The Railway Series - Criticism of Thomas

Criticism of Thomas

Some commentators have criticised the Railway Series as representing values more relevant to the 1940s and 1950s, when Awdry invented the characters, than to the 21st Century. In their book "Train Tracks: Work, Play and Politics on the Railways", Gillian Reynolds and Gayle Letherby criticised the race, gender and class politics of the stories. In a critique of Letherby and Reynolds's work in The Guardian, Ian Jack was deeply critical of their findings: "...the real charm of the books lies in the illustrations rather than the words. The stories themselves are plain little things, with jerky sentences that are hard to read aloud with much parental conviction, and four basic plot lines: Troublesome Trucks, Proud Engine Gets His Comeuppance, Small Engine Shows His Worth, New Engine Is Shunned (And Then Wins Friends)." Jack is particularly scathing about Reynolds' and Letherby's assertion that Toby the Tram Engine somehow reflects the "marginalisation and assimilation" of West Indian migrants arriving in Britain in the 1950s: "It seems unlikely that West Indian migration was much on mind in rural East Anglia, but, yes, the subconscious is a funny thing — though not quite as funny a thing as social studies."