Many people have grown up loving Thomas the Tank Engine and the show Shining Time ... George Carlin was an active comedian ...

She discovered the character in a series of 1940s children’s books and thought Ringo Starr would make a great Mr. Conductor on television.

Among the participants was the Reverend W Awdry, whose Thomas the Tank Engine books had been bestsellers ... continued to lead a parsonically simple life until his death in 1997).