On 12 May 1945, a new children's book called The Three Railway Engines was released. While not the first book about talking locomotives, it would garner many subsequent books, two television series, many toys and a loving fanbase of children and adults. It's still an active franchise to this day.

Thomas the Tank Engine has been a part of my life for as long as I have had free will. I have photos of me at the Day Out with Thomas event in Green Bay in 2003 or 2004. I remember endlessly watching him on VHS, and I remember watching the HIT era on TV. I eventually outgrew it by my tween years, but I remembered it well and even started watching Chuggington infrequently. This was still in my cartoon era, I'd watch reruns of Sonic Underground and new episodes of My Little Pony and Littlest Pet Shop. Around this time too is when I first had free access to the internet, discovering stuff like leokimvideos' The Mad Bomber and Dark Side of Thomas videos, as well as one of the many "MS Paint faces on Trackmaster models" videos (I think it was the creator that had that Total Drama parody episode). I stopped watching cartoons in about 2013-2014, which was the start of my cynical teenage years. I tried watching Thomas on TV again, but the episode was on Misty Island, and I said, "Nope, this show is gone," and switched off in 30 seconds. Thomas had been shoved to the back of my mind until I saw Edward the Useless Old Steampot by TheRealXboxNerd on YouTube when it was a few days old back in 2021. I never really watched YTP's when I was young, but this one really spoke to me and restarted my interest in Thomas and even got me down the rabbit hole into liking Tugs. So thank you, you little blue lone survivor, for teaching me it's okay to still like kids' shows.

I'm ALWAYS one to brag when it comes to featuring my own die-cast collection in these drawings, and all these models come from it, including that 1984 UK-exclusive Henry. Though they're not all mint, and the Thomas is a plastic face because when I tried drawing it, it looked horrifying (you can see how coked-up Percy looks), so I changed it to paper.

I feel like Roxie is almost an unintended guinea pig for drawing new objects - last time out, I drew my first gun using her, and now my first locomotives! She gets up to some wild antics, huh? I've implemented some other new things as well:
- A more boxy muzzle style
- Having a larger canvas size, which allows for more detail at the cost of file size (this image's .psd file is 103MB, compared to Bolide Jam, which is 10MB)
- Uploading at a time that isn't 3:00 AM

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Roxanne Fitzpatrick and Ashleigh Teagan Fitzpatrick
Traced from own photo, FurryVNE and Hero Forge screenshots