There are no LBSCR E2s left.

Would anyone remember them? Would they be another piece of forgotten machinery, with few photos and even less video footage? And in the universe we live in, they are so easily recognizable to foamers and outsiders directed to them- saying “That’s Thomas. He was real.”

Real and made real again in storybooks and TV shows and wooden toys and Bachmann models. Those 10 E2s, faulty lumbering engines with a wheelbase too big for tight turns and water tanks too small to be good enough for the short goods trains they were designed for… became the most famous tank engines in the world. Can you imagine if we still had them? If we still had one? Like wistful lovers of recently extinct animals, we write, we draw, we try to bring them back to life.

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