ON WEDNESDAY, the world of children’s literature will celebrate a very special centenary – it’s 100 years since the birth of the Rev W Awdry, the Thomas the Tank Engine man.

Awdry’s creations have delighted generations of children including his own son, Christopher, for whom they were written and who lives in Dorset.

Faith Eckersall salutes a very special author.

AS A MOTHER of two young boys, Thomas the Tank Engine loomed very large indeed in my life.

There was the plastic toy, the wooden train-set to be procured one Christmas, the bowl, plate and beaker, the umpteen videos, the obligatory days out to ride on the feted locomotive himself and, at the end of every day, there were the books.

Bright, oblong little books; story on the left, pictures on the right, of steam engines in paintbox colours, causing havoc and mayhem on the fictional island of Sodor.

More than 50 million of these books have been sold, which means even more millions have fallen under the spell first cast by Wilbert Awdry in Birmingham in 1942 when, trying to cheer up his two-year-old son, Christopher, who had the measles, he started telling him a story... about a train.

When Christopher asked what the engine’s name was, his father seized on the first one that jumped into his head; Edward.

Edward’s Day Out was told repeatedly and eventually it was written down and illustrated with simple line drawings. But it was only when the perhaps savvier Mrs Margaret Awdry chivvied her husband that he sent them off to a publisher.

The Three Railway Engines was published in 1945 and it was in the second series that Thomas made his debut. He’d started life as a toy made by Wilbert.

The rest of the Awdry story is one of much vicaring and writing; writing which was to be awarded the highest accolade of being sneered at by some librarians for its simple language and repetitive rhythms.

As critics often will, the naysayers entirely missed the point.

Trains do make repetitive noises and it was this which sparked Wilbert’s interest as a child. As he lay in bed at the family home in Box, Wiltshire, he told an interviewer, he would listen to the trains on the nearby Great Western Railway line.

“There was no doubt,” he said, “that steam engines all had definite personalities.

“Little imagination was needed to hear, in the puffings and pantings, the conversations they were having.”

It was his genius that allowed the transfer of this whimsical thought into stories about trains which were mischievous (Thomas), argumentative (Henry), pompous (Gordon the Express) and hard-working (Edward).

And around these engines grew yet more characters; Annie and Clarabel, the garrulous coaches, Toby the tram, Donald and Douglas the argumentative Scots twins, Bulgy the bus, Toad, and the one which always struck fear into my youngest’s heart... the nasty Diesel.

Speaking in 2007, Christopher, who was no slouch himself when it came to writing Thomas books, said: “I don’t think my father could have envisaged how big Thomas would become when he first started writing.”

Part of that would have been his modesty; Wilbert was a priest before he was a writer and he served in parishes in Odiham, Hants, Birmingham and Elsworth and Knapwell near Cambridge.

He was a pacifist who stood up for his principles and it has been pointed out by more than one commentator the similarity of a Christian life on the straight and narrow and a train’s life keeping on the rails.

Wilbert Vere Awdry died in 1997. Sticking a jaunty face on a steam engine and writing a few hundred words of simplistic story about it sounds like child’s play.

But it took the kind of man who had time to stop, stare and think about life to capture this little idea and turn it into something that children all over the world have fallen in love with.

And parents even more, as they get on with the chores knowing their little ones are safely ensconced in front of their favourite Thomas the Tank Engine DVD.