Hello everyone! 🙂

Welcome to ‘Bradley’s Basement’ blog and I’m Tim Bradley!

It’s Day 10 of ‘Bradley’s Basement’s Advent Calendar 2025.

Today, we’re back with Thomas in this episode of the ‘Thomas the Tank Engine’ series!

‘THOMAS AND THE GUARD’

I believe ‘Thomas and the Guard’ was the first episode I ever saw as a kid where Thomas is the main character. It would have been the third episode I saw on VHS after seeing ‘Troublesome Trucks’ and ‘James and the Express’. I’ve fond memories of these episodes. 🙂

‘Thomas and the Guard’ is based on the story of the same name from the fourth ‘Railway Series’ book ‘Tank Engine Thomas Again’ – the first story, in fact. This is where we see Thomas run his branch line with Annie and Clarabel as his two coaches, which is nice.

Despite being happy to run his branch line, Thomas still has tendencies to be impatient. In this episode, Thomas is having to wait for Henry’s train to pick up passengers. Henry arrives, feeling sorry for himself. This is something that will continue in the episode ‘Coal’.

Thomas is rather dismissive of Henry’s woes, In doing so, he leaves the guard for Clarabel to carry behind at the station. Annie and Clarabel try to tell Thomas that they’ve lost the guard, but he won’t listen. At a signal, Thomas stops and he demands where the guard is.

Annie and Clarabel tell him that they’ve left him behind. Very soon, the guard catches up to them on foot. I’m amazed he ran that fast. 😀 He must’ve been ‘very hot’ to have a drink, whether it was water or milk. 😀 Thankfully, all is forgiven, and Thomas continues his journey.

Thanks for reading and watching!

Check out what Day 10 of my ‘Bradley’s Basement’s Advent Calendars for 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024 were about!

Bye for now!

Tim 🙂