Trains getting scraped in real life: “What a shame. Some of those should really be preserved.” Trains getting scraped in Thomas & Friends: “Oh God! Somebody help these poor souls! They are dying!”

Personally whenever I saw the engines blushing I interpreted that as a buildup of steam pressure and heat. Obviously as they are engines they have a very high tolerance, but even they must have a point where they feel a bit overheated.

I always thought the faces in the railway series don't actually exist in-universe: I.e., the faces and sentience of the engines were only part of stories the workers would tell each other, inspired by the fact that Sodor had a lot of different engine classes with their own unique silhouettes and driving characteristics. I know this sounds very meta, but it makes a lot of sense to me, and leaves room for the possibility that there may be a little magic in those Northwestern engines...

What I imagine happens is that their faces control who they are and their personality. When a engine is scrapped their faces are removed and transferred to another and they would live on forever

I always thought that maybe the engines blushing was some red hot steel from working real hard. Not very realistic but it gives a message like that to kids, similar to how we blush.

Here’s how I see it: The way a sentient engine dies is when: enough parts are removed (engine equivalent of bleeding to death), it doesn’t have enough air to breathe (ie drowning or buried alive) or they are destroyed in an accident Depending on the circumstance, the face will either fade away or completely vanish Or you can make it a quick and painless death and remove the smokebox (engine equivalent of decapitation)

They cease to live

9:21 that main scrapped engine which is closest to us, we can see the marks where the crane grabbed it, your theory appears to be correct, a lot of the other trains also have it.

Jokes aside, I would say the most likely answers depend on a very important thing: Specifically, *when* in Awdry's vision you are drawing from. Early on, Awdry's vision was that the engines only had "personalities" because they were on Sodor, a fictional land. It wasn't until much later that he would (and later, his son would) just have it so nearly all engines had personalities. Amusingly, the scrap engines in Stepney the Bluebell Engine's art are probably one of the first major signs of the turning point between visions- which just so happens to coincide with the mass scrappings at BR's hands. Now, the next thing to really remember is that regardless of anything else, they are not really "alive". They have personalities and can talk, but they're not actually alive. Remember that their personalities are built-in, pracitcally, and that their greatest desire is to work and be useful. Railwaymen will often tell you their engines have personalities, after all. The trains do not have blood, hearts, or anything like that. They are just machines. They are dismantled, rebuilt, and scrapped regularly. If you looked at the anatomy of a steam engine, the firebox and boiler are perhaps the closest things to "vital organs" and these are the most commonly replaced parts. In fact, most steam engines in both the RWS and real-life are basically "living" ships of theseus in this regard. With all this in mind, the easiest answer - and most likely in my book - is just "they 'die' when they stop being an engine" - basically. when they are beyond any hope of repair.

Seeing your footage of a scrap crane in action got me thinking...No wonder the engines are afraid of Diesel 10 - he's a scrap crane on wheels!

I just thought of something. It could be that rust is a disease to the engines. Maybe the first signs of rust on the inside the smoke box door and therefore the face is what causes the engine's face to face. It could be that rust is like a parasite to the engines and it slowly eats away at an engines life.

*Me* : "Sir Topham, how do your engines meet their fate?" *Topham* : "slowly... and painfully" *Me* : "... what"

My interpretation of the stepney scene as a kid was that the orange glow on the left was a pool of molten metal and the grabber would pick him up and drop him in, and stepney would then melt into recyclable molten iron

"how do engines die" Stasburg 475: ~Observe~

Being a sentient vehicle in the Thomas universe genuinely has to be some kind of living hell of existential horror when you think of your existence compared to humans for even a second.

Finally!! Someone else who questions how these things feel pain!! I always get responses like "don't think about that" or "it's fiction" or "sir this is a Wendy's"

Something I've always wondered is, if different vehicles and such were truly sentient, would there be certain advocacy groups for "sentient machine rights"? Or something along that line? Would they be allowed to unionize? Protest? Granted personhood status? Just some funny things to think about in the TTTE universe lol.

I just got an interesting topic in mind... I feel like you should make a video off of this; *what would happen if these trains killed... a human?* Would they feel grieve? Guilty? Sadness? what if train serial killers existed? what if they go sick of carrying cargo here and there, they go on a rampage running everything on there tracks! even crashing themselves if there is passengers on the train? this is a scary question. well atleast for me

"This is quite a sweet fellow really, I think I'll call him bob." "Moments later bob is dismembered." -Words from the documentary shown in footage clips.

