Hello everyone! 🙂

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

It’s Day 23 of ‘Bradley’s Basement’s Advent Calendar 2025.

Say, I wonder what Gordon’s up to in this ‘Thomas the Tank Engine’ episode! 😀

‘OFF THE RAILS’

I’m going by how the episodes were presented on VHS rather than how the episodes were transmitted on TV. You see, on TV, ‘Off the Rails’ was shown after ‘Thomas’ Christmas Party’ in January 1985. For me, ‘Off the Rails’ was shown right after ‘Dirty Objects’ on VHS.

‘Off the Rails’ is based on the story of the same name from the eighth ‘Railway Series’ book ‘Gordon the Big Engine’. The first story, in fact. Gordon is resting in a siding (after pulling an Express train, no doubt). Henry comes along and calls him “Fat face!” in that moment.

I don’t know about you, but that’s rude. 😀 Gordon gets his own back by taunting Henry about his ‘Flying Kipper’ incident when he’s about to pull the Express train himself. After Henry is gone, Gordon is told he’s to pull ‘a special train’. And it’s trucks, not coaches.

Gordon fumes about it and Edward has to get him facing the right away by taking him to the turntable. I found it funny when Gordon went, “I won’t go! I won’t go!” whilst Edward tells him, “Don’t be silly! Don’t be silly!” Gordon gets to be quite rebellious in the episode. 😀

Unfortunately, it becomes his undoing when he goes off the rails and he ends up in a ditch. I found it funny when the Fat Controller was on the phone and he tells Edward to take the special train instead and to leave Gordon where he is, as they don’t have time for him. 😀

Thanks for reading and watching!

Check out what Day 23 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 🙂