"Magical Island where dreams come true"

One of the reasons I still collect Thomas trains.

I mentioned before in posts that my love of trains came from my Nana and Papa and that growing up the three of us along with my little brother, even if he tries to deny it now, fell in love with a magical island of the coast of England named Sodor.  Sodor, for those of you that don't know, is the home of the North Western Railway. A major rail network that connects to almost every part of the island. There are many famous engines that run on this railway but the most famous is a little blue tank engine named Thomas.

I have mentioned Thomas and his friends before when talking about my club at Masonic but it doesn't fully explain what this little engine means to me and my family. The stories of Thomas and Friends help strengthen my love of  trains and its one thing that I will always have to help me remember my Papa.  Years later I realized that I wasn't the only one that had this similar connection the brand and the world they created. But first a little back story...

My brother has autism. He sometimes isn't very social and sometimes stays in his own head. But what he sometimes lacks in social skill he more than doubles in brain power. The kid is going to be the next professor at Yale or Harvard. He loves history, video games, and above all else Starwars. But one thing I have noticed with him is that he will always fall back to little Island that we shared with our Papa. I mention his autism because as I got older and started working with kids similar to my brother I noticed that a lot of them shared this passion for the trains as well. During my research around this I found out that there a a lot of people with autistic tendency that have a love for trains and majority of the time Thomas included even when they are much much older. People that have autism like schedules, order and familiarity.  Railroads have all of these traits as well and its no surprise that there is sometimes a strong connection between the two. For example in the Thomas show; Thomas always works on his branch line and always is pulling his two coaches. This happens like clockwork and fans of the show will tell you that when this gets changed or interrupted is almost always causes confusion and delay!!

The best part was learning that the company that now owns Thomas realized this connection as well and are big supporters of those with autism. This is another reason why I wanted to collect the HO scale models of the Thomas character and run them for the visitors to the clubs layout. It always makes me smile when I see a guests face light up when they see them running around the tracks and having the fan name all of the characters and references I hid in the layout, normally while the parent looks at me baffled that I know them all as well.   But this allows me to have conversations with these kids and help break them out of their shells sometimes.  I have been told by parents time and time again how they are amazed how much their child is talking in public. All thanks to this little blue train that helps bring so much joy into this world.

I still have all of my Thomas models and still get to share them with families at special holidays at my old club and at special local train shows I also work on some Thomas related model train projects that you might see here from time to time. Let me know below If you or someone you know grew up with Thomas and if you have a story similar to mine here. Until my next post see you real soon!