In my headcanon, engines can also die if they are seriously mangled to a point where they aren't even remotely repairable, like when they're completely split into two or more.

I like to compare "mortality" of a loco in this series to that of a Cybertronian from Transformers, specifically the Aligned Continuity. These are mechanical beings with souls, feelings, and goals. They are "born", but not in the same sense as an animal. A Cybertronian and locomotive both would technically have parents, but again, not in a human sense. Cybertronians are born out of a Well of Allsparks (basically a well full of souls), and Locomotives are drawn up and built by people (and in current times, other machines). Both Cybertronians and Locomotives have a lifeblood (Energon and coal/ water/ fuel respectively.) If a transformer goes without Energon for too long, it doesn't die, but goes into a stasis mode. When engines run out of coal or fuel, they don't die, or lose their consciousness, they just can't move. With Transformers, they feel pain, but again, differently from humans. If a Cybertronian's hand gets cut off, it is difficult, but a new hand can be created and reattached. It hurt's the Cybertronian, sure, but from the looks of it, they have much more of a pain tolerance than people, and don't have to worry about bleeding out (regarding blood/ oxygen at least). Similarly, it seems that Locos in TTTE have a high pain tolerance as well, which makes sense. They are made to have easily replaceable parts, meaning (most of) these parts are meant to be removable in the first place. Losing a buffer is more like losing your hair, or a fingernail, than losing a hand, as it can be replaced so easily. Now with rust, there's a different story. In Transformers lore, rust is viewed as a Plague, something that shows the neglect of a Transformer. Rust spreads, so if you see a 'bot covered in rust, you stay the heck away. So many bots have died to Cosmic Rust, that most medics will refuse to treat it, with it spreading throughout the galaxy and harming anything remotely mechanical. I don't think rust in TTTE is that severe, but it represents a similar story, implying neglect, old age, and death. While Locomotives most fear being cut up by the cutter's torch, Transformers fear getting cut up by Scraplets. These are little aliens that eat all types of metals, but are drawn to living metal. To quote Bulkhead from Transformers Prime, "They pick you apart from the inside out, going for the small, juicy bits first, fuse by fuse, circuit by circuit, until there's nothing left. And I mean nothing... not even your optics." These things can pick the biggest Cybertronian apart in seconds flat. But run that back. Living metal? What the heck is living metal, and why isn't it the same as regular metal. Easy. Cybertronians are made of living metal. It grows and shrinks, squashes and stretches, and may or may not have the ability to displace mass (which is why big ol' Optimus Prime can convert into a [comparatively] tiny truck). This is why Transformers have eyebrows and moving mouths, unlike most fictional "robots." They are just as expressive as a human. Not too different from the smokebox doors of Thomas and his Friends, no? When a Transformer gets a body part replaced, most metals will do, not necessarily the metal a bot is made of. The body of the Cybertronian will convert "raw" metal to living metal. If locomotives can do something like this, it would explain alot. Back to an engine's buffer, if you remove it, the engine is more uncomfortable that in pain. But this buffer can still be replaced. Once it is, the loco should now be able to feel it as an extension of its body. But if metal is living, that means it can die. How does a Transformer's living metal cease to live? Good question. We know they can be melted down into raw materials. These materials can be used to construct protoforms. If Transformers have life cycles, protoforms are the "fetus". A blank state where Cybernucleic Acid is implanted and rewritten to "give birth" to a Transformer. Regardless of how this material is used, if a Cybertronian is melted down into scrap, it is dead (duh). From a physical point anyway. What separates Transformers from typical Robots, say Gundams or Droids from Star Wars, is the fact that Transformers have Sparks. These "Sparks" are no different from the soul of a human. This is why Cybertronians think and feel on their own accord. Transformers also have religions. The most religious bots believe that upon death, the Spark returns to the Well of Allsparks from which it came. The Well of Allsparks (All sparks). This is the place where Transformers are born. So the "flesh" is reused, and the soul is too. Is that how one engine in TTTE is able to become another. Despite how horribly scrap is viewed in the series, at the end of the day, it is meant to give new life to old machinery. Later diesels like Bear, Boco, Spamcan, and Class 40 were probably built from the remains of Engines that were scrapped. I genuinely think that Transformers and Thomas and Friends are so morbidly similar, it's kinda ridiculous. There is definitely more I could compare between the two, but I think this is a good jumping point (not to mention I just learned YT's character limit lmao.)TLDR: if you like Thomas, you might like Transformers. If you like action, robot aliens, character arcs and clashes, go watch Transformers Prime and give it a chance. This wasn't sponsored I swear. Happy Spoopy Day 2022:)

in my headcannon/opinion: when trains died their faces fades away but if they got killed or suddenly died from a horrible incident they don't get their face damaged or hurt it just fade away if the train just died

