A Deep Dive into Thomas Lost Media — Reviewed & Ranked

this video was brought to you by my loyal patrons pledge today and you can participate in choosing what video comes to the channel next Link in the description lost media the phenomenon of media projects that at one time were easily attainable and as time went on weren't preserved because they were either never completed taped over or intentionally destroyed and there is always a story why Thomas the Tank Engine is no stranger to Lost media throughout the entirety of the franchise's Run even as far back as the early years of the books there have been articles lost to time and with that crazy recent leak of all those season 5 rushes with all the outtakes and bloopers from That season Link in the description for those who haven't seen all of this crazy footage yet what better time than now to cover elusive Thomas content we never saw I'm going to go over some of the most elusive of the Lost media from Thomas's 77 year run some of which you're probably familiar with and maybe some you haven't even heard about yet I am definitely not the first person to cover Thomas lost media several other YouTubers have made excellent videos on the topic some of which go way further into detail than I ever could so some of the stuff I'm going to cover here is definitely not new territory but I think it's all interesting nonetheless and seems wrong not to include so disclaimer this is a lost media list video so I'm only going to be covering items that either still exist and are out there or existed at one point as much as I would love to talk about things like canceled characters like Little Giant or how Hero of the Rails was originally intended to be made with models I can't include them because they never happened so they are technically not lost no matter how hard we search we'll never find a photo of a hero prop it's just not out there this is also technically a ranking video so I'm ranking everything here by order of how accessible the media is as in how much information or photos we have of it the more elusive unknown and out of grasp it is the higher on the list it will rank so without further Ado let's dive in here is a comprehensive list of Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends lost media number 17. the original cut of Thomas and the Magic Railroad this is easily the least lost media on this list because we have it now it's on the internet Clips are everywhere and if you look hard enough you can find the whole movie Thomas and the Magic Railroad was Thomas's first big venture to the Silver Screen back in 2000 we all know this movie we've all seen it and we've all argued about it to the End of Time the movie had a poor reception and it sort of doomed the future of the TV series and it's always been a point of discussion for fans because of its insanely horrendous production history director Brett allcroft had a very different vision for the movie she wanted to tell a story more about the relationship of a jaded old man and his granddaughter with Thomas in it more so than a story about Thomas that of course did not go over well with investors and test audiences who wanted more Thomas the main villain of the movie was also not everyone's favorite Diesel 10 but it's such Psychopathic human named PT Boomer played by Doug Lennox he tested very poorly with audiences who claimed he was too scary and his scenes were thus cut from the movie altogether it's been known forever that the original cut of the movie was very different than the one we got with so much removed to lighten the tone and speed up the pacing with all this knowledge of a different movie out there fans have speculated for years what this mystery original cut was like well in 2020 in the lead-up to the movie's 20th anniversary Blu-ray release the rough cut leaked online the full unedited two hours something long cut of the movie with all the removed scenes intact I really don't have much to say about this cut other than I don't think it's very good I think it's a neat novelty just to get a better idea of what Brit's original vision for the movie was and I understand it's a rough cut as in it's not fully completed or edited but it's way too long it's drawn out there's way too many corny scenes with the human and PT Boomer is an utterly pointless character that takes up too much time away from the main plot I am not the biggest fan of Magic Railroad but I wholeheartedly think the final theatrical cut is the superior version and all the edits that they ended up making were wise ones I have talked about before that I want to do a full analysis video of this movie one day and I'll go more into the detail on all this stuff then whenever that happens but as for now the rough cut of Magic Railroad is definitely the least lost of all the Lost media on this list number 16. the Sir John gilgood narrations the original railway series books have had several audiobook narrators over the years including Johnny Morris Willie Rushton Ted Robbins michelangelos and even Reverend Wilbert Audrey himself one of the lesser-known narrators is Sir John gilgood who narrated the first 12 books for BBC Radio 1. Thomas was a tank engine who lived at a big station he had six small wheels a short Stumpy tunnel a short Stumpy boiler and a short Stampy Dome Sir John's narrations were played only on the radio and were never given a proper home release so it's not really a shock if you've never heard of him Sir John passed in 2000 and in honor of his passing several of his narrations were pulled out of the archive and played on public radio in 2020 26 of the