LNER 12 Ton Vans/Behind the Scenes

The Railway Series
LNER 12 Ton Vans are fictional standard gauge goods vans created by the Rev. W. Awdry.

They first appeared in The Railway Series book, Duck and the Diesel Engine, which was published in 1958. Their last appearance was in Wilbert the Forest Engine, published in 1993.

They were based on the real-life goods vans.

Types of designs in the Railway Series:

Television Series
In 1986, the vans were introduced in the second series and have been primarily used. These vans are sentient with and without faces.

Throughout the CGI Series, the van designs were altered to be much taller and thinner compared to the previous ones.

Types of designs in the Model era:

Gauge 1 models
The vans' original models were custom built from Tenmille kits.

Close-up model
A close-up model of the van was built to be used for scenes where they had to interact with the close-up scale figures. The door could be opened and closed.

CGI models
In 2009, the series introduced Computer-Generated Imagery (CGI) as a replacement for the show's long-standing live-action models. The vans were recreated from scratch in CGI by Nitrogen Studios. Their models were "hand-sculpted" in Maya, a 3D animation and modelling software..

Photographs of the vans' Gauge 1 models were used for referencing. According to Greg Tiernan, every detail of the original television series models for each character is carefully reproduced in the CGI model. The models are subjected to many rounds of review before they are submitted to HiT Entertainment for final input and approval.