwin) in charge. Meanwhile, Thomas (Eddie Glen) and Gordon encounter an evil diesel locomotive, Diesel 10 (Neil Crone), stating he has unfinished business on Sodor and he wants to finish it quickly. Thomas and Gordon are shocked.

Mr. Conductor has problems of his own. The mysterious gold dust that allows him to magically transport from place to place is running out, and without it there will be no way for anyone to travel to Sodor. The lost engine is able to travel between Sodor and Muffle Mountain via the Magic Railroad, but nobody knows where she is.

An old man named Burnett Stone (Peter Fonda) lives on Muffle Mountain, near Shining Time Station. Unknown to everyone, he is the guardian of the lost engine whose name is Lady. The engine crashed after an earlier encounter with Diesel 10, and ever since then he has been trying to repair her, so far without success.

Percy and Thomas find out that there is a secret railway and there are magic buffers that lead to it. However, Diesel 10 overhears them. Toby the Tram Engine follows him and hears him telling Splatter and Dodge (Which he calls them "Splodge"), his diesel locomotive henchtrains, that he will find the buffers and destroy the steam locomotives by destroying the Golden Engine. This is largely because Mr Conductor's sparkle is running out and he is too weak to stop him. Toby suddenly rings his bell and Diesel 10, Splatter and Dodge hear it. During this point, Diesel 10 says "It's the old teapot! Smash him!" and then accidentally fractures the foundation of the shed they are sheltering under and it collapses on them while Toby runs off.

Burnett's granddaughter Lily (Mara Wilson) comes to visit him. During her stay, she meets C. Junior, Mr. Conductor's cousin, who takes her to Sodor and introduces her to the talking engines who live there, including Thomas the Tank Engine. Later, Thomas is assigned to take Lily back, having discovered the start of the long-abandoned Magic Railroad by an old grotto. He finds a truck of special Island of Sodor coal and takes it with him. He arrives on the side of Muffle Mountain, and Lily goes to her grandpa's house, leaving Thomas stranded on the mountain. Suddenly, Thomas falls off the mountain and rolls all the way to the bottom where he re-enters the Magic Railroad through another portal there.

Lily reunites with Burnett at his workshop, where he shows her Lady, the lost engine, and explains his problem getting the engine to steam. Lily suggests using Island of Sodor coal from the truck Thomas brought. This proves to be exactly what was needed, and the engine comes to life. For the first time in years, Burnett smiles. Lily and Burnett take Lady along the Magic Railroad, which regenerates beneath her wheels. As the Magic Railroad is reborn, Lady's face appeared, commenting that Burnett had never given up on Magic. The team reunites with Thomas and find their way back to Sodor, where Diesel 10 finds them and gives chase. He is foiled by a damaged viaduct, which collapses beneath him.

Thomas, Lady, Burnett and Lily meet Mr. Conductor and Junior. They use the water from a wishing well and shavings from the rails of the Magic Railroad to make more gold dust, and the Island of Sodor is saved.

• Alec Baldwin as Mr. Conductor: The deuteragonist. A character originating from Shining Time Station. He lives inside the signal box on Shining Time's mural, and keeps a close eye on the Isle of Sodor. He was narrating the series at the time.
• Peter Fonda as Burnett Stone: The tritagonist. The caretaker of the lost engine, Lady. She crashed after Diesel 10 chased her down, and Burnett hasn't been able to make Lady run since. Although he promised his wife Tasha she could ride with him in Lady one day, she died before Burnett could fix the engine.
• Mara Wilson as Lily: Another tritagonist Burnett Stone's granddaughter. While traveling to visit Burnett in the Indian Valley, She finds herself on the train for Shining Time by mistake. This leads Lily to learn about the lost engine and the connection between the Island of Sodor and her grandfather.
• Edward Glen as Thomas the Tank Engine (voice): The primary protagonist. An engine who runs a branch line on the Island of Sodor. When Diesel 10 starts causing trouble on the railway, Thomas is determined to help Mr. Conductor and Lily save the lost engine from him.
• Michael E. Rodgers as C. Junior: Mr. Conductor's cousin. While he'd rather relax at the beach, Junior answers his cousin's call for help on the Island of Sodor.
• Neil Crone as Diesel 10 (voice): The main antagonist. (Originally the secondary antagonist). A scheming diesel who has returned to Sodor to destroy the lost engine and get rid of steam engines once and for all.
• Kevin Frank and Neil Crone as Splatter and Dodge (voice): Diesel's bungling henchmen, whom he collectively calls "Splodge" to save time. The two grow disdain for him by the end of the movie, and refuse to help him catch Thomas and Lady. They do not appear in the TV series because their models were repainted into Arry and Bert for Series 6.
• Britt Allcroft as Lady (voice): A magical lost engine who generates the energy that keeps the railway and steam engines alive.
• Mutt: A smart dog living at Shining Time. He senses trouble is coming for Mr. Conductor, and brings Lily to Shining Time to help.

