The Awdry family: home of Thomas the tank engine

Christopher Awdry

I was born in Devizes, Wiltshire in 1940, the son of the Rev. Wilbert Awdry and his wife Margaret. Five months later we moved to Kings Norton, South Birmingham, and when I caught measles at the age of two my father told me what became the first stories of the now famous “Railway Series”. His last book in this series was published in 1972.

Ten years later I had begun to write articles for ‘Steam Railway’ about railway preservation, and in the spring of 1983 I had written a group of ‘Thomas’ stories, mainly for the amusement of myself & my son Richard, then about the same age as I was when my father made up the first stories about Edward, Gordon & Henry.

My father suggested that I send my stories to Messrs Kaye & Ward, who liked them enough to publish them later that year as ‘Really Useful Engines’. I wrote a book a year for the Railway Series until 1996, as well as lots of other books about Thomas the Tank Engine and all his friends on the Island of Sodor.

The last book, ‘New Little Engine’, like several other books in the Railway Series, features the engines of the Skarloey Railway, which is based on the Talyllyn Railway in Mid-Wales.

Appearances at preserved railways by my wife Helen and myself have been restricted recently as we prepare for our new venture, www.worldofthomas.co.uk, but we still enjoy visiting our favourite lines and will, hopefully, do so for sometime yet.