Also In Stepney gets lost, for a few seconds we can see a lava pit. So the grabber would either crush Stepney or toss/dip him in the lava pit.

Reverent Audrey: Heres a fun story about talking trains. One gets stuck in a tunnel because he doesn't like rain. Isn't that silly? Trainboy decades later: So how do these things die? Is a slow painful process where they feel every agonizing moment? What horrors do they go through?

Idk why but I always imagined it as a sort of magic. Not literal magic like in The Magic Railroad but as like, the magic of personification. As in if you give an object human-like traits (such as a temper or ego) it manifests in the object itself. Henry as an engine runs poorly but is still useful, and is personified as a sickly but hard working engine. It also explains why many "Other Railway" engines have generic "names" like Diesel, Diesel 10, D199, etc. They try to avoid personifying the engine so it's easier to scrap them without hesitation. It can even explain why Hiro and Glynn can "survive" being abandoned for so long, in a way they weren't actually alive while they were rusting away, but when they were found they were personified as old, wise engines that could be restored.

2:10 they didn’t let him die, he’s alive

I think the engines are the sum of all their parts and the faces are just a sort of culmination of that. I think the more that is taken away from that whole, the less alive the engine becomes; and I think that an engine without a face can still be alive but unconscious and will only parish when reduced completely to pieces, or perhaps when a large percentage of them is no longer together. In the railway series we see damage to thomas's face: there's no bleeding and the chunks missing look the same as if they were damaged metal, so I believe the faces just sort of claim the metal of the smokebox door whenever an engine is first fired and that when damaged it is no different and behaves the same as if it where made from metal. Engines that are lost to the ocean or abandoned remain alive but perhaps unconscious until nature completely reclaims. I personally love the idea that theyre only awake when they're fired up. Even though we know that's not always the case in the Railway series, it just makes more sense to me given that's their source of power. It also removes the morbidity of engines being scrapped, or at least reduces it. I feel like these ideas are a nice middle ground between the extremely dark answers to these questions and the more juvenile ones.

I believe sodor and its engines are all in some degree magical or have magical properties.

I can imagine how terrible it is for the locomotives to see these rusting bodies.

