North Western Railway (fictional)
The North Western Railway is the main railway company featured in The Railway Series of children's books by the Rev. W. Awdry. Although the company's name has never been specifically stated in the books, it was mentioned as such in tie-in books such as The Island of Sodor: Its People, History and Railways by the Rev. Awdry, and also on some maps that were drawn to accompany the Railway Series.
The railway is situated on the fictional Island of Sodor and is usually referred to as the Fat Controller's Railway after the nickname of its chief executive or chairman Sir Topham Hatt.
The railway's motto is "Nil Unquam Simile", which is Latin for "There's nothing quite like it"!
In the television series Thomas & Friends, which is based on characters from the Railway Series books, the NWR is the main standard gauge railway on Sodor but the railway is known as the "Sodor Railway", "The Fat Controller's Railway", or "The Big Railway" in episodes focusing on the Skarloey Railway.
Read more about North Western Railway (fictional): History, Rolling Stock
Famous quotes containing the words north, western and/or railway:
“Ah, how shall you know the dreary sorrow at the North Gate,
With Li Po’s name forgotten,
And we guardsmen fed to the tigers.”
—Li Po (701–762)
“It is fatally easy for Western folk, who have discarded chastity as a value for themselves, to suppose that it can have no value for anyone else. At the same time as Californians try to re-invent “celibacy,” by which they seem to mean perverse restraint, the rest of us call societies which place a high value on chastity “backward.””
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)
“Her personality had an architectonic quality; I think of her when I see some of the great London railway termini, especially St. Pancras, with its soot and turrets, and she overshadowed her own daughters, whom she did not understand—my mother, who liked things to be nice; my dotty aunt. But my mother had not the strength to put even some physical distance between them, let alone keep the old monster at emotional arm’s length.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)