Toby (T&F)/Behind the Scenes

Background Information
Toby is a fictional steam tram locomotive created by the Rev. W. Awdry. Toby lives and works on the North Western Railway as their No. 7 engine.

Toby first appeared in the first series episode Toby and the Stout Gentleman, which first aired in 1984. His last appearance was in the twenty-fourth series episode Gordon and Rebecca, Coming Through!, which was released in 2021.

Initially, he retained his original Railway Series personality, though since HiT Entertainment took over, he has developed a more worrisome nature.

Steam Team
In the eighth series, Toby was among the members of the Steam Team, the main cast of eight central characters. However, following the twenty-second series, Toby's role in the Steam Team seemed to become demoted to be less prominent in order to fix the gender imbalance of the main cast and diversify the Thomas & Friends franchise. Unlike Edward and Henry, who were removed from the Steam Team in favour of Nia and Rebecca to join, Toby's spot was not filled by a new member and he is still mentioned in the updated Engine Roll Call song. He continues to appear as a major supporting character.

Voice
Colm Feore gave Toby an old English accent in Thomas and the Magic Railroad, though a Cockney accent was implemented in the UK dub once Ben Small took over. William Hope, however, gave Toby a Southern American accent in the US narration, which gives the same effect as Hope's voice for Edward, itself very similar to Toby's. Small left the show when his contract expired in 2015, leaving Rob Rackstraw to take over as Toby in the UK. Unlike Small, Rackstraw portrayed Toby with a West Country accent.

Gauge 1 models
Toby's original model was custom built with a plastic body shell and used a Märklin locomotive as a donor for the chassis and various parts. It was painted using automotive paint and significantly weathered to resemble wood. The numbers were custom cut vinyl stickers.

Toby's chassis was sourced from a gauge 1 locomotive made by Märklin, the BR 80. The wheels and side rods were red (not repainted from the original colour of the BR 80) in the first five series. The bell also came from the BR 80, while both sets of bufferbeams were sourced from the tender of a BR 55, making Toby the only character to have both the front and rear bufferbeams match.

Toby's original model was originally AC powered as this is how the Märklin locomotives were powered. During a refurbishment his AC motor was replaced by a DC motor to allow for easier running and maintenance.

A behind the scenes photo of Toby from the first series reveals that he was originally going to have a spark arrestor on top of his funnel just like in The Railway Series.

The eye mechanism had two servos, one for up and down movement and one for left and right movement. The up/down servo was attached to the body. The left/right servo had a rod attached to the arm, which connected to a bracket. The eye balls were coupled to the bracket and locked in by the face-plate, so whenever the servos were powered, the eye balls would move however the crew member desired.

Model Changes
Toby went through several aesthetic changes in the model series:
 * Series 1:
 * In the first series, he had his original bell sound. To create this sound, composer Mike O'Donnell borrowed a last orders bell from Nag's Head, a local pub the crew visited regularly.
 * Series 2:
 * His bell sound changes, now using a stock sound effect. It was later heard in Sodor's Legend of the Lost Treasure after Ryan stops the pirate ship during the wide shot of Arlesburgh Harbour.
 * In Daisy, the front lamp was lowered down and the handle on it disappeared.
 * Series 3:
 * His laughing face was changed to a grinning face.
 * Series 4:
 * He regained his original bell sound.
 * He had an unseen whistle which sounds the same as Percy's whistle from the second half of the third series.
 * His pupils became smaller.
 * Thomas and the Magic Railroad:
 * His wheels became black.
 * His bell became smaller.
 * His paint was given a matte finish.
 * His bell sound changed again to another different one.
 * His face becomes wider.
 * Series 6:
 * He regained his original bell sound again.
 * Series 12:
 * His livery became darker.

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 Resort. 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 it's old age, Toby's plastic model would be given away with a custom built display to go along with it, this was done as it was no longer needed by the company. Since they had the newer brass models which would stay under HiT and later Mattel's ownership.

One of Toby's twelfth series models used to be on display at Drayton Manor until it was allegedly "stolen" in 2011. His grinning face was on his twelfth series model when he first arrived at the Discover Thomas & Friends Exhibition and was put on display in 2009, but it was replaced with a replica face.

Faces
Fifteen different facial expressions were sculpted for Toby and used on-screen. The faces were first sculpted in clay and from that resin casts were made of a silicone mould. During and after production of Thomas and the Magic Railroad, most of Toby's faces were recasted to become wider to hide the gaps. Toby's sleeping face along with most of his original faces, which were in a primered state after being modified for the wider recasted faces, are now owned by Twitter and Instagram user ThomasTankMerch.

Close-up model
A close-up model of Toby was built to be used for scenes where he had to interact with the close-up scale figures. In the first series, due to budget constraints, a close-up model of Toby was not built and it only had a bell in the first series, as well as a water tank placed against wooden vinyl in the third series.

A close-up model of Toby was eventually built in the fifth series. The model was made in pieces so it was able to be dismantled and reassembled when needed. Unlike most close-up models, the one for Toby was built as a complete engine, minus his lamp irons and a visible face.

It later appeared in the sixth, seventh, eleventh and twelfth series, as well as Thomas and the Magic Railroad.

Present Day
Toby's close-up model is currently in Mattel's storage unit in Southampton England.

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

Photographs of Toby's gauge 1 model were used for referencing. According 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.

Toby went through several aesthetic changes in the CGI series:


 * Hero of the Rails:
 * His side-rods and pistons disappeared.
 * His bell sound changed again.
 * His cabs appear to be blackened out.
 * He has decreased in size and is the same height as Henrietta.
 * His face became thicker and gained a blockier appearance.
 * Toby's New Whistle (only):
 * He received a three-chime whistle, which was Hiro's whistle at eighteen steps higher-pitched and was a stock sound effect recorded from Southern Railway Mikado No. 4501, which is preserved at the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum.

Texture variants
In addition to his standard livery, a few other texture variants exist of Toby's CGI model. These texture variants include:

Voice Actors

 * Colm Feore
 * Ben Small
 * Rob Rackstraw
 * William Hope
 * Stephen Donald
 * John Schwab
 * Yasuhiko Kawazu
 * Tomohiro Tsuboi
 * Espen Sandvik
 * Herman López
 * Joaquín López
 * Osvaldo Trejo
 * Emmanuel Bernal
 * Harold Salazar
 * Rolando de Castro
 * César Árias
 * Jürgen Theuns
 * Tom Deininger
 * Christian Stark
 * Volker Hanisch
 * Franz Josef Steffens
 * Andreas von der Meden
 * Mieczysław Morański
 * Jarosław Domin
 * Albert Cohen
 * Gadi Levy
 * Fadulli Costa
 * Miguel Ángel Poison
 * Sacha Pilara
 * Ole Møller
 * Michel Lasorne
 * Bernard Demory
 * Petri Hanttu
 * Hristo Dimitrov
 * Vladimir Antonik
 * Denis Bespaliy
 * Haris Grigoropoulos
 * Um Sang-hyun
 * Shin Yong-u
 * Shin Jeong-hoon
 * Rosta Sándor