I tend to go with RWS cannon, and I think the most RWS accurate way of looking at machine sentience is to see the faces and voices not as literal flesh grafted to steel, but as the manifestation of the personality that has been projected onto the engine over the years. As someone who tends to anthropomorphize things a lot, I tend to draw the line of machine death in my Thomas headcannon at the same place where I would say "yeah, give it up, that machine is dead" IRL, which is the point at which it becomes impossible for anyone to restore it to fully operational condition. This is an insanely broad definition, and people have proven that you can bring a machine back from almost nothing, but it's still the definition I use. There isn't really a hard line either, but in a way, the same goes for people: people have gone for seconds to minutes without any life signs and still been brought back. I think the best wat to show how I think of this sort of thing is to give examples, and how I would interpret them. An interesting locomotive restoration that's currently ongoing is Peckett 1900, AKA the flying buffer beam. This is actually the second attempt at restoration, with the first attempt ending with the bits of the locomotive scattered all across the UK, being left at various shops. The wheels, the frames, the motion, all in different places. The loco is still going to be restored, though, so I'd call that not dead. In an RWS context, I'd consider it roughly equivalent to a medically induced coma, the engine isn't going to be chatting you up while in a hundred different pieces, but it's not dead. then there are rusting scrap engines, in various states of decay. I tend to look at them as sort of equivalent to cancer patients at different stages, a bit of rust is like early stage cancer, they are perfectly alive and capable of talking, and they might even be capable of moving under their own power with a little help. As the natural decay progresses, they would become increasingly incapable, being sickly, tiring easily from just speaking, spending a lot of time asleep, but still alive. This is the general condition level for Hiro and Glyn in the TV series, although with Glyn's age, he'd realistically be at a further stage of rust. Advanced stages of rust, where parts start to fall off or rust through badly enough that you can't fill them in with weld bead to remachine and reuse original parts, I consider the engine to be the equivalent of unconscious from blood loss, with full certain death being the point where enough parts have gone back to dust that you can't even use them as patterns to try and rebuild the engine. For being stripped for parts, I see that as being sort of like giving blood, but engines can't just replenish their own blood. Parts being removed with a torch would obviously be painful, like someone collecting your blood by slicing you open with a knife, whereas parts just being unbolted as intended and never replaced would be more like having your blood drained with an IV. Like having too much blood drawn, eventually an engine would fall unconscious as too many parts were removed, dying when enough parts had been stripped away that you could neither recognize the class of engine nor figure out how all of it's mechanisms had originally been laid out. As for my interpretation of if an engine restored from the brink of death would be the same engine or a new engine, I'm going to contrast two examples: Henry and the duke dogs. I consider Henry to be the same engine before and after his overhaul, despite the considerable modifications, because the intent was to improve an engine and send it back to work with the same name and running number. For the duke dogs, they took two classes of engines, and combined their parts to make an entire new class of engine, that all had new names and running numbers. Because the intent was to make new engines, the new engines weren't the same as the old ones, and since the parts were all mixed up and modified, so you could no longer tell what they had once been unless you knew the history, I would consider the original engines effectively dead. only effectively because it might be theoretically possible to track down to which new engines an original engine's parts when, reclaim them from the new engines, and get enough of them back together that you could consider it the original engine, but that would be the equivalent of trying to resurrect someone who's head was cryogenically preserved, sure, it might be theoretically possible to bring them back, but until you actually manage it, I'll still consider them dead. for a couple final cases to consider, we have what if you restore an engine knowing it's class but not which engine from the class it was, and what happens if you MASSIVELY mess up a restoration, like what happened to Lion. For engines properly restored to their class specification without anyone being able to identify their original identity, in my headcannon the engine doesn't know either, only having memories of things that could have been experienced by any member of their class that ever worked the same area as they did, and they wouldn't remember any names, dates, or specific details. For an engine that was restored into something it wasn't, how badly that effects things depends on how wrong the restoration was, and if the engine was at least correctly identified by name and number. If the restorers correctly identified which engine they were restoring but just really buggered it up, the engine would be mostly fine, but foggy on some of the details, especially about physical things that had happened to them. If the engine was misidentified, they would think they were the engine they were identified as, but in the same way a delusional person might think they were Santa, simply pulling the details from stories and common knowledge, but with no recollection of any specifics or things that the restorers themselves didn't know.

You might not like this. But Strasburg Railroad 475 (AKA that American tender engine in TATMR) was involved in an accident due to a misaligned switch, and it crashed into an excavator, destroying its smokebox.

In my headcanon, engines are immortal until they're maintained properly, and they can only die because of external forces like scrapping, abandoning, fatal crash. They can't drown tho, this was confirmed in S23 when salty was underwater for a whole night and he was singing in the morning when he was rescued not showing any sign of harm (aside from what water normally does to a machine)

I like to think that sentient vehicles are more in the category of Golems

For me, the faces were only ever a way to convey the character’s emotions. It’s just a face, it’s not necessarily actually there. After all, they weren’t there on Awdry’s models. The idea of them having blood and nerves is actually insane to me. I can’t get behind that. A soul, maybe, but not internal organs.

Man... The thought of a TTTE character dying is... Chilling

I’ve always liked to think that the engines were once humans, the engines are immortal as long as they are intact, which is the same reason why someone would want to become an engine

as seen with henry, engines canonically can get bloodshot eyes which...essentially confirms they have blood but i think it would be like an oddly oily blood, so it doesnt work like ours does

That actually raises a question, did any of the sodor rolling stock have asbestos in it? And if so, would said stock have to be rebuilt

I do find the amount of scrap engines on Sodor slightly disturbing, they're literally everywhere! This also makes me wonder about engines that were combined together, like the parts from Godred and the Falcon class engines.

“Luckily no one was hurt”

All steam trains have pressure limits. So I think One way a thomas character would die is by being overpressure. If the train has too much steam being made but too less steam being used, eventually the entire boiler will explode, killing the train.

