Henry (T&F)/Behind the Scenes

Background Information
Henry is a fictional standard gauge tender locomotive created by the Rev. W. Awdry. He is the No. 3 engine on the North Western Railway.

Henry first appeared in the first series episode Thomas and Gordon which first aired in 1984. His last appearance was in the twenty-fourth series episode Kenji on the Rails Again, whereas his last produced appearance was in Thomas and the Royal Engine, both of which were released in 2021.

Television Series
Many of the early episodes focusing on Henry feature him reprising his roles from The Railway Series, however unlike The Railway Series, Henry was never painted blue following the events of Edward, Gordon and Henry. This was done due to the out-of-sequence production and so that viewers would not mistake him for Gordon, which was a notable issue in the book Tank Engine Thomas Again.

Steam Team
In the eighth series, Henry was among the members of the Steam Team, the main cast of eight central characters. However, starting with the twenty-second series, Henry (along with Edward and Toby) was removed from the Steam Team in favor of Rebecca to join in order to fix the gender imbalance at Tidmouth Sheds and diversify the Thomas and Friends franchise. Although Henry continued to appear for the rest of the series as a minor supporting character, he did not have any major roles following his removal from the Steam Team, unlike Edward and Toby. Despite this, however, Henry has appeared in more episodes than Edward and Toby.

According to Ian McCue, Henry was not originally going to be removed from the Steam Team and would have been present alongside Rebecca, whereas it was always planned to remove Edward. These plans changed when Mattel ordered for the series to be revamped.

Voice
Kevin Frank voiced the character in Thomas and the Magic Railroad, giving the character a faint but noticeable British accent. Keith Wickham assumed the character's role in the UK and Kerry Shale in the US (Martin Sherman originally auditioned for Henry before he was given the roles of Thomas, Percy, and eventually Diesel). While Wickham maintains Henry with an English accent, Kerry Shale's performance is clearly American, though earlier post-Hero of the Rails episodes had his voice at a lower pitch than usual, before his voice became higher in following productions. Shale's portrayal gives Henry a faint New Jersey accent, which is more prominent in the higher pitched version of his voice.

Gauge 1 models
Henry's original model was scratch built from plastic sheets of varying thicknesses and used a Märklin locomotive as a donor for the chassis and various parts. It was painted using car body paint and lined with red and yellow automotive pinstripe tape, with his numbers being custom cut vinyl stickers.

Four different models were used as donors to make the engines after it was decided to use a more reliable base for the props. These were all gauge 1 models made by the German company Märklin. They are the BR 38, BR 55, BR 78 and BR 80.

Henry's main chassis was sourced from the BR 78 along with several other parts. These are the handrail stanchions, tender steps, cab controls and tender details of which he had two. One was on the front right of the tender mounted vertically and facing right, and the other was on the back mounted horizontally facing backwads. Since there is only one on the BR 78 body, he used the one from Gordon's donor model as Gordon lacks any detailed parts like this on his tender. Henry's front buffer beam was from the front of the BR 78, rotated 180 degrees from how it originally appeared.

His tender used some parts from the BR 55. The wheels and clips that held the wheels were from the tender of the BR 55, while the buffer beam used on his tender was sourced from the front of the BR 55, which was also rotated 180 degrees.

His model was built with the ability to be changed to his "old" shape or "new" shape when needed due to the series being filmed out of sequence. His "old" shape features splashers, a tapered firebox and no top feed or exterior steam pipes, while his new shape did have the top feed and exterior steam pipes as well as a Belpaire firebox. There were no splashers as they were not permanently fixed on to accommodate for this change in appearance when filming. In the second series, Henry's model had the splashers added back and they have remained on him ever since.

Henry's plastic model was originally AC powered as this is how the Märklin locomotives were powered. This required the polarity switch which was originally mounted in front of the main motor, to be moved to the tender. This allowed space for the smoke mechanism which sat in between the motor and eye mechanism. During a refurbishment, his AC motor was replaced by a DC motor to allow for easier maintenance of the electronics since there were fewer wires and electronic components to deal with.

The new models were made out of brass and equipped with a CNC machined aluminium chassis powered by a DC motor. From this point onwards the plastic model would only appear in scenes that would damage the brass models. One exception exists in Big Strong Henry where a brass model was used for the crash instead of the plastic model. This may be due to the plastic model having a previously loose middle left drive wheel which is visible in promotional photographs and some scenes of the episode Henry and the Wishing Tree. The way this crash unfolded could have caused the old repair to fail. The plastic model was officially retired completely after the episode Henry's Lucky Day.