narrations surfaced online and thankfully have all been posted by the Thomas and Friends audio archives Channel these narrations are technically not lost per se as they are available for public Hearing in the British library of London all you have to do is somehow get yourself to London to hear them I personally really like Sir John's narrations he talked a bit too fast for my liking but he brought a Graver more theatrical tone to the stories that the other narrators didn't I also really like him because of this ad-libbed line in the final story he narrated so they followed to the big station at the end of the line but all the engines had gone the FED controller whose name was dedic was waiting for them there Derek I don't know why he decided to call the then nameless fat controller Derek but I think it's funny me thinks Sir John was just having a laugh in the recording studio and threw it in just to see what he could get away with number 15 the cut season 21 episodes this marks a very interesting time in Thomas's recent history 2017 was a really turbulent year to be a Thomas fan starting out so strong with the final episodes of season 20 then being alienated by the bizarre antics of Journey Beyond Sodor then being utterly confused and upset about talks of a soft reboot in the coming year where Thomas would travel the world and Edward and Henry would be written out only to have all that confirmed True by season 21 which finished the year off season 21 ended abruptly with its final episode writing Edward off the main cast and ending with a scene that flat out said big change was on the horizon I wonder who will be joining us here at tidmouth's show but that's a story for another day man this year sucked season 21 was the shortest season in the entire show with a grand total of only 18 episodes as opposed to the usual 26. it was later confirmed that the season was shortened during production to make way for the Big World Big Adventures soft reboot what's interesting about this though is that season 21 initially was planned to be just a regular season just like all the others and that seemed to be the plan as far as mid-2017 or so due to delayed production with Seasons 19 and 20 after the adventure begins was fast tracked onto Arc Productions animation schedule in 2014 this was their year to play catch-up however Mattel greenlit blah blah seemingly out of nowhere on top of them having to sort out the mess in the aftermath of ark's bankruptcy they had reached a Tipping Point something had to give and season 21 was it the team had to scrambled to make the season work with the coming changes and as a result eight of the 26 planned episodes were just cut so they could move on to Bubba there wasn't enough time to complete a whole season so what they had of season 21 was churned out and they moved on it's led many fans to wonder what exactly was the plan for season 21 originally what were those canceled episodes about well a series producer Ian McHugh told a fan in an email five of the canceled episode scripts ended up being reused in later Seasons these episodes included two rebecca-centric stories confusion without delay and chuckle some trucks which confirmed Rebecca was meant to be in that season and thus was the reason why they wrote Edward out Oliver's fear of fireworks which was reworked to be about Samson instead major loss there Thomas's animal arc which just became a Season 22 episode and the unfriendly elephant which was reworked to be about Nia three unknown episodes remain saf confirmed a while back that there would be an episode covering Rosie his makeover this season and explaining her new job as a shunter at vickerstown well this never happened so this was likely one of the three missing episodes it very possibly could have been the original plot of the unfriendly elephant I put this low on the list because we have technically seen some of these lost episodes just Rewritten though I would love to see the scripts for those planned 8 as they were just to give us a greater idea of how this all was originally supposed to play out like I'd love to know how they were going to use Rebecca perhaps she would have actually been a good character since they wouldn't have had to rush her introduction and all season 21 was in my opinion the last true Thomas and Friends season before everything in the bed in 2018. number 14 the missing coach well this is definitely one everyone has heard about before the elusive canceled episode of season two the missing coach or as confirmed by Tom's props on Twitter hello Twins and doesn't have the same ring to it canceled episodes are not uncommon in Thomas many stories the crew planned to adapt were scrapped in early production such as Gordon goes foreign which they considered twice and was cut both times the missing coat is an anomaly though as it's the only episode to have gotten so far into production to have the majority of it filmed only to be thrown onto The Cutting Room floor in the 11th Hour this was intended to be the first episode of the three-part Donald and Douglas plot Arc in season two following the order of the stories in their original book however series Creator Brett allcroft decided at the last minute that the story was too confusing for kids and removed it from the lineup Donald and Douglas's debuts were then squeezed into the episode brake van turning their three-parter into a two-parter instead there is much speculation about what episode was filmed to fill the missing coach's slot the current consensus is that better late than ever was the replacement fans had known about this elusive missing