Nooo! What have they done!

[Whataday]

The new Sam has a Cardiff accent, the old one was from the valleys.

[martindtanderson]

i can forgive pat and sam, but never "Thomas and Friends"

[Daniel B]

i can forgive pat and sam, but never "Thomas and Friends"

Good point, Thomas The Tank Engine and Friends wasn't the same when season 5 started and when HIT brought it, the show was even worse.

For example poor storylines, too many characters being introduced (mainly one-offs), vintages quotes being milked to death and last but not least carelessness.

I saw an episode on YouTube where Percy is supposed to carry a roll of carpet that was dumped on a flat truck. That's it, it wasn't secured and obviously it flew away from him before miracolously returning to the truck. Then the crew men finally realise it wasn't secured at all and tie some ropes around it and the truck. They should have tied down the carpet straight after it was loaded onto the flat truck so it couldn't get away.

Apart from that there's been episodes where clean products like cocoa, gifts and the like have been dumped onto dirty trucks and they're not even packaged. Now that's what I call carelessness!

I used to like the early episodes of TTTE when Mr Awdry was around supervising it but now I don't.

[Bail]

For any old Thomas fans, who want to hear the best theme tune ever.. and re-live some old memories...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvXqphJzIXA

Youtube is full of episodes, some US ones with a voiceover that just doesn't work.

[Bail]

What "copyright 1984" remastered? How do you work that out? Thats how I remember the titles looking...

More:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRlJNDnuRWc

[Bail]

Fair enough, certainly better than "Thomas and Friends" he'll always ne a "tank" to me though...

[DJF]

I downloaded some episodes of Fireman Sam a while back and was rather shocked to find the above version!

The old version may not have been as nice and shiny as this new version - but it was still a hell of a lot better! And as for changing Dilys and Bella to females.....that's just wrong!

[Whataday]

To be fair, they've stayed fairly loyal to the set design.

Also, they tried to have CGI water coming out of the hoses but after several failed attempts they agreed there was nothing that beat cling flim which was used in the original series.

[martindtanderson]

some of my favourite moments from "THOMAS THE TANK ENGINE"

- Henry's new tender, after his accident with the Flying Kipper;
- Thomas getting his own branch line;
- Henry bricked up in the tunnel for months;
- Gordon unable to climb the hill;
- Toby and Percy scared by the 'ghost train';
- Gordon getting stuck in the mud after breaking the turntable

[Daniel B]

Oh the opening sequence was certainly the same, but they captions were "completely" different, by which of course I mean they were the same but different. Plus the closing credits would be overlay atop a still of the final frame rather than the generic Thomas in a yard scene. And there wouldn't be the Britt Allcroft signature endcap, there would be (racking brain point) I think a solid blue endcap with a picture of palm trees and a pink car.... but don't hold me to it! Then we'd cut to the 1980s Children's ITV studio with a rather younger Mathew Kelly.

Wow, I never knew there would be be fans of the vingtage TTTE. But the closing credits for series 1 and 2 would definitely show palm trees and a pink car and it was called Clearwater Features which was said to be Ringo Starr's production company.

I think the episodes were shown in pairs on CITV as some of the episodes have an interlude played between them showing all the engine with tourists looking at them along with their names drawn in front of them.

There was one episode I remember called Percy Runs Away that I think was paired up with another episode called Coal because at the end of PRA, instead of the end credits being played over the final frame, a generic looking picture of Thomas is shown instead.

Some of my favourite and memoriable moments from the show are:
- Thomas rescuing James and becoming a 'Really useful Engine'
- James pulling up the troublesome trucks
- Thomas getting stuck twice in the snow
- Percy running away from Gordon
- The Ghost Train episode
- Percy with a pair of trousers on his funnel and jam on his face
- Henry's forest
- The Trust thomas episode
- James being stung by a bee
- Peter Sam's new popcorn boxed shaped funnel.

[nwtv2003]

I used to have a very very old Video Collection release of TTTE from the late 1980's that was a combination of episodes, and I remember the montage very well. I remember ITV showed it for a few years, stopped and then started showing them again a few years ago.

Last I read HIT have sold the UK Broadcast rights to Five now...