Godred/Behind the Scenes

The Railway Series
Godred was a fictional narrow gauge mountain locomotive created by the Rev. W. Awdry. He was the No. 1 engine on the Culdee Fell Railway.

Godred appears in the Railway Series book, Mountain Engines - published 1964. He was last mentioned in Sodor: Reading Between the Lines published in 2005.

Godred as he appears in the Railway Series:

Made Up?
Godred's actual existence has been the source of some confusion and debate since his debut. At the end of the story "Bad Look-Out" from The Railway Series book, Mountain Engines, it is said that Culdee had only made both the story and Godred up. However, no other engine carrying his number was seen in any of the stories. Furthermore, both The Island of Sodor: Its People, History and Railways and Sodor: Reading Between the Lines confirm that Godred did indeed exist and met his demise when he fell down the mountain.

The explanation for it is that the Rev. W. Awdry wanted his fictional railway to mirror its real-life counterpart as close as possible. However, as this would result in the "death" of a character, he chose to end the story the way he did so as to avoid upsetting younger readers.

Cause of the Accident
The exact cause of Godred's accident has never been determined or confirmed by either Wilbert or Christopher Awdry. In The Island of Sodor: Its People, History and Railways, it is said that it was generally believed that a stone lodged between two teeth of the rack-rail had caused the accident, but that it had never been proved.

L.A.D.A.S.'s accident was caused by subsidence of the track, leading to the pinion wheel disengaging; this was amended by fitting guard-bars to the rack-rail. As the Culdee Fell Railway opened four years after L.A.D.A.S.'s accident, it seems likely that the guard-rails would have been required by the Board of Trade from the outset, meaning that a different chain of events would have had to occur to cause the derailment, somehow disengaging both the pinion wheels and the gripper connecting to the engine, which connects with the guard-bars to prevent such an accident from happening.

Television Series
Mountain Engines was the first book of the Railway Series not to have any of its stories televised. According to an interview with Robert Gauld-Galliers, this could be attributed to limited storylines, rack-and-pinion track, the engines' strange-angled bodies, and being not very merchandisable.

In 1995, Godred was produced in the ERTL die-cast range and featured in various Thomas & Friends media, such as magazines and trading cards. His merchandise bios acknowledge that “he was taken to pieces” and “his parts where used to mend the other engines" after his accident. In a magazine story, Godred was painted red with yellow lining, is introduced as a new engine and is named by Sir Topham Hatt.

In 2012, the Culdee Fell Railway was mentioned in a Blue Mountain Mystery promotional video about the differences between the narrow and standard gauge. The King, whom Godred was named after, later appeared in an animated segment in the 2013 feature-length special King of the Railway.

In a 2015 interview, Sam Wilkinson stated the "Culdee Fell Railway have always been on the list to be created, ever since I joined, but these would always require a lot of time, resources, and money to create. Also there is no live-action reference so everything would have to be done from scratch". Sadly, this never came to fruition.