episode for ages ever since it was first mentioned by David Mitten himself in his 2008 interview with Sif and some photos from the episode have appeared in publicity material in late 2020 or so more photos from the episode leaked online revealing a lot more of how details of the story Were Meant to go down other than the opening shot being repurposed for save from scrap and Donald and Douglas's debut shots being worked into breakvan no footage from the episode has ever surfaced which has inspired many fans to try and reconstruct the episode on their own it is believed that some of if not all the footage does still exist as the original film of the clips used in save from scrap and break van would have had been dug out and rescanned for the remastered versions of the episodes this film whatever remains of it would be somewhere deep in Mattel's archives but until someone on the Thomas crew digs it out for the public to see we can only speculate number 13 the proper season 7 us Dub Season 7 is a weird anomaly of a season in the U.S this was the last of the classic seasons of the show The Last directed by David Mitten the last to use the original theme song and the last to use score composed by Mike O'Donnell and Junior Campbell HIT Entertainment bought out gulane entertainment in 2002 during season 7's production and they had big plans for Thomas season 7 aired in 2003 in the UK as it was intended however season 6 was still completing its release in the U.S that year in 2004 HIT Entertainment had totally rebranded the show with the release of season 8. complete with a new intro new score and new format this of course was a big push and it took priority over getting all of season 7 out in the U.S season 7 was sort of swept under the rug over here while season 8 aired but it was released officially later on the episodes aired on TV B in half hour blocks between season 8 episodes and they were totally redone to fit the new format they were redubbed by the new narrator Michael Brandon and given an all-new score by Robert hartshorn these versions of the episodes were what they released on home media and the original intended versions with the original score never surfaced here we never got a proper release of season 7 in the US however we did get a glimpse of what a proper season 7 U.S release would have been like in 2004 the last three season six episodes were released on a DVD called Thomas and the Jet Engine and Other Stories they needed to fill the DVD with three more episodes so they threw three random season 7 ones on there complete with a new narration by Michael Brandon but as the season 6 episodes used the original Mike and Junior score the three season seven episodes did as well giving us the only ever time we've heard Michael Brandon's voiceover on top of score by Mike and Junior the engines are happy to show vacationers the wonderful sights to be seen but this year there was a problem It is believed that all the episodes do exist in this format somewhere deep in Mattel's archive I mean it makes sense it is basically just the narrator audio over the dubbing tracks after all many fans including myself have tried to isolate Brandon's audio and put it over dubbing tracks to make proper dubs some turning out better than others number 12 the canceled Chris Audrey book treatments Christopher Audrey took up his father's mantle in 1983 and continued The Railway Series adding 16 more volumes to the series he rather famously had much bigger plans for the series with many more ideas for books in mind but was continually hindered by the Publishers who wanted him to write books only focused on Thomas or a new character that they could Market this is especially evident in the abundance of his books that pointlessly have Thomas in the title when he contributes very little to the book's plot especially the later ones Chris talks about his frustrations with the Publishers and HIT Entertainment in the Thomas the Tank Engine man biography and Sodor reading between the lines where he talks about some of the ideas that never came to be the most famous of his forgotten ideas is the book bury the rescue engine focused on an engine called Berry which would have been a 2mt tender engine saved from Barry Island scrapyard and comes to work on the island of odor he also mentions other Scarlet books which of course never happened the infamous austerity engine mentioned in Wilbert's book by the end of his stay the fat controller knew that an engine like Wilbert was exactly what he needed is also never touched on again which we can only speculate would have also been a topic that Chris would have used later Chris definitely made notes of all his book treatments and even allegedly read some of these Original Stories out loud at events a full recording of all his notes for book treatments have never been made public while I personally don't think Chris was a great writer I do feel pretty bad for the guy his creativity in his own series really got shafted by Thomas's popularity number 11. the Thomas and Friends Institute of innovation this is a wild one be Thomas and Friends Institute of innovation was a short film commissioned by Mattel and produced by Studio hanza around 2014 or so the film was created to promote Thomas to merchandising Partners around the world the film was humorous in tone featuring two scientists experimenting with ways of how to improve Thomas in the most insane ways imaginable including testing Thomas to grow limbs injecting Percy with Botox and giving Sir Topham hat steroids this is real the film ends with Thomas in a post-apocalyptic World visually