Henry

Henry is a green mixed-traffic tender engine who works on the Main Line and who formerly slept in Tidmouth Sheds. He moved out of Tidmouth Sheds during series 22 onwards and moved to the sheds in Vicarstown. He was originally a failed prototype engine, and needed special Welsh coal to operate properly. Following his accident when pulling the Flying Kipper, Henry underwent an extensive rebuild, giving him a new shape and better performance.

Basis
Henry's history is unusual. The Fat Controller had intended to buy a Robinson Atlantic of the Great Central Railway, but was swindled and instead received Henry. According to men who worked on Henry pre-rebuild, he had a superficial likeness to Gordon, but the aesthetics were as far as this went. Although Henry's exact origins are difficult to trace, it is generally thought that he was built by an unknown rival locomotive builder to Sir Nigel Gresley, whose spy stole the wrong drawings for Gresley's upcoming A1 pacifics, resulting in Henry.

Henry in this shape developed performance issues from flaws in the design, compounded by his stay in the tunnel. Henry was a bad steamer; with good-quality coal, he could get enough heat to make plenty of steam, but when there was a poor lot delivered, his undersized firebox could not hold enough coal to make a proper fire. On advice from Henry's fireman, the Fat Controller ordered high-grade Welsh Coal, which made an appreciable difference in Henry's performance.

When Henry suffered an accident and severe damage in the winter of 1935, the opportunity was taken to send him to Crewe, where he was rebuilt into a London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS) Stanier 5MT "Black Five" 4-6-0. After "The Eight Famous Engines", Henry's Stanier tender was replaced by a standard Fowler tender.

In the television series, Henry has always had a one-window cab with an LNER-style tender. The differences between his shapes were removed splashers, the Belpaire firebox replacing the tapered, added steam pipes beneath his smokebox, and a top feed. This was done to ease the changeover to his "Black Five"-esque appearance. However, Henry kept his parallel boiler instead of the tapered one that the Black Fives had. He later regained a full set of wheel-arches in Series 2 onwards, making him somewhat a hybrid of the 5MT and the similarly designed LMS Jubilee Class. It is also worth noting that Henry has always had a blocky-looking tender in the television series.

Trivia

 * Sodor Fallout Henry currently spwan at outside of Brendam Docks.