• Linda Ballantyne voiced Percy the Small Engine
• Kevin Frank voiced Henry the Green Engine, Bertie the Bus and Harold the Helicopter
• Neil Crone voiced Gordon the Big Engine
• Susan Roman voiced James the Red Engine
• Colm Feore voiced Toby the Tram Engine
• Shelly-Elizabeth Skinner voiced Annie and Clarabel
• Offscreen, Sir Topham Hatt audibly (but unintelligibly, over the telephone and shown on a poster) instructs Mr. Conductor.
• Troublesome Trucks (Do not speak)
• Henrietta the coach (Cameo)
• Butch Breakdown (Cameo)
• Cranky the crane (Cameo, but was supposed to have a bigger role)
• George the Steamroller (Deleted from script)
• Lady Hatt (Mentioned and shown in a picture)

• Didi Conn as Stacy Jones
• Russell Means (previously Tom Jackson) as Billy Twofeathers

• Doug Lennox as P.T. Boomer: An unfriendly motorcyclist who was the original main antagonist. He was jealous of the relationship that Burnett had with Tasha. He does not believe in magic and returns to Shining Time hoping to find and destroy Lady. The character was cut due to being too frightening for the younger audience, and Diesel 10 was rewritten as the main villain of the film.
• John Bellis as Thomas: The original voice of Thomas. A fireman and part-time taxi driver on the Isle of Man, Bellis received the role when he happened to pick up Britt Allcroft and her crew in his taxicab. According to Allcroft, after hearing him utter a few words, she told her colleagues, "I have just heard the voice of Thomas. The man is exactly how Thomas would sound!". She offered Bellis the part and he accepted it, but was ultimately cut after American test audiences complained of his Liverpudlian accent making Thomas sound too old. In a statement following the decision in April 2000, Bellis said he was "gutted", but wished the film-makers well. "It was supposed to be my big break," he said. "But it hasn't put me off and I am hoping something else will come along." ^[1] He did receive a credit in the movie as the Isle of Man unit transportation co-ordinator.
• Michael Angelis as James, Percy and (rumored) Gordon, was cut due to supposedly sounding too old.
• Keith Scott as Diesel 10, was cut due to supposedly sounding too frightening for younger audience.
• Patrick Breen as (rumoured) Splatter and Dodge, was cut for unknown reasons.
• Jared Wall as Young Burnett
• Laura Bower as Young Tasha

There was originally to be a lengthy scene with Young Burnett and Young Tasha dancing with P.T. Boomer sulking in the background. Due to his scene being cut, all that is heard of Burnett and Tasha is their voices.

The movie was filmed at the Strasburg Rail Road (SRR) in Strasburg, Pennsylvania (U.S.), as well as in Ontario and on the Isle of Man. Castletown railway station on the Isle of Man Railway formed part of Shining Time Station and the goods shed at Port St Mary railway station became Burnett Stone's workshop. The SRR was used for shots of the full-sized Indian Valley railroad. Norfolk & Western 4-8-0 475 was the Indian Valley Engine.

Sodor was realised using models and chroma key. The models were animated using live action remote control, as on the television series. The model sequences were filmed in Toronto, Canada instead of Shepperton Studios, the "home" of the original TV show; however, several of the show's key staff were flown over to participate.

The Magic Railroad was created using models and CGI and water color painting.