showing that the Thomas brand has longevity and would survive even long after the death of humanity like a cockroach who knows maybe Millennia from now new life forms will bear witness to the enduring appeal of this little engine the film is technically not lost as it's been kept confidential intentionally by Mattel only to be shown to Brands interested in partnering it has never been uploaded in full online anywhere only a couple Clips have been uploaded to Vimeo by studio hanza and a few screenshots have surfaced and man oh man they are surely something number 10. down the mine the 1983 pilot the original pilot episode for the TV series after getting the green light to adapt Wilbur Audrey's Railway Series into a television show Creator Brett alcroft teamed up with Clearwater features to create a pilot pitch they tested different mediums to make the series and settled on Real Models on sets they opted to adapt the story down the mine and two model engines were built for it Thomas and Gordon who both looked very different to their later selves the episode was completed in 1983 and was used to pitch the show to investors obviously it was a successful pilot as a whole first season was greenlit that year down the mime became the 25th episode of the Season 1 lineup and was re-filmed entirely with the later models and props to be consistent the original pilot however has never seen the light of day as it has never been shown publicly however parts of it did some shots from it were repurposed for the later Final Cut of the up episode including these close-up shots of Sir Topham Hatt this one close-up of Annie and famously this shot of Thomas departing netford if you look closely you'll notice Thomas is a totally different prop here than his final one like the missing coach the footage for the pilot is believed to still exist as they would have had to rescan the shots that were repurposed in the final episode for the remastered version and just like the missing coach that footage would be deep in storage in Mattel's archive while we know really nothing of how the pilot would have played out we can deduce a few things one is that it would not have been narrated by Ringo Starr as he wasn't on board with the show just yet likely it was narrated by a temp narrator second is that it likely had no music or at least had temp music as Mike O'Donnell has stated he and Junior did not compose anything for it while it's probably pretty janky compared to the final one I would absolutely love to see this pilot the very first original purest vision of Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends known allegedly there may be plans to include the footage on some sort of special release for the franchise's 80th anniversary in 2025 but that's all just rumors at the moment but Never Say Never number nine Pierce Brosnan's dub of season 12. this one really interests me this is a glimpse into an era of the show that could have been but sadly was lost when plans to switch the show to full CGI occurred and everything changed Pierce Brosnan James Bond himself was brought onto the show in 2008 to be the official new narrator for all English-speaking countries making his debut in the movie the Great Discovery Thomas and James were racing to the wharf I'm going to win Tudor Thomas no I will whistle James the season following the movie was season 12. season 12 was a unique season for it was the first to bring in CGI elements it was all still filmed with models on sets but CGI was used to animate people and the characters faces Pierce did indeed narrate all the episodes and it appears all the lip movements were animated to his voice I never get lost I know the railway better than any other engine however when season 12 officially came out Pierce was not the narrator instead the previous narrator's returned michelangelos in the UK dub ha I never get lost I know the railway better than any other engine in Michael Brandon in the US dub huh I never get lost I know the railway better than any other engine and the Great Discovery marketed Pierce as a special guest narrator no one really knows what happened here the original contract was that pierce was cenere at least until season 14. we can only speculate hit entertainment's decision to switch to full CGI was a sudden one as the model CGI hybrid style was to be the media moving forward for the next few years as far as all the show crew were aware of something tells me that when Pierce caught win that Thomas would be switching the full CGI sooner than expected he called it quits as he'd be voicing only the narrator and not the characters themselves even though he had already finished season 12 it probably saw it more cost effective to just bring the old narrators back so to not have to pay Pierce any residuals we have nothing else to go off of here but a clip of Pierce's dub of season 12 has surfaced online Gordon didn't want to pick up the Workman he wanted to pick up the very important passengers I've got to get coal and water see you at Great Waters and Gordon as well as Snippets from his behind the scenes interview the Neville is what to see he is um he is in many regards similar to Thomas he's new to Sodor he's clearly narrating the episode best friends here since he's asking about Neville what a timeline we could have lived in a few more years of the model CGI hybrid style with James Bond as our narrator number eight foreign dubs Thomas has been dubbed in over 30 different languages across the globe some foreign dubs are pretty well known such as the Japanese dub that famously used a full voice cast instead of just a narrator