My theory is that blushing (at least in Henry's case in Super Rescue) is simply due to their face getting hot, since he was working extra hard rescuing 2 trains.

Am I the only one wondering why the Island of sodor, a safe haven for steam engines, has a massive scrap yard in the first place? At times it looks like there's more abandoned engines at those docks than there are active engines on the NWR roster...

I’m sitting on my porch at the moment hopin for trick or treaters

Seeing the real locomotives and rolling stock being either dismantled or melted almost made me cry. And to be honest, those who destroyed them are heartless

Y'know, this theory makes a lot of sense, but I just say the blushing, crying, and (maybe) blood just happens, it just kinda comes with the face.

9:20 Oh, you mean the body farm. There’s actually a place in Tennessee (I think UT Knoxville) where they actually do have bodies decaying above ground. It’s for education/science, but it surprisingly exists.

I have a theory that the only "sentient" part of the engine is the smokebox door. This explains things like Henry's rebuild. Why are some locomotives sentient and some not? For the RWS/TVS canon, I don't know, but in my AU it's related to something similar to TATMR, but in a weirder way.

I yearn for a story about a scrapman with severe PTSD as he tortured and killed sentient machines. I’d imagine there would be a much stronger preservation movement in Thomas due to how awful scrapping would be.

i always assumed that a well maintained engine could potentially live forever

The faces fucking explode for no reason.

Fun little fact. In “Thomas and the Christmas party” from season 1, whenever Thomas discovers Tidmouth Sheds in darkness, it’s stated that “his heart dropped.” Not that his smile wained, or that his pistons sighed. His *heart* dropped. So he has a heart? Maybe. Now, this might be different in the Book Awdry wrote, I’m not sure. But if it isn’t, then that’s also interesting because this book was written in the 80’s, well after Awdry had established his style.

Those scrap cranes remind me of how Diesel 10's claw moves. And that concerns me.

One thing that's always weirded me out about the show is that the humans decide when the engines get scrapped, and nobody questions that. As Theo put it in JBS, "Engines get scrapped when they're not useful and nobody cares about them anymore." Or when Percy thinks he heard TFC talk about sending him for scrap, and Thomas is like "Don't worry bro, you're still useful!" And the show never unpacks the implications of this. I get that this is Happy Talking Train Time, but it's pretty morbid that the show has no problems with the humans deciding to scrap engines for something that isn't the engines' fault, lol.

I always thought that if drowning doesn't kill an engine, then scrapping, a really bad crash and boiler explosions do.

Boiler explosion

We also have to take into account that the smoke box door can be opened in The Railway Series canon

I think that the faces are more projections of their machine spirits, the culminitive personality people have given them. All of the faced vehicles in Thomas have either a strong personality, extensive use, a high age, or a mixture of the three. Maybe, when a machine's soul is strong enough, when enough people assign and affirm a personality to this machine, it is able to manifest itself as a face on its body. This would also explain the whole Ship of Theseus paradox Henry went through: It's still Henry because it's still his soul. The idea of Henry the engine was still there, even though the body was different. I did not expect to get so philisophical over sentient locomotives, but here we are

I love this extremelly dark undertone that the series has

***SPOILERS*** That first example of being cut up little by little reminded me of the book unwind. It’s about children getting cut up for use as parts in hospitals and stuff but there is one scene in it where the character we are following at the time experiences it firsthand. The books quite a good read but you could probably find that scene and get a good idea of how the engines felt.

Henry’s face is just to serious for me and I like it ❤

7:30 can we take a moment to appreciate the nerd who spray painted that? It is definitely more interesting than a lot of text graffiti you'll find, despite not needing artistic talent. With the actual context, I feel like they would likely die at last steam, when nobody wants to use them anymore. They simply aren't the cute fun engines they used to be, and thus don't have sentience anymore.

I really love this video as you handle dark topics of Thomas so much more maturely than many others. I like that Thomas does this because it’s like they literally try to softly introduce the fact that sad things like death happen in life and there is no way around some of these sad things, but the light hearted stories like Henry’s forest always come back to remind the audience that everything will always get better again eventually.

