Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends is a children's television series about the engines and other characters working on the railways of the Island of Sodor, and is based on The Railway Series books written by the Reverend W. Awdry. It was produced by Clearwater Features Ltd. for Britt Allcroft (Thomas) Ltd. and Central Independent Television. This article lists and details episodes from the second series of the show, which was first broadcast in 1986. This series was initially narrated by Ringo Starr for the United Kingdom audiences, who later re-narrated 17 episodes for the United States. The entire series was narrated by George Carlin for US audiences.

Production

Stories

Christopher Awdry was commissioned to write a new Railway Series book as source material for the second series. Three stories from More About Thomas the Tank Engine provided additional roles for Bertie the Bus, Terence the Tractor, and Harold the Helicopter. The episodes "Thomas and the Missing Christmas Tree" and "Thomas and Trevor" were both one-off stories written by Christopher. The following series would begin to use original stories by the production staff, with some of the remaining Railway Series stories deemed "repetitive and too 'storybook' orientated".

Filming

Early in production, a third episode based on The Twin Engines was due to be filmed, based largely on the story "The Missing Coach". This was originally to be the episode Donald and Douglas the Scottish twins were introduced in. It was thought that the model crew had gone as far as filming scenes on the Tidmouth Station set with Thomas arriving at the station, before Britt Allcroft decided the episode had too little action and its storyline would be too difficult to understand by younger viewers. Subsequently, the episode was cancelled and the story's exposition was instead included in the episode adaptation of the story "Break Van", which would instead serve as the twin engines' introductory episode. In August 2020, there was a leak on Twitter that showed that the crew had filmed virtually the whole episode, including and up to the scene where Donald and Douglas swap tenders to impersonate each other (the scene that made Allcroft deem the story too confusing to air on TV), and the audio is the only thing missing. Several promotional stills from the filming of "The Missing Coach" have surfaced in various Thomas publications over the years, while the series’ original director David Mitton was believed to be in possession of the original film footage. In December 2022, the dialogue and visual script for "The Missing Coach" episode leaked on Twitter. Scripts for three Railway Series stories, Percy's Promise, Gordon Goes Foreign, and Double Header, were leaked the same month. "Percy's Promise" and "Double Header" (renamed Time for Trouble) were later adapted in the third series. Gordon Goes Foreign was never adapted due to budgetary restraints. These were likely the episodes replaced by the Christopher Awdry written stories. This season began production in September 1985 and completed filming in June 1986.

Episodes

Characters

Introduced

Recurring cast

Home media

United Kingdom

Series 2 was first released as three separate VHS volumes by Pickwick's Screen Legends imprint in 1986. The Video Collection later re-released them in the 1990s, and have seen numerous re-releases over the years. Video Collection International released a complete series VHS set in 1999, available as either a single-VHS or double-VHS release. It was soon released on DVD in 2004 as part of the "Classic Collection Boxset" before being released on its own the following year. The 2012 re-release by HIT Entertainment utilised the 2003 restoration of the series. Episodes from the series have also made it to various compilation releases with other series.