Thomas was very popular in Japan and still is so that dub of the show has been released on home media several times and all the episodes are pretty easily available online but many other countries were not so lucky in countries where Thomas wasn't popular they saw little to no home media releases and thus those dubs were never preserved by fans I can't go over every country with lost dubs of course as there are a lot of them France for instance only released the first two seasons on DVD season 5 was released on VHS in french-speaking Canada and seasons 3 4 6 Etc never got a home release making only the episodes from those seasons are on these American DVDs with language options the only ones to surface in Poland the first five seasons were dubbed by jagors fedorowski I'm sure I just butchered that Stefan knoth took over as narrator in season six and later re-narated the first five seasons the original fedorovsky narrations were never released on home media and only two known episodes are available online [Music] several countries never received certain Seasons Germany and Greece never received season 6 or 7. Japan never got a complete release of season 12 and most countries didn't get the Jack in the pack episodes It's unknown if dubs of these Seasons even exist in these languages number seven Dustin in 2014 Mattel introduced a new line of sets into the Thomas Wooden Railway range called the Sodor Story collection these sets were based around a series of books that would be included with the sets themselves some of these sets and books featured new characters that weren't in the show including a little shunting engine called Logan a giant American articulated engine called Sam and a rotary snow plow engine called Dustin in 2015 the official Thomas YouTube channel posted shorts promoting these new characters featuring full CGI models and footage to give the illusion to kids that these characters were actually from the show the first was of Logan and then two later of Sam everyone expected one of Dustin too but it never came the Sodor Story collection line was retired in 2016. so all marketing ceased with a Dustin short never coming out many fans just believed they never made one of them however that's not exactly the case use as a magazine came out showcasing a whole page spotlighting Dustin and showing a full complete CGI model of him they had indeed built a Dustin for a short that was either canceled or simply never uploaded if this short does indeed exist it like the missing coach and a down the Mind footage is on a hard drive somewhere in Mattel's archive if only we could somehow get into that vault number six Gordon's snow machine let's keep on the topic of snow machines shall we okay so this is kind of a meme in the Thomas fandom at this point in the season 5 episode snow Gordon passes Thomas with a snow machine that blows snow all over Thomas it appears in literally three shots and that's it it never reappears in any other season and was likely lost or broken during the shipping of all the props to Canada for production of Thomas and the Magic Railroad what's elusive about this is that you never see the machine clearly in any shot as it's blocked by snow you never see its front or its chassis this one photo here is the best shot we have of it and it's totally obscured even in the recent season 5 rushes where we do get a slightly closer shot of it it's still not fully in view in the many waves of reference and ruler photos of Thomas props surfacing online everyone always hopes that one day ruler shots of the snow machine will surface and it just seemingly never does interestingly learning curve plan to make a toy of it in the Wooden Railway line in 2006 a single prototype was made before the item was canceled now Thomas toys getting canceled is nothing new in this franchise but this one is interesting because it is of a prop we have never seen in full and it confirms they must have had ruler photos of some sort to work off of so they must exist the toy has a working rotary blower on the front something that we don't see on the prop does the prop have a rotary blower on it we need to know God damn it number five the original draft of Day of the Diesels I'm gonna be honest here I think this is the least interesting of all the items on this list the original draft of Day of the Diesels one of the most boring padded out been there done that nothing Thomas movies out there was allegedly much darker as confirmed by then series producer Sam Barlow in an interview with Sif the original draft of the movie featured scenes that were deemed too scary for children and had to be heavily altered at the request of HIT Entertainment however he doesn't give any specifics and he had left hit during the movie's production so all of this is just left up to speculation old forgotten characters such as splatter Dodge and Dennis were allegedly intended to reappear in this version of the movie but that never happened and were changed to new characters Paxton Sydney and Norman instead there is some evidence out there that supports this original version existing the post-credits scene of the previous movie Misty Island Rescue you featured a teaser with diesel 10 maliciously planning his return He says this line you'll be laughing on the other side of your boilers soon Sid his steam is and then he starts to laugh maniacally then you watch Day of the Diesels and he doesn't deliver on any of that clearly the original script went very differently but I can't imagine it was anything too crazy this is Sharon Miller era Thomas we're talking about here one of the changes