u/JakeTheRailfan

Maybe this has been asked before, but whatever. Besides being a plot point, I’ve wondered forever why scrapping is even a thing in Thomas. It’s a human murdering a sentient being against their will. I get that it’s there because the stories represent real world history, including scrapping. But locomotives aren’t alive in real life.

Compared to other stories with sentient objects being taken apart by people, Toy Story (1995) and the Brave Little Toaster (1987) both have examples of this. Sid Phillips takes toys apart in Toy Story and makes the Mutant Toys. The parts store owner takes appliances apart and makes “mutant appliances” in the Brave Little Toaster. The difference between those stories and Thomas, is that the humans don’t know the objects are alive in the former. It’s called a Masquerade if I remember right.

In Thomas, the humans are well aware that the locomotives are alive, so why are they scrapped anyway? Victor Tanzig, love him or hate him, asks the same question, so he changes the timeline slightly to make scrapping a consensual act; a locomotive can’t be scrapped unless they want to be. But I guess in the RWS canon, humans scrapping sentient locomotives is just normal, at the expense of the engines being terrified of death.

People love to poke fun at Sir Topham Hatt for being an “evil dictator” who makes his engines be useful or he’ll scrap them, but that’s not true at all. The real evil ones are British Railways execs for killing off the steam engines!

Any of you got anything to add on? Sound off in the comments, I’d love to hear your thoughts.