Customer Reviews

The Three Railway Engines

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
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Back in 1945 when this work was first published books, especially children's books were rather hard to come by and the likelihood of newly written books in this genre being published were quite slim. The reason for this was that the war (WWII) was just over and paper was a commodity that scarce. Governments simply had better stuff to do with the supply which was available.

The Reverend W. Awdry had made a couple or three stories up to tell his son while he was sick. Awdry's wife, who apparently was more astute in such matters than the Reverend, saw the potential and pushed him to publish. Well of course he did and what was created was almost an entire industry based around this particular work. The book being reviewed here is the first in the long, long series which have been delighting kids and their parents and grandparents for around fifty five years now. I see no end to these books. (Note: Many people believe that Thomas the Tank Engine was the first in this series...that is not so...this was the book that started it all!)

Anyway....

This first book includes four stories of three rather remarkable trains who share a train shed. The three trains, Edward, Gordon and Henry. The stores of course center on these three heavily anthropomorphized characters; their adventures, bragging versus reality and such...good stuff that kids love. This original work was illustrated by William Middleton. It should be noted here that the author was not happy with Middleton's work and changed illustrators after this publication. Personally I find the illustrations quite good and for the life of me cannot see why the author was unhappy with them, especially as this first book quite quickly sold over 22,000 copies!

Be that as it may, the important thing to know of this book is that children still to this day love it. I personally am more comfortable with this illustrator's take on the subject than I am on many of the other books in this large series.

The text is quite readable, the illustrations good and this work has stood the test of time. I am not at all sure how many other books this one has spawned, but I do know that every time I turn around, there seems to be more added to the list each year. That is a good long run!

I can well remember having this book read to me as a little one (I fear that was very, very near the original publication date), and I am very please that this one is still around.

Don Blankenship
The Ozarks

The original installment of the "Thomas the Train" stories (alert--Thomas does not appear in this group of stories yet) introduces Edward, Gordon and Henry. My son adores these and we read them over and over. He studies the illustrations very intently and want to know every detail!

I love that this is the original oldy-timey version of the Thomas stories. My son loves the illustrations. The size is easy to handle. There are about 3-4 stories per book.

I love reading these books with my son becuase they seem more realistic (for books about talking trains) and explain things with greater detail than the new Thomas books that are mostly pictures and very little content.

This one explains why it's Gordon's Hill and Henry's tunnel! And it's not the fruffy story from 'Gordon's bad day' or whatever the name of that other rag was.