we can point to was Diesel 10's voice actor originally he was going to be voiced by Rupert Degas who delivered an older and slightly more threatening performance you'll be laughing on the other side of your boilers soon the voice was changed to Matt Wilkinson later on as degas's performance was deemed too scary campy and Theatrical Wilkinson continued to voice the character moving forward however a clip of degas's performance has surfaced online ha ha ha hahaha yeah number four The Adventures of Thomas I think this is the one that stings the most for fans cause man we were robbed here in 2009 HIT Entertainment announced an official theatrical Thomas movie would be coming out in late 2010 with director Shane Acker attached and CGI provided by nitrogen Studios the film with the working title The Adventures of Thomas was unlike anything from the TV series and was seemingly in a different Canon altogether the movie would have taken place in London during World War II and revolved around a boy and his father who have drifted apart the boy discovers the world of Sodor a place his father visited as a child but cannot remember amidst their Adventure on Sodor together they would have bonded the aesthetic of this film was going to be very real with the creative team behind the movie describing it as a reimagining of the core characters and the world in a way that would appeal to a wide kids and family audience publicity material and revealed CG models portray Thomas as a real steam engine taking on the proportions of a real E2 class and shockingly without a face the release date kept getting pushed back first to Spring 2011 and then to 2012. production was finally canceled amidst the Mattel buyout in 2012. as the movie was canceled pretty early on in its production there of course isn't any Lost movie here to be found but there would have been storyboards and definitely character concept art which was completed in October 2009 according to nitrogen's production timeline and definitely a script which was confirmed completed in 2010 the only production materials that have surfaced are the official teaser poster some test renderings of the E2 model nitrogen built for the film and a rip-o-matic trailer that was spliced together to give investors a feel of the tone that they were going for utilizing footage from other blockbuster movies including the Polar Express Harry Potter and the pursuit of happiness while I can't say this movie would have been good or bad knowing all this information I would definitely have liked to see how this would have affected the trajectory of the franchise following it this had the potential to either be the greatest thing ever or another repeat of Magic Railroad number three Jack and the pack in the pack or as later referred to Jack and the Sodor Construction Company horribly clunky name was an attempt at a spin-off series of Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends taking Focus away from the railway and onto a fleet of construction vehicles affectionately known as the pack Jack was the main one we followed and he was sort of the Thomas of the group the vehicles all lived on the island of Sodor and interacted with the railway this spin-off was planned as early as 2001 and a soft pilot was worked into season six of the main show this was a two-parter that featured the new characters to allow audience to get to know them before the launch of their full series the next year in 2003. the Jack episodes were filmed alongside season 7 in 2002 however they didn't get far in July 2002 HIT Entertainment acquired gulein entertainment and became the new owners of Thomas hit also owned the rights to Bob the Builder and they weren't about to let the production of a spin-off series made to compete with that continue not to mention they saw the episodes as too expensive to continue filming since hit owned both properties They seized production on the jack series pretty much immediately with only 13 of the 26 planned episodes completed HIT Entertainment had big plans for Thomas which turned into a full Rebrand in 2004 needless to say the Jack episodes were sealed away in the vault never to see the light of day that is until 2006 when hit decided to release all of the completed episodes on a special DVD the episodes were reformatted to fit the current branding of the main show complete with the regular Thomas intro were dubbed by the then narrators at the time michelangelos in the UK and Michael Brandon in the U.S and were scored by the then composer at the time Robert Hartshorne while we were allowed to see these 13 anomalies of episodes there are still 13 more out there we know very little about they technically are not lost since they Were Never filmed but surely there would be scripts or storyboards for them out there the titles of all the canceled episodes have been revealed since some with brief synopses of their plots this one called Jack's snow rescue for example is about Jack being fitted with a snow plow and rescuing a Snowden Village did they get far enough into production to build the snowplow prop for Jack are there photos of that somewhere out there likely not but who knows on top of that we've never seen the episodes we did get in the form they were originally intended it's amazing how much they actually had planned for these construction vehicles and it's a shame that they never got to see their true potential these characters weren't totally forgotten though as every so often they made appearances in the main show they all got brief roles in the movies the Great Discovery and sodor's legend of the Lost Treasure and