Henry's Tender
During filming of the tenth series episode It's Good to be Gordon, there was an accident involving the smoke unit made to produce a large volume of dark smoke related to the story. The unit was located inside Henry's tender and accidently exploded, resulting in a small amount of fire and sparks shooting out from the hole for the coal load, which itself along with the figurine of Henry's driver or fireman, was blown into the air. It also had enough of an impact to derail his tender.

The current whereabouts of the plastic tender bodyshell is not known due to the lack of clear enough photographs to be able to identify whether or not it is at the Hara Model Railway Museum, or if it was the one with the brass Henry that was displayed at the British Museum in 2015, which is now in storage.

Model Changes
Henry's gauge 1 models had gone through several aesthetic changes in the television series:
 * Series 1 (only):
 * After his rebuild, his splashers were removed.
 * Series 2:
 * He regained his splashers, with the third pair being cut off from where his tapered firebox was.
 * His ladders had small strips of plastic added to the back and sides to strengthen them which made them appear solid, this was done as the original ladders were moulded in a flexible plastic which meant they were quite fragile.
 * He gained two extra brake pipes, all four now facing downwards.
 * In Duck Takes Charge, and in some scenes of Dirty Work and A Close Shave, his whistle sound is Duck's, five steps higher in pitch, but the rest of the series, he had his original whistle sound.
 * Series 3:
 * His eyebrows became smaller.
 * His front right and rear right brake pipes were facing upward again.
 * In Tender Engines, his front left and rear right brake pipes were removed.
 * He is painted in a slightly duller and darker shade of green.
 * Series 4:
 * He was partially repainted, but a slightly darker shade of green was used, this was on his firebox, topfeed, cab sides only, tender and wheels.
 * Series 5:
 * He was almost completely repainted to a darker green with a more bluish tint to it compared to previous series, oddly though his cylinders retained their Series 3 green which lasted through Series 4 as well.
 * For this series only, there was extra yellow lining added to his quarter windows. This was to match the whole windows and keep continuity since the large scale model featured lining on both areas.
 * Thomas and the Magic Railroad:
 * His paint was given a matte finish.
 * His whistle sound changed again and shared the same with Percy.
 * The gap between his second and third boiler bands becomes larger due to misplaced lining.
 * His tender lining had its spacing from the edge made even all around, thus making it no longer match the lining on his cab which was higher at the bottom due to the thick red stripe running along his side.
 * His two safety valves were reduced to a single safety valve due to one of Gordon's going missing, Henry's second one was used to replace it.
 * His eyebrows became more slanted.
 * His window frame lining became thinner.
 * His front right bogie wheel became a 12 spoke type due to being mixed-up with one of Gordon's tender wheels which was on a 12 spoke set. Gordon had his and Henry's 10 spoke bogie wheels fitted on his tender along with a 12 spoke on the front right side of Gordon's leading truck.
 * His back left brake pipe faces upward again.
 * His smokebox length decreased slightly due to the black paint ending further forwards than previous series.
 * Series 6:
 * His eyebrows became longer.
 * He regained his original whistle sound.
 * The ends of his crank pins were painted green.
 * Gordon's former 12 spoke tender wheel on Henry's leading truck was moved from the right side to the left side.
 * His middle splashers moved slightly closer to his first splashers.
 * Series 10:
 * His front cab windows became slightly wider and shorter. (brass model)
 * The riveting and brake pipe extrusion on his front buffer beam disappeared. (brass model)
 * His front left bogie wheel became a 10 spoke type again. (brass model)
 * The gap between his second and third boiler bands was shortened. (brass model)
 * His splashers increased in size. (brass model)
 * His plastic model has visible damage to his front left side.
 * His plastic tender shell was put on a newly made tender floor after the smoke generator accident.
 * Series 11:
 * The damage seen on the plastic model in the previous series was repaired.
 * The floor of his plastic tender is seen with a newly made shell, they were likely swapped by accident.
 * Series 12:
 * His eyebrows became thicker.
 * His crow's feet disappeared.
 * The uneven spacing of his boiler lining went back to how it was originally.
 * His tender went back to how it was in Series 10.