The fascinating thing is we know from a couple of mentions that engines can be literally taken to pieces and reassembled and keep on living--in fact, they have to for how overhauls work. If anyone's seen the video updates on the overhauls of Tallylyn and Dolgoch that are currently underway, Dolgoch's wheels, pistons, and frames are in one place, and her boiler is in another being redone.

Train about to be scrapped on Sodor Topham: Not in my town you don’t!

It’s from questions and theories like this that I enjoy content from victor tanzig, he also tries to address these questions throughout his series with some forms of logic too

How I think they get scrapped is scrappers torch to smokebox (face) then dead. Or being crushed by the claw. Also if the claw had grabbed Stepney, wouldn’t his boiler nearly explode and hot water go everywhere.

One of the darkest moments I've seen in Thomas & Friends! It also brings in lots of questions just like what The Unlucky Tug mentioned in his unanswerable Thomas questions video.

A few months ago, I saw the carcass of an old GE Dash 7 locomotive that was converted into a remote control sled (CCRCL) or a "control car" for housing the remote control equipment used in remote switching operations on the Union Pacific scrapped on-site at the UP Alfalfa Yard where I live in El Paso, TX. It was a very depressing, yet interesting sight. They simply took an excavator and demolished it section by section until it was nothing but a pile of scrap. That unit got replaced with two new yard units that were powered locomotives which were fitted with remote control equipment.

I like to think that an engines sentience is tied to how “complete” they are. The more and more they decay, or have bits cut off. The more and more their minds get fuzzy. They start loosing themselves and slowly become a lifeless hunk past a certain point. However! I also think that this process is reversible. If an engine is repaired, restored or rebuilt. The new bits and rebuilding of old bits completes them again, bringing back sentience

Personally like the fan content about the ones that come back. The BRS had Fowler's Ghost, an engine that grew so angry with being hidden and disowned by its designer it came back to look for him after the tunnel it was hidden in collapsed. It became a grim reaper of sorts, escorting engines to whatever comes next when their time comes, but it's still looking for Fowler and refuses to rest until it finds him, and also refuses the notion he's already moved on and escaped it. It also raised the notion that there are fates worse than death, as along the way an engine that had been converted into a stationary boiler is shown and it's quite miserable. Death would be a release, and it openly says it's had enough. Preservation is an immortality of sorts, one engine calls it his idea of heaven, always to be well-looked after by people (angels?) who care about you, plenty of coal and water, and something to do. But a wise engine tells one that's about to be preserved that endless life is a blessing and curse of its own. Nobody wants to die of course, but to life forever precludes seeing what comes next and possibly being reunited with those we miss, so the preserved ones remember those that have moved on and tell their stories to others so they won't be forgotten, and a little bit of them can live on too.

Welp it takes time and revolution but as time passes people start to wonder if that’s valuable which takes them into conserve them, including their legacy.

Personally, I think that if diesel 10 did destroy Lady in Thomas and The Magic Railroad the engines would inevitably die whether from losing permanent steam or having the magic that keeps them alive in the first place. Another thing I like to believe that once the engines reach Sodor they'll get magic coal and gain life

I think that when a train is first started it comes to life, but the face is the only true living thing on said train, and the blushing is from heat, and nerves that can be compared to a starfish with it being entirely located in the face, like every vital organ is in the face, every nerve is in the face. And that is how I explain why the train can’t drive itself or stop to avoid becoming a runaway, their nerves don’t control the throttle or brakes so they need drivers to do that for them

I've always thought that the faces rust away and that the rust acts as a natural numbing process so they don't feel anything so once the rust is all over the smoke box they don't feel anything else that happens to their body their minds slowly slip away as their joints go stiff the rust sets in like a cancer and envelopes their bodys soon the good parts not effected by rust can be taken off cleaned and reused. Once the rust officially envelopes their faces it's gone. The blushing can be also caused by heat from their boilers radiators etc. But once the face is covered in rust the locomotives days of being alive are numbered and eventually disappears leaving a smoke box door that's why you see so many. As for why the scrapyard is feared it's because it's the last thing they see when they go. Engines that are forgotten about in woods or underwater get piece as they disolve from this world. No sound of metal being crushed, torches buzzing to life, just the sound of the forest, ocean, or wherever they are. They know what's coming it's how they endure the end. I don't know about you but I don't want to be dying in a morgue while watching the bodies around me being put into a furnace to be turned to ash. This is just my head canon but at least it seems naturally humane vs the alternative.

