As a young child, I never much cared for Thomas the Tank Engine, who struck me as creepy and coercive (though I believe the word I used at the time was “yucky.”) The book I adored was “The Three ...

Britt Allcroft, a British television producer and writer who helped to develop “Thomas & Friends” based on “The Railway Series” books and its characters including Thomas the Tank Engine, died on Dec.

Did you know that Thomas the Tank Engine is 80 years old? Yes, rail-y! The famous engine was originally created by Reverend Wilbert Awdry, whose Thomas & Friends books then became a TV series. So to ...