A major character, 'PT Boomer', played by Doug Lennox, was deemed too frightening for the younger audience and therefore was entirely cut out of the film before its release. Because of PT Boomer's absence from the final film, the plot elements that had been driven by him went unexplained. This change was so close to the release, that trailers for the film actually still featured him (such as a clip from the trailer in which he appears falling off the viaduct alongside Diesel 10). Oddly enough, he still appears in the movie during some shots, shown lying on the roof of Diesel 10 as well as a lost motorcyclist being given directions by Burnett (The original scene being dubbed over by Nelson Ferreira from the original confrontation scenes).^[2] Boomer also appears in Thomas and the Magic Railroad coloring books by Random House, seen exchanging words with Burnett and setting the explosion off that sent Thomas off the mountain.^[3]

The same trailers also depicted Diesel 10 with an upper class English accent rather than the American one he had in the release. The reason for this change is that there was a different actor playing Diesel 10 in the trailer (an English one instead of an American one) or that that was the voice of PT Boomer. It was revealed that the original voice of Diesel 10 was Australian voice actor Keith Scott, thus revealing it was NOT the voice of PT Boomer. The reason Keith Scott was removed, was because the test audiences feared it would frighten the youngest of audience members. According to an E-mail reply from Neil Crone by the Sodor Island Forums, he stated that he did a voice for Diesel 10 with a Russian accent and that Britt had heard it and liked it. However, that voice suffered at the hands of the test audience too, as they believed it could cause offence; as such, Crone had to record his lines all again. At Allcroft's behest, Crone and his comedy partner Kevin Frank did a dialogue polish on the engine scenes to add more comedy; among other things, it was their idea to have Diesel 10 refer to his claw as 'Pinchy.'

Prior to filming, it had been revealed that Thomas' voice would be provided by an Isle of Man taxi driver named John Bellis (who also worked as a fireman on the Isle of Man Steam Railway). However, during a test screening in Los Angeles, the test audiences disliked Bellis' voice for Thomas due to his Liverpudlian tones, claiming that he made Thomas sound too old. Subsequently, Bellis was dropped from his role and was replaced by Edward Glen, who gave Thomas a more youthful voice.

It has also been revealed that Michael Angelis, the narrator for the UK version of the TV Series since 1991, would have been the voice for James and Percy (and possibly other characters too). However, like Bellis, Angelis also suffered at the hands of the American test audiences, claiming that he made James and Percy sound too old. Eventually, James and Percy were voiced by Susan Roman and Linda Ballantyne.

It has been revealed that Cranky the Crane and George the Steamroller were originally in the film with roles but they never appeared in the finished film. George never was on set, but Cranky was briefly on set. In a picture from SiF, there is a shot of a modeller above Knapford. If you look closely, Cranky can be seen. The model for Cranky remained, but it was just a generic crane and not the character fans knew.

Because of the cuts, many key scenes that gave Britt Allcroft's original story substance and were filmed with Peter Fonda as Burnett Stone and Russell Means as Billy Twofeathers plus Cody McMains as Patch, were not in the released version because of the references to P.T. Boomer. The movie scenes with these cuts were either cut or altered.

The credits for the film says that an older Patch (who would have appeared in the original script as Lily's husband years later) is played by Robert Tinkler. Tinkler is not seen in any of the scenes; it is possible that elements from the early script drafts were filmed.

In February 2009, a YouTube user uploaded the original chase scene with PT Boomer as what had been a dubbing project for the user's film class. While the original audio level was toned down considerably as so the original soundtrack would not conflict with the overture from Dark City that played throughout the duration of the video, the finding sparked renewed interest in the Director's Cut project.

The Sodor Island forums has started a campaign to release the Directors Cut.^{[citation needed]} However, in order to do so the rights to the movie must be approved for viewing and marketing by HiT Entertainment and Destination Films.^{[citation needed]}

The film was premièred at the Odeon Leicester Square; for the purpose, a steam locomotive, no. 47298 painted to resemble Thomas, was brought to the cinema by low loader on 9 July 2000. National press coverage was low, because many journalists were concentrating on the launch of the book Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, for which a special train named Hogwarts Express was run on 8–11 July.^[4]

The released film received two award nominations by YoungStar Awards and Young Artist Awards.

• Thomas and the Magic Railroad at IMDb
• Thomas and the Magic Railroad at Rotten Tomatoes.
• Cinema.com: Thomas and the Magic Railroad
• Britt Allcroft Engineers Magic - Frazier Moore, AP
• Sodor Island's Magic Railroad Mini-Site
• The official website for Composer Ben Wright, who wrote 'Summer Sunday' used in the film