Gordon (TTTE/T&F)

Gordon is a blue tender engine from the Thomas And Friends franchise who lives and works on the Island of Sodor and is the North Western Railway's #4 engine and the main express engine. He is also The Flying Scotsman's only surviving brother. Gordon was built at Doncaster in 1921 as an experimental prototype for Sir Nigel Gresley's GNR Class A1 4-6-2 Pacific design for the Great Northern Railway. The design had faults which needed correction, so Gordon was kept "hush hush" and apart from test runs, was never put into regular traffic or assigned a GNR number. He was used experimentally until all defects had been cured and the first batch of the GNR A1's had appeared in 1922. In 1923 after the LNER was founded and he alongside the other GNR Class A1's were reclassified to LNER Class A1's, Gordon was no longer needed and was sold to the North Western Railway together with a spare boiler and firebox. When he arrived on Sodor, he was repainted to blue with red stripes and a yellow number 4 on his tender's sides. During Gordon's early years on Sodor, he often looked down on the smaller engines like Edward and Thomas. However, he would soon find he needed help from Edward to be his banker after he got stuck on a hill with a train of trucks. He also needed Edward and Henry to pull his passenger train after he broke his safety valve infront of Henry's Tunnel. Gordon's important position as the engine who pulls the express has made him proud, pompous, arrogant, stubborn, prideful, and self-important. He is the fastest steam engine on Sodor. He is extremely proud of this and is inclined to boast. But despite his pompousness, he is also good-hearted, always willing to forgive, and uses his strength to help other engines out of trouble, as he got along with his famous and wiser brother (The Flying Scotsman) when The Flying Scotsman visited The Island Of Sodor in 1968. Though he also has a great hatred of goods trains and believes that he should only pull coaches.