Visiting Thomas and the Magic Railroad Filming Locations

okay so last year I took a short vacation to the aisle of man with my parents I'll admit the main reason I wanted to go there was because that's where they filmed scenes for the commercial flop movie Thomas and the Magic Railroad a movie which unfortunately I happen to have a mild obsession with the plan was to go there and visit as many filming locations as I possibly could before leaving I was so determined to make the most out of this trip that not only did I find places from the main feature but also the deleted scenes I just had to find them first okay so for those who didn't know the aisle of man is actually right next to the island of Sodor you know where Thomas and his friends live I couldn't wait to finally see it we boarded the ferry and then Sodor really does have a thing for windmills huh after a couple of hours we finally arrived at Douglas on the island of man who the heck has got [Music] clogston the plan of action was to visit Port corna first and foremost but instead of doing that we got so lost you'd probably think that we were trying to avoid this place yes not only did we somehow get lost on day one but we also managed to get lost twice on day one we got to see a good chunk of the island too I'll be it very briefly this is Port corna it shows up super early on in Thomas and the Magic Railroad as the ocean of [Music] time this extremely remote part of the island is not only home to a very Rocky Beach but also Bern at Stone's Cottage I never would have imagined that his house was right next to the ocean the whole time I mean to be fair just look at him he's a bronze Beach [Music] [Music] babe I don't know what they're using it for now but there's probably nobody living inside of it please just leave me [Music] alone even though there's not really a lot in Port cor it seems to be a pretty popular spot for dog walking with the locals and it's like gorgeous too come on that too a short way behind burn at beach babe Stones Cottage was the climbing tree where passionately meet for the first time [Music] day two it rained with the bad weather of foot we decided to hit a the railway for a nice ride to Douglas back the train stopped in Port Aaron for a bit so while the crew were preparing for the next trip to Douglas we went to the [Music] museum among the various artifacts and information about the islands Railways was a photograph of the castl toown railway station while while they were shooting Magic Railroad more on this later inside the station building was this plaque dedicated to none other than the Reverend Wilbur Audrey himself it's nice to know that the legacy of Thomas will never be forgotten [Music] here [Music] when we got to Douglas we had some time before the train set off back down the line again and I knew that the production office for Magic Railroad was right around the corner from here so it made sense to go and visit only only problem was I couldn't remember the address while I was there I thought it was number 14 but it turns out the building they actually used was number 10 so now I have all this useless footage of a building with no real importance to me but hey at least you could see number 10 in this shot oh don't forget about this one too yeah yeah yeah see th this was the building they used not that one also weirdly enough Douglas station has a Platform 9 and 3/4 display not going to lie guys but I think you missed the mark by about 314 mil good effort though next up is Castle Town railway station this is The Shining Time Station building the real station's Made of Stone but it got covered in panels to look American for the movie we got there early enough in the morning so that there was hardly anyone else around except for these dogs of [Music] course contrary to what you see in the deleted scenes muffle mountain is not right in front of the station nor is there a giant green screen there just a rugby [Music] pitch after going around and filming the station for a bit we spoke to the station Master he actually remembers when the production crew came in to shoot the movie according to him the filmmakers were very pleasant and actually tried to work their schedule around the railway's timetable which means they were still running regular trains while they were filming magic Rail Road at one point I asked him if they filmed anything inside the shed at Castle town he said that it was only ever used as The Shining time Co-op and that the scenes with Burnett's Workshop were filmed in the shed at Port St Mary I did some digging and I think he might be right on the Blu-ray re-release of Magic Railroad there's this shot of the crew on the Port St Mary platform and apparently the shed doors were also replaced during production I feel stupid I didn't get a lot of coverage of the shed the best I got was this shot when I stuck my phone under the door the next place we visited isn't actually a magic railroad location this is balabag station does it look familiar Balck station was of course the basis for the tiny station on the scarlo railway in the TV series series first appearing all the way back in season 4 before making its last appearance years later in season 18 clearly the station had a bit of a growth spurt but [Music] still the station's been repainted a couple times and honestly I love the red it's such a nice look and I definitely prefer it to the all green Livery they had before just out of curiosity I wanted to see what the station looked like