I know this is a bit presumptive, but I think it makes more sense than David just forgetting what Oliver does By that point in the series, there was no designated pilot/shunter engine, and I believe Oliver had a TVS yard essentially created just for one of his feature episodes

Also, by S5 they were playing incredibly fast and loose with where the engines went and what they did I’m just going off the scripts here where Duck at least says he HAS a branch line It doesn’t even seem like he has one in the final season

There’s tons of evidence of this being true: - Gordon refers to Brendam as being on “the Main Line” in Heroes - Maron is called “the end of the line” in S1 - The crew didn’t think the Narrow Gauge engines would be possible to film until AFTER S3

I’ll double down on this and present you with a wild, but plausible theory: As of Season 3A, Maron is the end of the railway to the east. Crovan’s Gate, The Skarloey Railway and Vicarstown aren’t intended to exist until the decision was made to canonize them in Escape

The craziest part of this, if it is in fact true? There is a significant argument to be made that S1-3A and S3B onwards are different timelines One where Crovan’s Gate and the SKR exist and one where the Main Line ends at Maron and later Brendam

Bruh who threw that rock then?

Following the track plan I made of S3-5 Brendam Docks. Here's now another, much smaller one. It's the Coal Mines set from S5, which appeared in "A Surprise for Percy", "Put Upon Percy" and "James and the Trouble with Trees".

I’ve always believed that the Coal Mines are located in between Thomas and Toby’s Branch Lines, and that’s the reason there appears to be an exit on either end Still firmly believe the “Coal Village” is a regular station on Toby’s Line as well

The coastal track to the fucking what???

👀👀👀

I’m going to quickly dive into a few things about the map that really stood out to me, Jun Kellsthorpe does touch on a couple of them here that seem to line up with the HIT Writer’s Bible from just a year before this toy was released

The first thing that really caught my eye when I saw this map was this part of the Main Line between Maron, Kirk Ronan and Crovan’s Gate As you can see, this is completely unique and the closest we could get was Frankensteining the road and rail in the section to fit the shape

The reason I believe this may be significant is, simply put, the shape of these two lines just so happens to be exactly how this part of the Main Line would theoretically look if it followed the established canon of S4 & 5 of the Model Series

As you’ll recall, S4 establishes Crovan’s Gate as a location, and since we never see or hear a mention of Cronk, Killdane or Kellsthorpe Road during the original series, it’s safe to assume they don’t exist and the Main Line runs directly from Maron to Crovan’s Gate as of S4

Now, call me crazy, but take a look at these previous 2 posts of mine where I analyzed the section of Main Line in between Maron and Crovan’s Gate on the 1991 and 1994 David Mitton maps. That looks AWFULLY similar to what is shown on this map, no?

In short, while we absolutely can’t prove anything, what are the odds greater of: Whoever designed this toy went out of their way to augment this part of the map so it just happened to line up with how Kirk Ronan would theoretically work in the TVS? Or they had other material?

Been very busy with some personal things (in a good way). I am still around from time to time

This is an extremely interesting topic that needs to be explored more, as there’s a bunch of interesting little tea leaves to read into My main question would be this: is Maron supposed to be the end of the main line? What about Edward & Gordon where Gordon goes past Maron?