Hello everyone! 🙂

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

It’s Day 14 of ‘Bradley’s Basement’s Advent Calendar 2025.

Let’s see how everyone else on the Island of Sodor is doing without Thomas around much?

‘TENDERS AND TURNTABLES’

This episode is based on the story of the same name from the fifth ‘Railway Series’ book ‘Troublesome Engines’. In fact, ‘Tenders and Turntables’ was the second story in ‘Troublesome Engines’. The first story in ‘Troublesome Engines’ was ‘Henry and the Elephant’.

However, ‘Henry and the Elephant’ was later adapted as an episode for Season 4 of ‘Thomas’ instead. Interesting that ‘Henry and the Elephant’ was skipped in Season 1. Mind you, ‘Tenders and Turntables’ is the first in a trilogy of linked episodes for Season 1.

In this episode, Henry, Gordon and James are struggling to cope without Thomas whilst he runs his own branch line with Annie and Clarabel. They end up fetching their own coaches for trains, which means more hard work for them, which they don’t approve of.

Gordon has an issue with getting onto a turntable to face the right way to pull his train. There’s a strong wind at where the turntable is, which puts him out of balance. In the end, Gordon has to pull his train backwards and he’s mocked for it, being called a ‘tank engine’.

James meanwhile laughs at Gordon’s predicament, only to end up going around like a spinning top when on the turntable. We don’t see what happened to Henry, but he’s also disgruntled. The episode concludes with Henry, Gordon and James deciding to go on strike.

Thanks for reading and watching!

Check out what Day 14 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 🙂