from the back and it's still green granted it's a spot that nobody's ever going to see unless of course you're like me who's perfectly happy to crawl through shrubs and Thorns to get me Shots it was pretty neat to see these two liveries side by side later that day I got dropped off at St John's this place took up the role of shining time the contented railro roing Town hidden deep in a valley but unlike shining time St John's isn't actually a town just a village first up was the tin Wald hillan alongside this wall was where the juggler's telephone box used to be and just across the street was where the newspaper scene happened St John's was also the main location for Mr conductor's nightmares I will say though one thing that did annoy me about my visit was that for some reason I just couldn't find the playground where the juggler walked through I know it must have been somewhere in St John's with the rest of the shining time scenes but but everything about the background was throwing me off where's this wall how about this wall are these Pham poles still up or is this house the same color did they knock anything down I don't know I hunted up and down those streets looking for these walls and I kept seeing similar walls but they weren't the same ones from the shot and I I just had to give up I couldn't find them I'm sorry day four was my last full day on the aisle of man so we had to make the most of it with back-to-back location spotting first up was the round table we passed this place a lot before today so it was really nice to just stop and look around for [Music] [Music] once the first time I saw this place I was actually a little surprised to find out that it was on top of a mountain because it really doesn't seem seem like it is in the movie it's interesting to see that one of the gates was actually replaced at some point if you look closely at the footage that Jacob and Wy shot the gate is similar but not identical to the one in the movie so I guess it's fair to say that the gates are just occasionally swapped out over the years before we left this huge Squad of dirt bikers came through from one of the nearby trails and just as soon as they came they were gone again a little further up the road is the bridge that Stacy and Lily drove over on their way to meet [Music] [Music] brnette I find it kind of funny that in real life they'd actually be driving away from the crossroads even further down the road was a trail that led to one of the fields that Thomas rolled through on his way down the mountain one thing I find interesting about this place is that there's a noticeable amount of trees that are missing from the original shot I couldn't find any information about this but I suspect that there may have been a fire here at one point St wheel ah now here's a spot that I found all by my myself as I was leaving the field I found the establishing shot of the sheep farm seing right before patch and Bernette talk about Lily's [Music] disappearance before the day ended I knew I had to climb Dolby Mountain after watching Jacob and wy's video and seeing how they tried to scale the mountain three separate times I decided that the best course of action would be to just follow the route that they took I mean I it was pretty much guaranteed to work we parked the car in the village of Glen May hiked along the road for a little bit up a Rocky Trail cut through the edge of someone's backyard before finally reaching the ascending Fields up Doby Mountain as we were hiking up we looked back down and saw Glen May getting smaller and smaller the higher we went the more my eyesight looked like a shot from the movie right before we got to the top there was this rusty old gate that I'm pretty sure I broke trying to climb over from there it was a matter of walking along a narrow path before reaching the ledge this is the exterior of burn at Stone's Workshop the walls here were dressed up a bit for the movie but this is it you know this is it honestly the fact that anything's here now is kind of amazing everything about Dolby Mountain was perplexing to me clearly something used to be here but when I tried doing research before the trip I couldn't find anything continuing further down the path brought us to this huge huge tree that was really awkward to shuffle around my dad had to pin the tree branch down so I could shimmy around it it was worth the tussle though because just past it was another filming area it was none other than the cliff where Thomas enters the real world this was so cool it was like he really could have been here hello I'm Thomas and I'm really here standing on Thomas's ledge you can actually see the reverse shot of where Lily was calling back to Thomas some of these shots would have been filmed from The Landing below and while you can't really see it from my shots a fall from this height would definitely be enough to kill me one thing I didn't realize at the time of filming was that the cliff where Thomas came out was also the same Cliff as the deleted scene where patch watches Boomer what's even more interesting is how they actually film these shots when we're watching Boomer we're actually looking down at him from a high angle and even though patch is standing where Lily stood the camera's facing towards the valley in a completely different direction and these two subtle ch changes in cinematography actually make up a completely new area on muffle Mountain even though it's shot in the same place as another scene while I was getting this