Henry the Green Engine
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Henry the Green Engine is a fictional anthropomorphic 4-6-0 steam locomotive from the children's television series, Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends, and The Railway Series books written by the Reverend Wilbert Vere Awdry and his son, Christopher Awdry.
Henry lives on the fictitious Island of Sodor with many other locomotives, including Thomas the Tank Engine, Gordon the Big Engine and Percy the Small Engine. He is engine number 3 on the railway.
Henry's first adventure was in The Sad Story of Henry, which was story three of The Railway Series book Three Railway Engines. In this story he refused to come out of a tunnel due to fears that the rain would spoil his paint. As punishment by the Fat Controller he was bricked up in the tunnel until he had to help Gordon the Big Engine after a burst safety valve.
Henry was originally a failed prototype engine, who as the result of a small firebox was often ill and a poor steamer. The Fat Controller gave him special Welsh coal, which helped. But worse was to come -- Henry had an accident while pulling the fast fish train known as the Flying Kipper. The Fat Controller sent Henry to the works at Crewe, where they rebuilt him into his present shape, where he was given a new firebox making him similar in specification to an London, Midland and Scottish Railway 5MT "Black Five" steam engine. This cured his illness completely.
Henry now works on the main line. He can pull coaches and trucks equally easily, and sometimes even pulls the Express when Gordon is not available. He is still the engine responsible for the Flying Kipper, and in the television series he also brings the post from the Mainland.
He likes to tell people about the famous time when he managed to pull two failed diesels and their trains when he himself had a failed regulator (in the story 'Super Rescue'), but the other engines are always there to bring him down to earth if he gets too big for his wheels.
He has been in the television series from the start, and in recent seasons has been identified as part of the Steam Team, the eight central characters.
Henry's Rebuild
Behind the scenes, Rev. W. Awdry had a great deal of trouble with the illustrators' depiction of Henry. He was unhappy with the way C. Reginald Dalby had portrayed the character, as he looked almost identical to Gordon. To make things worse, the character was inconsistently portrayed, often having several different appearances within the space of a single story.
Awdry's original idea had been to write Henry out of the series, hence the character's illness. But by the sixth book, 'Henry the Green Engine', he had decided against such a drastic measure. He instead decided to have the character rebuilt into a Class 5MT which, being a real locomotive, would effectively force Dalby to be consistent.
There is a certain amount of debate as to the nature of Henry's rebuild, caused by the book 'The Island of Sodor: Its People, History and Railways'. This book, written to flesh out the Railway Series universe, claims that the pre-rebuild and post-rebuild Henry are actually two completely separate beings. But in the story 'Percy Takes the Plunge', set after the rebuild, Henry recalls the events of 'The Sad Story of Henry'. As both sources may be considered equally canonical, the question of whether there have been two Henries or one will likely remain unanswered.
The same book featured a certain amount of retcon to explain Henry's old shape in the first place. The explanation devised was that he was an experimental locomotive built according to plans stolen from Sir Nigel Gresley. Owing to a mistake, the wrong plans were taken and the locomotive built was so riddled with faults that the only person who could be persuaded to buy it was the Fat Controller (then the Fat Director), who was desperate for any locomotive he could get. The name of the thief is never revealed. The Fat Controller claims that he wanted an Atlantic (a locomotive with a 4-4-2 wheel arrangement). This latter point is worth noting, as William Middleton, the very first Railway Series artist, portrayed Henry as this type of engine.
'The Island of Sodor' also features a biography of the Fat Controller, which mentions that he was apprenticed under Stanier. It is possible that this is another piece of retcon to explain how he was able to have Henry rebuilt so easily -- something that even Rev. W. Awdry admitted was "a mystery".
In the book 'Sodor: Reading Between the Lines', it is said that Henry merely strongly resembles a Stanier 5MT, so it is possible that he is not totally identical to one of these engines.
Racism Allegation
Henry was the central character of what might be the most controversial episode in the history of the Railway Series. In the story 'Henry's Sneeze', the character blasts some troublemaking schoolboys with soot. The story was attacked in 1972 because the boys in question were said to have been rendered "as black as niggers".
So controversial was the issue that it was actually reported in the national press. Awdry himself claimed that it was a case of oversensitivity on the part of the race relations board -- a complaint that was misinterpreted by some members of the public as meaning that he was a racist. To solve the problem, he changed the offending sentence to "as black as soot", which has been used in every subsequent edition of the book.
The 'Henry's Forest' Controversy
Henry was the focus of Rev. W. Awdry's irritation once again in the 1990s, when the third season of the television series 'Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends' was released. This series featured a number of original episodes that had not been adapted from The Railway Series stories, some of which annoyed Awdry with their lack of realism. The story that particularly angered him was called 'Henry's Forest'.
This episode begins by explaining that Henry's favourite place on Sodor is a forest through which the line runs. He likes to stop here and admire the scenery. A storm damages the forest, making Henry sad. The episode ends happily, with new trees being planted to replace the ones lost.
Awdry's complaints were directed at two aspects of the episode in particular. One was that it was unrealistic to have a railway running through a forest. Britt Allcroft, the series producer, countered by claiming that she had seen a number of lines that do just that.
The other aspect was that Henry stops to admire the view without alerting the signalman, which was in direct contravention of British Railways' Rule 55. This, Awdry argued, would never be allowed to happen in real life, and would be highly unsafe.
In the Season 5 story 'James & the Trouble with Trees' some trees are removed because 'The Fat Controller says they're too close to the line.' This is evident in Season 8 story 'Henry and the Wishing Tree', in which the trees are further back. It seems likely that these changes were a response to Awdry's complaints.
Henry in Thomas and the Magic Railroad
Henry is voiced by Kevin Frank in the Thomas and the Magic Railroad movie. [link]. In this incarnation, he is the only steam engine to have an American accent, and he appears to still suffer from boiler trouble. The major difference between this incarnation and the pre-rebuild version of the television series is that his sickness is cured by "Island of Sodor coal" rather than Welsh.
Trivia
- Rev. W. Awdry's own model of Henry was as troublesome as his fictional counterpart used to be, never really working properly. Eventually the model was scrapped without being replaced.
- In the books, Henry's tender is unusually small for a Stanier 5MT. In the book 'Sodor: Reading Between The Lines', it is explained that this is because it is a smaller tender of a type designed by Henry Fowler, which the Fat Controller prefers. In the television series, he kept the tender from his old shape after his rebuild.
- Although he is always known as "the Green Engine", from the end of 'The Three Railway Engines' to 'Troublesome Engines', he was painted blue. In the story 'Henry Sees Red', he temporarily ran in an orange-red undercoat.Though in the Television Series he is always Green.
- In the television show, there have been close up shots of all the engines' whistle valves. Even from regular shots, it appears that Henry has no whistle valve (with the exception of the mid-story sequence with a pre-rebuild from the first seasons), and if so, it is very small. The only times in which Henry's whistle has gotten a close-up are in the "Night Train" music video, and Duck Takes Charge.
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