Talk:List of Railway Series Books

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	This page has been flagged as being within the scope of WikiProject Thomas. WikiProject Thomas aims to develop and expand Wikipedia's content relating to the TV Series Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends, as well as the original book series The Railway Series.
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Contents 1 Page Title 2 Directly-derived works - The M&S 'The Railway Stories' series 2.1 Marks & Spencer - 'The Railway Stories' Books 3 Ladybird books 4 Oh dear...

[edit] Page Title

Should this be at List of Railway Series books (reversing the redirect) or possibly List of books in The Railway Series?

Just a thought - does anyone know more about WP naming policy? Mdcollins1984 20:30, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Don't know about policy, but the former might need to be changed - I'll leave this to someone who's sufficiently bothered by it :o)

As for the second alternative, reordering the words like that strictly reduces the list to a set of 40 books, as would the addition of 'The' after 'of' in the present title. Alternatively, adding the word 'canon' at the end would restore the meaning to cover what is currently on this page (List of books in The Railway Series canon is slightly more precise than the present title) but is a bit long-winded!

EdJogg 17:20, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Directly-derived works - The M&S 'The Railway Stories' series

The following section was created within The Railway Stories.

Unhelpfully, when M&S re-published these versions (as described below) they also used the title 'The Railway Stories'.

Since the article describes the audio versions of the original books from The Railway Series, coverage of these derived works is inappropriate there.

The section has been copied here pending a decision on whether (and where) these and other directly-derived versions should be described. (All relevant articles ignore their existence at present.)

[edit] Marks & Spencer - 'The Railway Stories' Books

In the 1980's, Octopus Books published several paperbacks containing stories from The Railway Series for Marks & Spencer, under their "St Michael" label. Unhelpfully (for the purposes of this article), the series was also titled: The Railway Stories.

Each book contained all the stories from three of The Railway Series books using the original text and illustrations. The book format was different from the original books: a more conventional 'portrait' shape, with a picture on each page above its text. The cover background was a distinctive 'brick' pattern. The Rev. W. Awdry was identified as author, but the preface to each book was omitted.

Curiously, only six of the first eight books of the Series were covered; the two books omitted being the two specifically about Thomas. This choice could not have been influenced by the Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends TV series, whose first season covered the same eight books, as the TV programme was not aired until two years later.

Two books were published:

• Vol 1 (1982)
  • The Three Railway Engines
  • James the Red Engine
  • Troublesome Engines

• Vol 2 (1982) - ISBN 0862730546
  • Henry the Green Engine
  • Toby the Tram Engine
  • Gordon the Big Engine

The books were available individually, or as a boxed set (of two).

[edit] Ladybird books

I've just remembered (and seen on Amazon) the Ladybird books that were published as a spin-off from the TV series. I 'believe' these are the original books, albeit containing stills from the TV series, and rebranded (book one is Edward, Gordon and Henry [1].

There seem to be many other books etc available: should they be placed in merchandising articles? Mdcollins1984 11:28, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Oh dear...

This page is exploding. It's getting way too much to have every single book with a link to The Railway Series listed in detail.

I propose the following:

• All 40 Railway Series books remain, of course
• The three books currently listed as "non-fiction" also remain, as they are often-referred to sources, and their relationship is very direct
• All other books either be removed completely, or listed without headings, with minimal detail.

Any thoughts before I enact this off my own bat?

Gonzerelli 00:17, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

For once I disagree with you. For example, I found the newly-added information about the Bad Days for Thomas... books to be helpful, as I have not (yet) encountered these books. It was interesting to see the safety messages Christopher Awdry had attempted to cover.

In terms of just listing the books; that can be done anyway on the authors' own pages – as is already the case (especially with C. Awdry).

However, if you are concerned that the page is getting too long, I would propose splitting into two:

1. List of The Railway Series books – for the forty books directly from the series
2. List of books related to The Railway Series – for any others we care to add, starting with the three non-fiction works at the top of the page.

I think we've been quite restrained so far; for example: each of the 33+ books in the Asterix series has its own article in WP! The level of detail is probably about right, although none of us has got round to linking all the characters properly.

EdJogg 01:22, 27 February 2007 (UTC)