Emily (T&F)/Behind the Scenes

Background Information
Emily is a fictional standard gauge tender locomotive created by Phil Fehrle and Jan Page. She is the No. 12 engine on the North Western Railway.

Emily first appeared in the seventh series episode Emily's New Coaches, which first aired in 2003. Her last appearance was in the twenty-fourth series episode Gordon and Rebecca, Coming Through!, which was released in 2021.

Steam Team
When production of the eighth series began, Emily was added to the Steam Team to give a female character a prominent role and has appeared as one of the main characters ever since, essentially making her one of the most significant female characters of the television series.

Emily's Conceptualisation
During production of the sixth series, one of the crew members built a model of a GNR Stirling Single in his spare time. The rest of the crew were impressed with this model, with some even saying that the smokebox design and cylinder casing bared a resemblance to women's hair. This gave the crew the impression that this specific class of engine would make the perfect basis for a female character in the show, which led to Emily's creation and introduction in the seventh series.

Voice
Many of the UK narrators portrayed her with a Scottish accent, Michael Angelis, Pierce Brosnan and Mark Moraghan among them. When the show switched to full CGI as of the special Hero of the Rails, a permanent voice cast was also instilled. Teresa Gallagher took up the role in the UK, voicing Emily with a Scottish accent as with the UK narrators. Jules de Jongh, however, gave her an American accent in the US, much like Michael Brandon, who was the series narrator at the time of her debut.

Gauge 1 model
Two models for Emily were scratch-built from brass to run on gauge 1 track. For unknown reasons, one of Emily's models did not have brake-pipe outlets. Interestingly, this model had a tendency to oscillate left-and-right when at speed, a quality that Emily's basis was affected by.

Emily has had modifications throughout the model era. These include:
 * Series 8:
 * Her buffers changed from bronze to silver.
 * Her whistle sound changed and shared the same one as Henry's.
 * Brass ring around her funnel became gold.
 * Calling All Engines!:
 * Her whistle sound changed pitch and she reused Edward's fourth series whistle sound, until the twelfth series.
 * Her smokebox was given a matte finish.
 * Series 11:
 * Her eyebrows became a bit thicker.
 * Her front buffer shanks' colour changed from black to red, whilst her rear ones remained black.
 * The colour of her running board changed from dark grey to light grey. Presumably, this was done to match her running board colour to the other engines in the Steam Team.
 * Series 12:
 * Her face became larger.

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 only having one set of models made to gauge 1 scale, Emily's models would stay under HiT and later Mattel's ownership.

One of Emily's models is now on display at the Explore the Rails exhibition and is wearing her content face mask. It was previously on display in Canada at Nitrogen Studios

Faces
Seventeen different facial expressions were sculpted for Emily, although only fifteen were used on-screen and two of which her wincing and disgusted faces were left unused. The faces were first sculpted in clay and from that resin casts were made using a silicone mould. The eye mechanism had two servos, one for up and down movement and one for left and right movement.

Pantone colours
The following pantone colours are used on Emily's Gauge 1 model:

Close-up model
A larger scale model of Emily was built in the seventh series. It was required for scenes where she had to interact with the close-up scale figures. It was also used for close-up whistle shots; smoke would emit when required.

Most of the engine was built, excluding the wheels, and a visible face. It also had a snowplough, most likely made for the episode, Thomas, Emily and the Snowplough, but it ultimately was never used on-screen.

It appeared in the seventh, eighth, tenth and twelfth series.

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

Photographs of Emily's Gauge 1 model 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.

Texture variants
In addition to her standard livery, several other texture variants exist of Emily's main 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 Emily's CGI model:

Fonts
The following fonts were used on Emily's CGI model:
 * Tahoma

Voice Actors

 * Teresa Gallagher
 * Jules de Jongh
 * Rachael Miller
 * Elain Llwyd
 * Diana Pérez
 * Mara Brenner
 * María Sánchez
 * Kate Kelly
 * Chiara Gioncardi
 * Blanche Ravalec
 * Ioana Perneș
 * Marjolein Algera
 * Christian Stark
 * Kristina von Weltzien
 * Judy Winter
 * Marit Berg
 * Marianne Westby
 * Susa Saukko
 * Haffner Aniko
 * Joanna Pach
 * Olga Kuznetsova
 * Vina Papadopoulou
 * Mia Kadosh
 * Thanh Hống
 * Yuka Shioyama
 * Erina Yamazaki
 * Kim Eun-a
 * Bang Ji-won