Personally I like to imagine that "vital organ" is an engines boiler pipes. It's like veins or arteries, you cut the boiler pipe and the engine dies. Sort of a silly idea but a lot of the scrap engines seem to have lasserarions specifically on their boilers so who knows?

I used to think it was only the face alive but there’s a few holes in that theory - the face can ‘feel’ the rest of the engine, and also when the ‘City of Truro’ - the celebrity engine - visits the island, the narrator says the engines spent the afternoon talking to him and he was very polite. He doesn’t have a face.

I think their skin is made of a more durable material. A tissue that can better withstand wind, rain, and intense heat much better than human or animal skin.

I've pondered upon this question in the context of not just sentient engines, but sentient objects in general, across all fiction. I have a series in works that might delve into this question, as sentient objects, the synergy of the organic and the mechanical and dark topics are or will be brought up.

Imagine if the Grabber was alive, watching with joy as he Rips Stepney Apart, and then drops him into the furnace.

Imagine a pile of faces, which are supposed to be Smokebox doors in the back of the scrapyard

“When does a train die? When they’re forgotten.”- Dr. Hiruluk (probably)

I would love the full video of all of the different deaths, types of scrap / abandoned engines it would be dark, human abandonment after a life they never requested, slowly starving and going insane

Good luck on NNN mr locomotive male

Trainboy i just wanted to say that in the concept art of stepney gets lost is a door next to him after the concept art he would get grabbed at once and thrown into the smelter right next to him.

I’d like to imagine that the face is organic, separate from the train. Once its removed all memories and functions stop sorta like a reset, possibly to keep a face functional for a rebuild like Henry they just have a machine to keep them alive briefly. Imagine the train as like one big robotic limb that once connected to these faces can become automatic

Happy Halloween Trainboy, thanks for dropping some quality content on this blessed evening !🎃

Man this video is really interesting, thanks for another upload Trainboy

I think engines blood in thomas is just left over water or oil and there just like normal trains but once you take off the the door the face disappears and thats why you see the scraped trains in the TV show have normal train fronts

this talk was just down right great and bone chilling,happy halloween hope your doing alright and take your time making projects and videos!

there are, however some cases of where thomas characters... just don't die, in the railway series, one of the carriages (i forgot their name) was completely broken to bits, but they were still alive, their face was just hauled away to whatever came next, so if these characters do have organs, they must be flat enough to fit in a confined area the length and height of their face with minimum width, so things like rust would probably be ineffective at killing them, as their metal body would die but their "face" wouldn't the only way to kill them then... is to effect the face... like drowning or cutting their face to pieces or melting them

My theory is that all the blood and stuff is contained in the face, between the back of the door, and the front of the face, and they "feel" things via vibrations throughout their body, and the harder the vibration, the more pain they feel

Small fun fact. When Trainboy says “what about when engines are left to rot?” And shows the first image, said engine is Norfolk & Western M2 No.1134, one of the… 5 or so (iirc) “Lost Engines Of Roanoke” (interesting topic to look up, I recommend it). No.1134 was saved and restored cosmetically and is now on display in Norfolk, VA. I’ve been there and seen her, the museum folks did a pretty good job on her for the condition she was in.

What would happen is like when an engines face comes off, they re use it on trucks or rolling stock in general

eh I think the blushing is more a response like how cuttlefish change colour, mimicking human reactions. and tears are just lubricant for your eyes, in a very simple way of putting it, so there doesn't have to be a deeper type of 'biological' system to facilitate that, just the eyes existing.

I agree with u said tb,theres normal locamotives and for scrap yards in the show it's a prop decoration,in one episode they used city of truro for a scrap engine prop. But there are some fans that go too deep into it stuff you'd find on reddit

I’d like to not think too deep about and just go with magic

They are all in purgatory. A ghostly reflection of reality, the 'Trains' being the only ones with a life spark, the last glimmer of a soul struggling with its fate. The train corpses are the hollow remains of those that have finally passed to above or below. ... ... ... I'm sure there's a decent horror in there somewhere.

Always forget that we are a day ahead of you in my side of the world. So it's 1st Nov.

The way I think is the sentience is metaphorical, a engine is “alive” when it is steamed. The engines can interact because they are machines. When you run a steam engine you can feel how it runs in the throttle. So the way I interpret it is that the engines aren’t “alive” in the term we think.