James (TTTE/T&F)

James is a character in The Thomas And Friends TV Series, he is red mixed-traffic tender engine who lives and works on the Island of Sodor, and is the North Western Railway's number 5 engine. He primarily works on the Main Line, pulling both passenger and goods trains. . James was designed by George Hughes and built by Horwich Works in 1912. He was designed as an experimental variation of the Lancashire And Yorkshire Railway's Class 28 locomotives, with a front pony truck installed at the front and 5'6" sized driving wheels instead of the class' usual 5'1" (added in an attempt to cure the "nose-diving" the class experienced when traveling at high speed), though unlike many other engines at the time, he was fitted with wooden brake blocks. The experiment did not entirely produce the results hoped for, and sometime after the Grouping, James was sold to the North Western Railway in 1925. . Shortly after he arrived on the Island of Sodor, James was severely damaged in a crash when his trucks pushed him down the line and his wooden brake blocks caught on fire. After being recovered from the wreck by Thomas, which led to Thomas getting his own branchline after saving James, James was sent to The Works, where he was repaired, repainted into NWR red with gold and blue lining, and a yellow number 5 with blue lining on both of his tender's left and right sides, and gained new functional brakes made of metal. . James is very proud of his splendid red paintwork. He dislikes pulling trucks (though not to the extent that Gordon does) and is quite vain and occasionally boastful, particularly towards those who appear old-fashioned, weak, slow or dirty. This has caused him to have somewhat of a rivalry with several engines and in some cases act out. In most cases, it takes scolding from others to make him see the error of his behavior, and even then it is too late to prevent trouble. . James is also prone to occasional joking, often tricking or scaring the other engines for fun.