Present Day
After production of the model series wrapped in 2008, most of the models and sets would be put into storage, with some being put on display at Drayton Manor Theme Park. All other models would be logged and referenced in 2009 by HiT Entertainment, from this HiT would decide on which models were to enter storage once again, which would be given to crew members and which to be disposed off. Due to the size of Henry's plastic model and the cost to make it, the plastic model would be kept, alongside the newer brass models used at the time and all would stay under HiT and later Mattel's ownership.

One of Henry's brass models is on display at Hara Model Railway Museum and has his sad face. It had previously been on display at Nitrogen Studios. The other brass model was put on display at the British Museum during the 70th anniversary and had his unused exhausted face, after which the model was returned back to Mattel's storage unit in Southampton England where it resided before the event and currently resides to this day. Additionally two spare unused number decals, one on it's own and another part of a larger transfer were sold by The Prop Gallery in 2022.

Faces
Eighteen different facial expressions were sculpted for Henry, although only seventeen were used on-screen and one of which an exhausted face was left unused. Henry had two variants of his surprised face with the latter being made from the same sculpt as the "ah" sneezing face. The last face was only seen when one of Henry's brass models was on display at the British Museum for the 70th anniversary, it appears to be an "exhausted" expression. The faces were first sculpted in clay, then a silicone mould was made of this sculpt which was then cast and smoothed for moulding and casting again to produce the final face which was then painted. Some of Henry's faces were duplicated in case the crew needed a face to look dirty and clean on the same day of shooting. When the faces for the characters were recasted during the production of the film Thomas and the Magic Railroad, Henry's eye sockets on some of his faces were noticeably smaller most likely to hide the black space, most notably his smiling and sad faces. Two of Henry's faces are now owned by Twitter user ThomasTankMerch. A face mould for Henry's surprised face was previously owned by Jonathan Saville.

Close-up models
Close-up models were required for scenes where engines had to interact with the close-up scale human figures. In the first series, due to budget limitations, a close-up model of Henry was not built, so Gordon's close-up model was reused instead and the blue parts of the model were covered with green vinyl.

Cab side boards for Henry were eventually built in the fourth series. The side boards were made to be attached to Gordon's close-up model, similar to James' and Edward's close-up cabs. All of the blue parts were strategically hidden with camera angles, though production footage from the fifth series shows Gordon's firebox. By the eighth series a dedicated close-up model was constructed. The model was not complete and consisted only of a cab and tender.

It later appeared in the fifth, seventh and eighth series.

CGI model
In 2009, the television series introduced Computer-Generated Imagery (CGI) as a replacement for the show's long-standing live-action models. Henry was recreated from scratch in CGI by Nitrogen Studios. His CGI model was identical to his Gauge 1 model but has had slight modifications:
 * Hero of the Rails:
 * He gained a regulator on either side of his cab controls.
 * He lost his front brake-pipe outlet.
 * His crow's feet reappeared.
 * The red lining on his wheel arches became thinner and he got lining on the back of his cut-off wheel arch.
 * The inside of his tender became green.
 * His tender is slightly lowered.
 * His eye sockets became smaller.
 * Series 17:
 * He regains his permanent lamp and tail lamp.
 * The Adventure Begins:
 * His connecting rods became silver.

Texture Variants
In addition to his standard livery, several other texture variants exist of Henry's CGI model. Many only appear once, however a few are reused mutliple times. These texture variants include:

Pantone colours
The following pantone colours are used on Henry's CGI model:

Voice Actors

 * Kevin Frank
 * Keith Wickham
 * Kerry Shale
 * Simon Hepworth
 * Ryō Horikawa
 * Kenji Utsumi
 * Jun'ichi Kanemaru
 * Kenta Miyake
 * Fabrice Trojani
 * Espen Sandvik
 * Ambrogio Colombo
 * Jesús Cortés
 * Luis Alfonso Padilla
 * Ricardo Silva
 * Arturo Mercado Jr.
 * Wolf Rüdiger Reutermann
 * Christian Stark
 * Michael Bideller
 * Lutz Herkenrath
 * Q. Gray
 * Cezary Kwieciński
 * Krzysztof Korzeniowski
 * Reinder van der Naalt
 * Dov Reiser
 * Dor Srugo
 * Yoli Seker
 * Caspar Phillipson
 * Henrique Reis
 * Ulisses Bezerra
 * Juan Navarro Torelló
 * Jos Gómez
 * Jukka Voutilainen
 * Jarmo Koski
 * Trưởng Tân
 * Seder Gabor
 * Alexander Kotov
 * Loukas Frangoulis