 The form in a bin will bite. Several years ago, I bought and received a job lot of early Thomas and friends videos and the like from an eBay seller. The auction's description mentioned that several of the videos were actually given to him prior to the release of the series on VHS, implying that the seller originally worked on the show in some way. Some of the early tapes he sent me were in relatively good condition, considering they're almost 30 years old, and some are a little worse for wear, with missing boxes, labels, etc. Some of the tapes had the original labels missing, and had crudely written replacement labels stuck to them. Other tapes had earlier versions of certain episodes with extra, or missing, sound effects, as well as short bits of footage that did not make it to the final versions of the episodes. The video that grabbed my interest the most, however, was a video simply called, Early Real, which I believe was filmed in the early 1980s, alongside the original pitch episode, Down the Mind. Now, Down the Mind was pitched to ITV, before filming on the series properly began. Once it was green-lighted, Series 1 of Thomas and Friends was produced, and Down the Mind was re-shot to become the show's 25th episode, meaning that this video could not have been Brutal Cross' pitch to the ITV network to get Thomas' green-lipped. Intrigued, I played the video before any of the others I received in the job lot. The video started with a date displayed in the bottom right-hand corner. It only appeared for a few seconds, and it said, 5, 6, 1981, which would mean the 5th of June, 1981. According to most sources, 1981 was the year filming began on the show. After this, the title card appeared. As this was one of the earliest, if not the earliest, Thomas' videos to be completed, it made sense that the familiar theme tune, along with the famous scenes of Thomas bypassing a windmill and stopping at Farquhar Station, was absent. Instead, a relatively plain title card was used, simply displaying the classic Thomas and Friends symbol, shown at the end of all Series 1 and 2 episodes of Thomas and Friends. After a few seconds, it faded to black. Ringo Star was not present as the narrator. There was no narrator, the video contained no speech, merely sound effects, making it all the more unerving. The episode started out with Matford Station being completely mobbed, with trains populating virtually every platform. As only seven engines were featured in the first season, it was likely that one or two unmodified Marklin engines were pulling some of the trains. A goods train, of trucks full of stone, was present in the goods platform, which was the platform closest to the viewer. The camera zoomed in to look more closely at the goods train, and we then saw Thomas back down on the train. Thomas' model looked off in this early reel. It was, presumably, the same model as the one used in the Up Down the Mind pitch, which is visible in a single scene in the broadcast version. Thomas' side rids were chunkier than the TV series model. His wheels were also slightly smaller and his running plate was lower, obscuring part of his wheels. The thing I found creepy is that the engines' eyes didn't move in this. They were painted on, very much like the troublesome trucks, and characters like Terence and Caroline. So Thomas, with his lifeless eyes, pulled out of the station and onto the open line. The puffing noise in this video were more realistic, as if recorded from real locomotives. Further down the line, Thomas passed Percy. Again, his model was noticeably different to his model in the show itself. His tanks were less rounded, and his whole look had a more industrial feel about it, similar to how he looked in some of the later Railway series books. As the two engines passed each other, they whistled, their whistles sounding the same as they do on the show. Immediately following this, Thomas got sent down the runway. We saw a shot of Thomas rolling down the runway with a surprised look on his face. It looked similar to the one on the show, except it was more detailed and seemed to convey more horror, as if Thomas was severely loathing the thought of what is to come. I saw Thomas roll down a steep gradient, with the trucks surging against him. The shocked face from the last scene was still present. A level crossing was ahead of Thomas, which he immediately ran into and broke. To make matters worse, a car was on the level crossing at that point in time, which Thomas ran into, sending it tumbling out of control. A semi-mounted is set similar to the one from Thomas in Trouble, where Thomas is confronted by the policeman, was seen with Thomas in the far distance. The difference was that there were more rocks, ridges and cliffs, and less grass. A pair of derailed trucks were present on the line in front of Thomas. Thomas, unable to stop, smashed into the derailed trucks and flew off of the rails. Thomas continued to roll along the ground. A thin piece of string was visible in a few scenes, until he tumbled off a rocky ledge. He fell all the way down the mountain cliff with a more unsettling face. It was similar to his eyes shut face from the show, but conveyed intense fear and his teeth were gridded. While this was going on, a climatic orchestral piece was heard, which was likely to be a piece of stock music. Thomas reached the bottom of the mountain, and crashed into the rocky ground below. A terrible metallic crash could be heard, while Thomas' body shell exploded on contact with the ground, with bits such as whistles and handrails flying in several directions. A sinus sound explosion sound effect was added for a more dramatic effect. Even worse than this was a pair of male voices letting out blood curdling shrieks, which I assume were Thomas' driver and fireman, either being killed or badly injured by the crash. As the crash died down, the camera panned, and I saw some of Thomas' remains, including the upturned, exploded body shell, as an ominous string's piece, again, probably stock music, was played. The face was gone, faded to a smokebox door. Flames were around the broken pieces