Alaric/Behind the Scenes

The Railway Series
Alaric is a fictional narrow gauge mountain locomotive created by the Rev. W. Awdry. He is the No. 7 engine on the Culdee Fell Railway.

Alaric appears in Mountain Engines - published 1964. He also appears in various companion volumes, such as annuals and colouring books. Alaric was last mentioned in Sodor: Reading Between the Lines published in 2005. Christopher Awdry has stated that the reason there are no more books about the Culdee Fell Railway is due to the safety precautions and limited traffic - meaning no more story opportunities.

Front of Alaric:

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 body, and being not very merchandisable.

In Thomas & Friends media, Alaric was used to represent the Mountain Engines in Thomas's ABC and Thomas's Book of Colours – published in 1987 and 1989 respectively. Despite not being referred to by name, Alaric's existence is implied in Wilfred, Culdee and Lord Harry’s merchandise bios.

In 2012, the Culdee Fell Railway was mentioned in a Blue Mountain Mystery promotional video about the differences between the narrow and standard gauge. 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.