Narrow Gauge Coaches/Behind the Scenes

The Railway Series
There are several narrow gauge coaches seen throughout The Railway Series created by Rev. W. Awdry. There are nine known named coaches.

They first appeared in The Railway Series book, Four Little Engines, which was published in 1955. Their last appearance was in New Little Engine, published in 1996.

The coaches are based on carriages servicing the Talyllyn, Corris, Ffestiniog and Welsh Highland Railways.

These coaches (with exception of the Talyllyn coaches) do not appear in the television series adaptation, Thomas & Friends. However, these coaches form the basis of several other coaches on the Skarloey and Mid Sodor Railways.

Television Series
In 1995, the narrow gauge coaches were introduced in the fourth series of Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends. Three variations of coaches were made; blue and cream coaches, red coaches with yellow stripes, and green and cream coaches. They replaced the roles of Agnes, Ruth, Lucy, Jemima, Beatrice, Ada, Jane, Mabel, Gertrude and Millicent in the televised adaptations of the Skarloey Railway stories from The Railway Series.

While all the narrow gauge coaches in The Railway Series were female, any instance of the coaches in the television series being referred to in gender-specific pronouns were removed and omitted. This could of been a result of sexism allegations centred around the fact that the engines were almost invariably male, while the coaches were always female which surfaced in the 1980s. Britt Allcroft, the producer of the television series, claimed that gender issues were irrelevant.

These coaches reappeared in sixth series but were no longer depicted with faces. The seventh series introduced the Refreshment Coach. They last appeared in the twelfth series.

Following the show's transition to CGI, these coaches were later replaced with ones that resembled the coaches on the Talyllyn Railway when the Skarloey Railway was reintroduced in 2012. Coaches based on the Glyn Valley Tramway coaches were added in 2018.

Awdry's models
The Rev. W. Awdry built OO9 scale models of the Skarloey Railway coaches (Agnes, Ruth, Lucy and Jemima). These models are now on display at the Narrow Gauge Museum in Tywyn, Wales, UK located near the Talyllyn Railway along with the other Skarloey Railway engines and rolling stock.

Awdry also built OO9 scale model of the Mid Sodor Railway Coaches for his layout. The models were donated by Awdry and put on display at the Reverend Teddy Boston's Cadeby Light Railway in Cadeby, Leicestershire, before the railway finally closed in 2005. These models are now in possession of the Awdry family.

O gauge models (Small scale)
These models were scratch-built to run on O gauge gauge track to the Gauge 1 Scale Standard during production of the fourth series. Three variations of coaches were made; blue and cream coaches, red coaches with yellow stripes, and open green and cream coaches. 4 of each of the 3 set of coaches were made. The coaches were designed by art director, Robert Gauld-Galliers, who based them off real narrow gauge coaches.

Like Annie and Clarabel, these coaches had the embedded faces and matched their paint schemes. The face ends were held on with black tack, allowing them to be detachable. The faceplates were made from Plasticard and depicted various facial expressions.

O gauge models (Large scale)
For ease of filming and reliability, the fifth series introduced larger-scale versions of the narrow gauge engines and rolling stock. From the sixth-twelfth series, these larger models were used almost exclusively. The narrow gauge coaches in particular were upscaled in production of the fifth series to be compatible with the large scale narrow gauge models introduced in the previous series. These models were built to a larger scale than the gauge 1 engines and rolling stock and ran on O gauge track. They were close to 16mm scale, but slightly larger.

The covered coaches windows were now clear and the coaches' roofs were removable, thus making it accessible for human figurines to be place inside all coaches. Alternate variations of each type of coach were made with lower buffer beams to accommodate with engines such as Skarloey who had abnormally low buffers. However, unlike their small scale counterparts, the models were never depicted with faces onscreen.

These coaches were made of resin. The original pattern for the sides was moulded so that multiple casts could be reproduced. So in effect, only one side and one end was made from scratch as a pattern. The wheels were sourced from Slater's Plastikard.

Close-up models
Larger scale models of the blue and red coaches were built during production of the fourth series. These were required for scenes where the coaches had to interact with the close-up scale figures.

These models were able to be dismantled and resembled for use of interior shots. Furthermore, the close-up scale models were usually not built as complete models.

Blue coaches Unlike the O gauge counterparts, the blue coach's close-up model never had windows and was painted completely blue. This model only appeared in the fourth series.

CGI models
In 2009, the series introduced Computer-Generated Imagery (CGI) as a replacement for the show's long-standing live-action models. Both types of narrow gauge coaches were created from scratch in CGI by Nitrogen Studios in 2012 for production of Series 16. The models were "hand-sculpted" in Maya, a 3D animation and modelling software.

Instead of reintroducing the pre-existing coaches, they were replaced with coaches resembling the ones featured on the Talyllyn Railway. These coaches are out of scale, being too long and too tall.

In the twenty-second series episode Counting on Nia, a new coach design which was based off the Glyn Valley Tramway coaches was introduced into the series. This type of coach was also created by Nitrogen Studios.

Voice Actors
Blue Coaches:
 * Hideo Ishikawa
 * Yasunori Masutani

Red Coaches:
 * Nobuhiko Kazama
 * Yasuhiro Takato