shot the gears of my head started turning and I realized that I was standing next to the corner where they filmed PT Boomer's detonation scene this is my genuine reaction of me figuring this out I feel like I need to stress the importance of this exact spot before the work print or the Blu-ray or any of that got released for the longest time this was our best look at p T Boomer this one shot from a Japanese trailer that was it this was the place that teased me with the promise of of something even better than what we already had the mystery of what could have been and I was standing right in front of it of course I'd already seen the workprint and the Blu-ray numerous times before coming out here but it was nice to finally have closure with the shot also I'm pretty sure they put in a fake rock for Doug Linux to sit on to the left of Thomas's Cliff is another one of the slopes that he rolls down on this one's kind of funny because if we look at the real world route that Thomas takes to fall down this mountain he slips down here somehow jumps back up here and then ends up in a completely different field and then another completely different field but that's the great thing about film making you can make all these cheats and nobody will ever notice something I really liked about this area was that because it had rained the night before there was all this running water that was dripping off the rock face behind us it was so cool another interesting thing I noticed is that when you're looking out from the cliff you can see another one of the roads that was used in the movie kind of funny to think that they filmed this shot from Doby [Music] Mountain before we left my dad took this picture of me doing a very tasteful tribute and on our way back to the car we stopped by the huge slate pile where Boomer was digging with his excavator it was really cool to stand up here but my God was this place unstable again probably fatal if you slipped there was still one more place that I really really wanted to visit before we left and although it was on the way back down the mountain there was just no easy way to get to it the field where the original ending of the movie was shot Lily's scrapbook ending this scene took place 20 years after the events of Magic Railroad and Lily who's now about 32 passes on the story of Magic Railroad to her children also real quick since the film definitely took place in 1999 going forward exactly 20 years places this scene in 2019 unfortunately there was only one clear way into that field and there was a horse blocking the only entrance so sadly it wasn't meant to be my final day on the aisle of man everything was so quiet and Port St Mary felt so peaceful this early in the morning my family and I had to catch the morning fairy back to the mainland but we did have a little bit of time to kill beforehand with that being said I'd like to tell you about some of the local superstitions on the island residents on the aisle of man have conjured up superstitions of fairies inhabiting some areas around the island fairies are typically seen as mischievous creatures that should be treated with some level of respect for example wishing the fairies a good morning or just by saying hello is said to make for a pleasant trip not doing so is said to bring about bad luck please observe the MA's tradition and say hello Fair as we pass the fairy Bridge hello fairies hello fairies this folklore is manifested into the infamous fairy bridge where the tradition is usually carried out when crossed the production crew for Magic Railroad actually honored this tradition a fair bit while they were on the island and they even went as far as to actually credit the fairies at the very end of the movie which is really Charming we kept passing the bridge every time we went anywhere on the island and we always said good morning to the fairies but this was the only chance I had to stop and really look at it you know I think I'll let the display speak for itself [Music] [Music] [Music] here [Music] [Music] [Music] after I got back home I started talking to Jacob Jarrett about our trips to the AL of man not many Thomas fans can say they've done what we've done so it was nice to find some common ground there we also spoke a bit about Doby mountain and came to the conclusion that we basically knew nothing about it this then prompted Jacob to go out and uncover just a ton of new information about Dolby Mountain out of nowhere so a huge Thanks goes out to him for somehow making this possible as it turns out Dolby Mountain used to be home to the Glenn Russian slate quaries in the 1800s during the height of the quarry's life there were roughly 120 men working up this mountain even though we only saw one level there were actually five different levels that went right down the mountain unfortunately the quality of the Slate was poor it was much thicker and heavier than what was being imported to the island so around 1900 the Quarry was closed for Good given how tricky it could be to access the site what's left of the Quarry now remains mostly untouched a lot of this information was sourced from the book hidden places of Man by Stan BAS but even though this information exists in print form finding anything about it online was tricky most of what Jacob found wasn't even put online until at least 2019 about a year after he and Wy went to the aisle of man as frustrating as it was not knowing any of this before my trip I'm just thankful it's finally surfaced you may think