Slate Trucks/Behind the Scenes

The Railway Series
The slate trucks were characters who appeared in The Railway Series and were created by Rev. W. Awdry. Despite being sentient, they were never illustrated with faces in the original books.

They first appeared in The Railway Series book, The Little Old Engine, which was published in 1959. They last appeared in Great Little Engines, published in 1985.

Television Series
In 1995, the slate trucks were introduced in the fourth series of Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends. They fit into the category of Troublesome Trucks. Their size is also significantly larger than their basis and Railway Series counterparts.

The slate trucks have appeared in every series since the fourth, with the exception of the eighth, thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth and nineteenth series. They have only appeared with faces in the fourth and fifth series.

Following the show's transition to CGI, these trucks were reintroduced in 2011 along with four new designs of slate trucks. The original design of slate trucks were reintroduced with faces in 2017; however, they were scaled to standard gauge.

The trucks are based on various wagons used on different narrow gauge railways in Great Britain.

O gauge models (Small scale)
The slate truck models were scratch-built to run on O gauge gauge track to the Gauge 1 Scale Standard during production of the fourth series.

The wheels of the slate trucks were sourced from Hudson "Skip" 4 hole disc wagon wheels made by Slater's Plastikard. The coupling hooks and chains also came from the Slater's Plastikard, although these hooks were cast in resin and used as well. The insides of the trucks are flat which suggests to have been a 1-part mould. The two ends and the two sides are identical. The resin coupling hooks proved to be fragile and broke easily. The chassis for the slate trucks were made from Cooper Craft O gauge "GWR Match Truck" (3016) and were given modifications, with a portion of the middle cut out to shorten the length and a piece of styrene attached for stability.

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 Slate Trucks in particular were upscaled in production of the fifth series to be compatible with the large scale narrow gauge models. These models were built to a larger scale than the gauge 1 engines and rolling stock and ran on O gauge track. A further batch was made for the sixth series. They were close to 16mm scale, but slightly larger.

As their previous counterparts, they were made from resin, right down to the axleboxes. The coupling hooks and wheels were sourced from standard gauge Tenmille ones.

Close-up models
A larger scale model of the slate trucks was built for production of the fourth series. These were required for scenes where the trucks had to interact with the close-up scale figures.

The close-up scale models were usually not built as complete models. Unlike the O gauge counterparts, the slate truck's close-up model was painted light brown.

This model only appeared in the fourth series episode, Trucks.

CGI models
In 2009, the series introduced Computer-Generated Imagery (CGI) as a replacement for the show's long-standing live-action models. The narrow gauge slate trucks were created from scratch in CGI by Nitrogen Studios in 2011 for production of Blue Mountain Mystery and the sixteenth series. The models were "hand-sculpted" in Maya, a 3D animation and modelling software.

The pre-existing designs from the Model-era were used as referencing. These were also recoloured in dark brown, cream and varying shades of grey liveries.

Voice Actors

 * Chisato Nakajima
 * Yasuhiro Takato
 * Tomohisa Asō
 * Hisao Egawa
 * Ryōichi Tanaka