of Thomas, and a broken down drain could faintly be seen in one shot, appearing to be coupled to Percy, whose face was obscured by its cap. You could faintly hear a male voice saying the Latin sentence. Felicit rest, Nemono cere. Slowly, the scene faded to black. On the black background, some text, in white, red, there's nothing quite like it, below the middle of the screen, in Rockwell. In the Railway series, there's nothing quite like it, was the motto of the Northwestern Railway, the Railway featured in the books and TV show. Following this was a copyright notice. A clear water features production for Brit Alcroft Limited. Copyright, Brit Alcroft, Thomas, Limited, 1981. While the copyright bait was displayed, the faint sound of steam hissing was audible, along with a faint, yet shrill-sounding steam whistle, which sounded like a more realistic version of Thomas' whistle. The screen remained blank for about 30 seconds. Slowly, it faded to a night scene. The color was very washed out at this point. A rusty engine with Thomas' shape could be seen coasting along a rundown branch line. I say, coasting, because the engine was making no puffing noises to signify that it was moving under its own power. I could only assume that the engine was a ghost Thomas or something similar. Thomas no longer had a face, but instead a regular smokebox door. The smokebox door wasn't secure, so it kept banging against Thomas' smokebox. Each time the door opened, there was some sort of substance that was faintly visible inside Thomas' smokebox. I initially assumed this to be ash, but upon closer inspection, it looked like some sort of rotting flesh. I still like to think that it's ash however. Throughout these night scenes, very little sound was present. During close-ups of the ghost Thomas, some awful grinding, squealing and clanking noises were heard. The branch line terminates at the scrapyard. By this point, Thomas was rolling at a considerably slow pace, slower than usually seen on the early seasons of TNF. Oddly, most of the scrap models were not the regular scrap engines seen on the show. The scrap consisted largely of broken up road vehicles and the like. Thomas slunk into a damp siding. After stopping, a man, modeled in the same style as the series proper, holding a cutter's torch appeared, standing in front of the rusty Thomas. The camera pan down slowly whilst fading to black. After about six seconds, the sound of birds chirping was audible. I was half-expecting the tape to take a more light-hearted approach. I was rung. A black-on-light hand drawing faded into view. It was of a set of sidings with rows of steam engines that had been withdrawn from service. Having several books and magazines on British railways in the final days of steam traction, I am used to this sort of scenario. However, the engines were completely dilapidated. Their frames were bent out of shape, various bits of the engines were cracked and dented, most engines were missing things like smokebox doors and buffers, and all the locos simply looked completely mauled. As I am something of a British railway buff, I found this image to be a little upsetting, though I imagine that many people will be completely enthased by it. If you're a long-time follower of Thomas and friends, or have children or younger siblings that are into the show, then you'll know that there are literally hundreds of characters in the series, even more if you count things such as the original railway series books and the magazines. This picture did not have hundreds of engines, but the choice of engines were interesting to say the least. All of them represented real engine classes, some of which formed the bases of characters that weren't yet created. For example, there was a North Stafford shear battery electric locomotive. Fairly little known until 2012, when it was brought out of obscurity, by serving as the basis for the character, Stafford. Even more bizarre was the inclusion of two Manning Ward oil-class tank engines. Any fans of the series will know that both Billy and Charlie are based on this engine class. Other engines were not used as a basis for any Thomas character. For example, the London, Tilbury and Southend Railway Class 79. This engine class normally sports a Westinghouse pump, as seen in the linked image. The drawing showed the pump to be missing. However it had not been torched off, but rather it appeared to have been wrenched off, leaving a gaping hole in the smoke box. There were similar holes in the engine's boiler. And in the middle of the picture was Thomas himself, barely recognizable. His smoke box door had been broken right off, as had most of his cab and external parts. Some of his wheels were missing, his sidrids were removed, and what little paint that had remained on the dilapidated, whole written body shell was almost completely faded and obscured by rust. As for sound, the chirping birds played throughout the showing of the drawing, about 27 seconds in total, along with the unmistakable sound of a black five whistle. The whistle was long and drawn out, lasting for the whole showing of the image, and still trailing after the image had faded to black. It would seem that the recording was from an engine that had been taken out of service, and was being drained of steam, ready to be broken up. This made the image all the more unsettling. Partway through, the whistle almost seems to begin to sound pained. I've always been somewhat unnerved by static captions or images. Especially if they are not accompanied by any text or music. I'd never liked static to be items used to signify the death of a royal family member, for example. This was no exception. The imagery and the soundtrack didn't help matters either. After a while the whistle began to get a bit staticky. The image showed again for a split second, but now with a black on red color scheme. It was not blood red, crimson red or anything, but rather a perfect red. You'd expect to see as the default red color for old editions of Microsoft Paint or Paint.net. The red quickly faded to a more brownish yellowish hue, before fading away completely.