A really useful engine

Tom Bozzo, economist and father of small persons who like blue train engines that talk, applies some real-life economics to the Island of Sodor, Sir Topham Hat's running of his railways, and Thomas the Tank Engine and his friends. Sample question and Tom's answer:

4. How is it that the bakeries only keep enough flour on hand to make a day's worth of English Muffins, and that the Mountain Village doesn't stockpile coal to avert tragedy when the narrow-guage engines go joy riding on The Incline?

The Island of Sodor's businesses adopted "just-in-time" logistics techniques long before they became au courant for manufacturing business. These are very efficient when they work, as inventory and storage costs can be substantial, but JIT methods make users highly susceptible to supply chain disruptions.

There's more, on the environmental threats to the Island of Sodor from all those coal-burning engines puffing about, productivity on the Island, and the logistics of track layouts, applicable only to real railroads not the wooden tabletop models, sorry.  Of all the things I miss from our guys' little boyhoods, I think I miss Thomas the most.  I miss the TV series and the boys watching the videos over and over again, I miss their joy in collecting the ERTL toys, and I miss reading them the original stories.

Duck was my favorite engine.

I've never been able to decide who I liked better as Mr Conductor, George Carlin or Ringo Starr.

Don't even talk to me about Alec Baldwin.

Comments

[Tom Bozzo]

Thanks for the link, Lance. My wife, parenting blog pals, and I often have mixed feelings (if that) about our sons' -- and, to some extent, also daughters' -- Thomas obsessions, so it's interesting to hear that we might look back on the Thomas days as you do.

I'll agree that Carlin vs. Starr is a toss-up. I might even like Michael Angelis, too, but for how he does Sir Topham Hatt.

[Tom W.]

Ringo - 'cos he's Ringo, and it's freaking British.

But I even missed the goofy Shining Time Station series they put around it in the States: underrated, but not by my (then) 3-year-old.

[AdorableGirlfriend]

Lance honey, you need to go outside, take a big breathe of air and get perspective. Quick, run...

[AdorableGirlfriend]

:)

[Violet Mannion]

Ringo!!!!!!!! He's Ringo!!! Even so, I personally don't remember watching him on the show when I was little. I remember George Carlin, but not Ringo. Unfortunately.

[David Parsons]

As a house rule we don't read any of the post-Awdry Thomas stories; The Railway Series went downhill pretty quickly after creative control got out of the hands of the trainspotters (using a Stirling single for _freight_? Sheesh) and into the hands of the creative types who wouldn't know how to run a railway if their lives depended on it. Originally, I disapproved of the Railway Series, but that stopped about 30 seconds after being forced into reading one of the Reverend Awdry's books and realizing that he knew what he was talking about, and not only that but that I could identify some of the railways he was describing.

[Mother Mannion]

Nothing here some warm milk and cookies couldn't cure, son. But as you know I have always been partial to George. Harrison, not Carlin.

[Lance]

Mother! You promised you would never bring up the Hamilton incident in public! And I don't believe for a minute he's my real father! I don't! I don't! I don't!