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December 12
Hatt is Immortal

I'm writing this well in advance in an attempt to provide blog coverage during NaNoWriMo. This is a softer subject than my normal posts, mainly because I can't exactly prognosticate what Apple and Microsoft will each do on October 26th and 27th.
I missed some publishing targets in November (and didn't finish writing a few things), so this is going to come out in December.

Every now and again, I look for Thomas the Tank Engine stories on YouTube. I used to be a big fan of the stories on video tape and during Shining Time Station, and I had the big anthology of the original illustrated stories.

The original illustrated stories, and the ensuing video story series was compelling because they were based off of real events. As the video series licensing agreement changed and as the company licensing it needed more stories, the content in the series changed.

There was a period in the late 200s and very early 2010s when the stories were pretty thin. The format at that point time was essentially, an assignment is given, something is done wrong, then done wrong once more, then a third time. Confusion and delay ensues, corrective action is made, and then the day is somehow saved. The most recent of the show episodes and the movies are structured much better, and there are several instances of legitimately good storytelling. It's a refreshing change from the three strikes structure.

For a long time, I wondered about the economic viability of the island. No governance structure has been set up (as far as I can tell) other than that one of the towns has a major, but it otherwise looks like the railway runs the island. There's better discussion of this than I think I can do at the moment.

This post is about some information that came up in a recent episode. I have a new wacky fan theory that Sir Topham Hatt is, in fact, immortal. Thomas is considered both in Awdry's stories and in the recent movie "First Adventure" to have arrived on the island in about 1923. At the very tail end of this story, Thomas greets the previous #1 engine, a "coffeepot engine" that was already on a siding, having been long forgotten at the start of his branch line.

In a recent Season 20 episode of the show, set in the early to mid 1960s at latest, given that Daisy the Diesel Railcar (based on BR class 101, built in the 1950s) is many passengers' first experience with that type of vehicle, the coffeepot engine, revealed to be named Glynn, is discovered and Thomas and Percy spend effort trying to get him repaired. The big dramatic reveal in the episode is that Hatt (who, I'll note, looks the same both in 1923 and in the 1960s) built Glynn at the founding of the North Western Railway, but a date or time frame isn't given that.

Now, Hatt is clumsy and has his own health issues, but nothing generally commensurate with what I'd suspect would need to be about an eighty-year life, if you consider the following:

  • You probably need to be about twenty years old to build a steam locomotive and found a railway in England at the end of the 19th century.
  • Glynn had a "long" and productive service life, but none of the other engines anywhere on the island make a reference to recognizing, and all of the ones who would have (Edward, Henry, Gordon, James), saw him in one of the two episodes so far featured. Call it about 20 years, at least based on the needs of US Class 1 railroads in modern days. It was probably actually longer in early 20th century England, especially on what is essentially a short-line that generally accepts or buys second-hand equipment from the companies that went on to make up BR, and BR.
  • In 1923 when Thomas sees him after his first few weeks on the island, Glynn has already been mothballed for a very long time, following the end of his primary service life. Even in 1923, there was ample space shown on the island to store a just recently disused engine, and the railroad is portrayed in almost every story as being perpetually short of power. If the North Western Railway was real
  • Hatt hasn't visibly aged between a story set in the early 1920s and a story set in the early 1960s.
  • Lifespans in England in the early-mid 20th century are going to be shorter than they are today and visual degradation of appearance is going to be more rapid and noticeable.

Take that for what you will, but it looks clear enough to me. The only reasonable way Hatt could have done this is if he were immortal. No discussion is made as to what possibilities there are for this. It's not Hatt's father or a cousin, and Hatt makes no denial of the idea that it was him that built Glynn.

It would be interesting to see more stories from the earlier days of the railroad, especially with the modernized storytelling and visual formatting of the show. The story of how Percy came to the railroad has yet to be re-told, for example, and I think that some of the other daring rescues over time would make great episode fodder.

I also know that there's some newer Awdry stuff that would do well in the new format, and some possible retconning to help alleviate the situation of Diesels vs. Steamies that has evolved in the new show. For example, if BoCo were to come to the new format to help Bill and Ben, along with Derek (the Paxton Class 15/17 diesel) were to show up, and perhaps continue having reliability problems, but be friendly to the existing cast, that would go a long way toward the show itself promoting literally any kind of diversity.

Back to Hatt: it's a little hilarious to see all of this stuff in such quick succession. The movie showing Glynn having already been long forgotten (at which point we'll have to guess Hatt was 60 years old or more) came out just a few years ago. It Hatt is already 60 in 1923, by 1963 he is a hundred years old. The Island of Sodor is a magical place, but is it that magical?

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