we're done here but let me tell you we are definitely not done [Music] here about a month after I finished the aisle of man trip I went back to stay in America for a few months even though I live in the UK I want to take some time off to travel around the states to visit friends and family I don't get to see very often I had so many amazing experiences from this trip and I even got to visit the Edison show in November which was really [Music] fun I was really hoping to visit the North American filming locations but for one reason or another plans fell through and I I just had to accept that I wasn't going to see them surprise trip to Strasburg while I was staying with some relatives in Pennsylvania they very kindly took us all out on a day trip to the Strasburg railroad and wouldn't you know it the first thing I see is I'm getting out of the car it's none other than 475 or as I know it the rainbow Sun back in service after it's little uh accident I'm honestly kind of impressed by how fast they got this thing fixed him back in [Music] service along the main platform was where The Shining Time Station facade one stood because the train and the station itself were filmed in two different countries a fake shining time wall was built in America America so that the rainbow sun in the station could actually Coexist on screen in the final film however you only see the facade once okay technically twice you can actually see the back of the facade in the reflection of the carriage Windows during The Shining Time song It's funny being here I feel like I hold more of a connection to the railway through the 10 years of Thomas VHS than Magic Railroad what do you like about Thomas when he goes very very fast he will go very very F the platform at the Depot was actually remodeled a bit so the ground is a bit different from how it was in 99 and again Platform 9 and 3/4s even further away than [Music] before at the very end of the day right before we left we stopped by the Cherry Farm level crossing and I was able to recreate this shot from the [Music] movie this was also where the reverse shot of those two kids waving to Billy was filmed and just a short way down the line was where PT Boomer had his big motorcycle stunt I was honestly pretty surprised by how built up this area was [Music] [Music] now so after I finished filming this video guess what I found the exact coordinates for the PT Boomer motorcycle scenes I kept watching this one shot over and over and over again trying to find any other clues that could tip me off to its whereabouts and then way off into the distance TR this was a huge tip off if I could just prove that this was a level crossing in the background then I could easily find this place I then started to look through a list of every single level crossing on the aisle of man hoping that maybe one of them could be it and then I remembered one very specific shot in Jacob and wy's video this shot look at the angle on that level crossing it's so similar it isn't long before I figure out that this road crosses over the Snell Mountain Railway I soon find this place on Google Maps Bingo the angle of the crossing the walls the cover on the ground it all matches and then I think I wonder if they filmed all all the motorcycle scenes in one go it makes sense from a filmm standpoint efficiency is so important that the other spots being nearby wouldn't be that much of a stretch and sure enough just down the road was this place I was right and if you kept driving towards Port corner you drive over this place too not long after I found those roads would you believe it I finally found the playground too see this wall here it's actually two walls the shots perspective in alignment just makes it look like it's all one wall when in reality there's actually a road running between these two walls you can actually see the rear wall in one of the deleted scenes fully intact so I can now say with full confidence that the juggler's playground is right in front of the tin Walt Hill in walls and all sadly there were a handful of spots that I just never got around to visiting or filming some of which we know their exact whereabouts While others still remain a mystery before the video ends I've got one last surprise for you all in the description of this video is a link to an up-to-date Google Earth file that lists every known location in Magic railroad's production history while doing research for this video I quickly realized that there there just isn't an easily accessible or recent database of the Magic Railroad filming locations so I decided to make my own I'm really proud of this map and I'm hoping that it serves as a useful tool for anyone interested the map will be updated should new information ever be uncovered if there's anything you think should be added to the map then please let me know in the comments or on Twitter I'm very much open to suggestions [Music]

Channel: Lead Paint Crisis

Views: 46,651

Keywords: Thomas, Thomas the Tank Engine, Thomas and Friends, Thomas & Friends, Thomas the Train, Trains, Funny, Thomas and the Magic Railroad, Shining Time, Shining Time Station, Mr. Conductor, Filming Location, movie, film, behind the scenes, Lady, Diesel 10, Isle of Man, Fairy Bridge, Manx, Strasburg, Strasburg Railroad, gold dust, Island of Sodor, P.T. Boomer, PT Boomer, Britt Allcroft, Alec Baldwin, Rainbow Sun, Muffle Mountain, Magic Railroad

Id: Krl9kvi2hYo

Length: 28min 18sec (1698 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 30 2023