even a few Spotlight episodes in CGI I am a big fan of the pack and their spin-off series is something that really fascinates me it feels like we got so much with the release of the 13 filmed episodes but they still leave so many questions I can only wonder how these would have played out if the hit buyout didn't occur would they have had their own intro would Mike and Junior have done the score or would it have been someone new would this show have been a big success who knows we can only speculate number two the sad story of Henry 1953 I think everyone is pretty much aware of this one too as it's been covered by many different YouTubers Reverend Wilbert Audrey's original railway series books were so popular that even as far back as the 50s there was interest in adapting them for television in 1953 BBC made the first ever attempt at making a railway series TV show similarly to the later show we all know in love it was made with models on sets but with tiny double O gauge ones they use three meccano Duchess of Athol models and a tank engine which were modified to resemble the characters the first story they chose to adapt was the sad story of Henry the program was live and thus was narrated Live By radio show host Julia Lang this pilot was a total disaster A Train derailed on camera messing everything up and since it was live a hand was seen on camera re-railing the engine destroying the illusion Lang had to scramble to add ad-lib the script to suit what was happening on screen it was an absolute embarrassment in Wilbert's eyes he described it as a matter of almost National concern in this letter he wrote talking about the program it made him hesitant on a TV adaptation of his books ever happening again but he did lighten up over time of course needless to say the episode did not go over well and the second episode and later the whole series was quickly canceled BBC would often tape over old programs back during this time due to lack of space so it is believed this pilot was taped over and his thus lost a Time the only evidence we have of it existing are news articles posting rather negative reviews of the program this letter written by Audrey himself talking about the program which was up for sale recently at an auction and some information on the production in the Thomas the Tank Engine man biography book by Brian Sibley this is something I'd love to see just for the novelty of it some YouTubers have done excellent Recreations of this production they really give a good idea of how this would have went down a real shame that no photos of the modified models exist either I'd love to see how they managed to turn a meccano duchess into James or Edward and number one Thomas the Tank Engine by Andrew Lloyd Webber this is in my opinion the most elusive piece of lost Thomas media on this list as we know so very little about it Brit allcroft's adaptation of the Railway Series Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends was in fact the third attempt at adapting the books for TV we know the story of the 1953 attempt Wilbert Audrey was not pleased with it and due to negative media attention that series was canceled despite it backfiring the interest in trying again was still there this second attempt is very unknown the series called simply Thomas the Tank Engine was put forward by no other than famous musical writer Andrew Lloyd Webber who had read The Railway Series as a child and wanted to adapt it into a 2d animated Musical TV series in a style similar to Iber the engine the idea was put forward in 1973 and a pilot episode was produced in 1976 but very little Came Of It ultimately the project was scrapped due to the U.S market not being interested at the time no one knows what happened to this pilot or if any footage of it even still exists the only single known image of this series is this one of animator Brian Cosgrove working on assets for it and that's uh that's it that's all we got I would love to see this thing I can't say I'm a fan of the character designs with their giant ugly noses and all but I can't even begin to imagine what a 2d musical version of Thomas would even be like oh Andrew Lloyd Webber would go on to write his famous musical Starlight Express which was very much influenced by The Railway Series the musical would go on to be the ninth longest running west end show in England well you know what they say third time's the charm the third attempt which was by Brit allcroft in 1984 turned out to be a Monumental success and we all know the story from there foreign there you have it folks a comprehensive list of Thomas lost media there are of course other minor lost media items out there that I didn't touch on such as various TV props that have seemingly disappeared where are you Fulton fairy plenty upon plenty of unused or deleted footage or alleged bloopers like the outtake of this scene where birdie apparently ran over the people here but you know I can only go so in depth for this thing hello so tell me in the comments below did you learn anything from this video or did you think there was something important I missed what is the most elusive piece of lost Thomas media in your opinion thank you [Music]

Channel: The Unlucky Tug

Views: 108,089

Keywords: thomas, thomas the tank engine, thomas friends, thomas the train, lost media, sad story of henry, andrew lloyd webber, thomas and the magic railroad, director's cut, pierce brosnan season 12, pierce brosnan series 12, the missing coach, down the mine, pilot, dustin

Id: z3arbxKE2uk

Length: 42min 31sec (2551 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 15 2023