Thomas the Tank Engine First Editions: The Railway Series Collector's Guide

The Railway Series first editions are 26 small oblong books by the Rev. W. Awdry, published between May 1945 and October 1972, the first 22 under the Edmund Ward imprint of Leicester and the last four by Kaye & Ward, followed by 16 more by his son Christopher Awdry from 1983 to 2011. They are easy to find and hard to find right: Edmund Ward reprinted the early titles within months, had the first two books redrawn, and altered their text, so a shelf of "1945" and "1946" copies is almost always a shelf of reprints. This guide gives the tests that two or more dealers, auction houses or Awdry references agree on, says which copies are scarce, and lists what has sold.

We record the editions and their printings on the Railway Series page and on the pages for The Three Railway Engines, Thomas the Tank Engine, James the Red Engine, Tank Engine Thomas Again and Toby the Tram Engine.

The books at a glance

Dates follow the Wikipedia list of books in the Railway Series, which draws on Brian Sibley's biography The Thomas the Tank Engine Man (Heinemann, 1995), the standard reference. Sources disagree on when the Edmund Ward imprint gave way to Kaye & Ward (the fan references say 1967 or 1968); Lycanthia Books lists Small Railway Engines (1967) under Edmund Ward and dealers list Enterprising Engines (1968) under Kaye & Ward, so we treat 1968 as the first Kaye & Ward first edition.

No.	Title	Year	Illustrator	First publisher
1	The Three Railway Engines	1945	William Middleton (Dalby from 1949)	Edmund Ward, Leicester
2	Thomas the Tank Engine	1946	Reginald Payne (retouched by Dalby 1950)	Edmund Ward
3	James the Red Engine	1948	C. Reginald Dalby	Edmund Ward
4	Tank Engine Thomas Again	1949	Dalby	Edmund Ward
5	Troublesome Engines	1950	Dalby	Edmund Ward
6	Henry the Green Engine	1951	Dalby	Edmund Ward
7	Toby the Tram Engine	1952	Dalby	Edmund Ward
8	Gordon the Big Engine	1953	Dalby	Edmund Ward
9	Edward the Blue Engine	1954	Dalby	Edmund Ward
10	Four Little Engines	1955	Dalby	Edmund Ward
11	Percy the Small Engine	1956	Dalby	Edmund Ward
12	The Eight Famous Engines	1957	John T. Kenney	Edmund Ward
13	Duck and the Diesel Engine	1958	Kenney	Edmund Ward
14	The Little Old Engine	1959	Kenney	Edmund Ward
15	The Twin Engines	1960	Kenney	Edmund Ward
16	Branch Line Engines	1961	Kenney	Edmund Ward
17	Gallant Old Engine	1962	Kenney	Edmund Ward
18	Stepney the "Bluebell" Engine	1963	Peter and Gunvor Edwards	Edmund Ward
19	Mountain Engines	1964	Edwards	Edmund Ward
20	Very Old Engines	1965	Edwards	Edmund Ward
21	Main Line Engines	1966	Edwards	Edmund Ward
22	Small Railway Engines	1967	Edwards	Edmund Ward
23	Enterprising Engines	1968	Edwards	Kaye & Ward
24	Oliver the Western Engine	1969	Edwards	Kaye & Ward
25	Duke the Lost Engine	1970	Edwards	Kaye & Ward
26	Tramway Engines	1972	Edwards	Kaye & Ward, no jacket issued

Christopher Awdry's 16 books, from Really Useful Engines (1983) to Thomas and his Friends (2011), were all illustrated by Clive Spong and published by Kaye & Ward, then Heinemann and Egmont. They are collected as a run rather than for individual value, and our guide to first editions versus first printings covers their number lines.

The publisher and the artists

Edmund Ward was a small Leicester printer-publisher who took the stories after other houses had turned them down; Wikipedia records a fee of £25 for the first book. Ward sold the firm to the London printers Straker Brothers in 1952, who merged it with Nicholas Kaye as Kaye & Ward but kept the Edmund Ward name on the Railway Series for another fifteen years. So the imprint dates a copy: Edmund Ward is 1945 to 1967, Kaye & Ward 1968 onwards, and Heinemann or Egmont a reissue.

The artists matter because the first two books were redrawn. Awdry wanted engines that were technically right, and William Middleton, a lithographic artist with little picture-book experience, gave him toy-like engines with faces that look traced round a coin. Edmund Ward had C. Reginald Dalby redraw The Three Railway Engines; the Thomas Tank Collectables Blog and the fan edition lists both date the Dalby version from October 1949. Reginald Payne drew Thomas the Tank Engine in 1946 and no other book; Dalby retouched his pictures in 1950, and because later printings credit Dalby he is routinely, and wrongly, named as the 1946 illustrator. Dalby illustrated books 3 to 11 and withdrew in 1956; John T. Kenney took books 12 to 17 and Peter and Gunvor Edwards books 18 to 26.

The first-printing tests

No impression statement. Edmund Ward printed the reprint history on later impressions: West Hull Rare Books describes a Three Railway Engines marked "Eleventh impression November 1951", Grimes Hill Books a Thomas the Tank Engine marked "Fourteenth impression", and Richard Sylvanus Williams notes that a 1949 Tank Engine Thomas Again has "no printing information verso title page". A first printing is silent; a reprint tells you what it is.

The price on the jacket. Dealers' descriptions of first impressions agree: 4/- net on The Three Railway Engines (Treasured Books, and Stella & Rose's Books' guide to the title), James the Red Engine (Peter Harrington, John Atkinson), Tank Engine Thomas Again (Peter Harrington) and Troublesome Engines (Lycanthia Books); 4/6 net by Toby the Tram Engine in September 1952 (Two For Joy Books), and West Hull's 1951 reprint of book 1 already carries 4/6. Lycanthia reports 5/- on The Little Old Engine (1959) and 6/- on Small Railway Engines (1967). A 1940s book in a jacket priced 4/6 is wearing a later jacket, and a clipped jacket has lost the evidence; our guide to dust jackets explains why that matters.

The publisher's list. Each book carries a list of the Railway Series titles so far. Rainford & Parris Books, a PBFA dealer, identifies a first impression of Duck and the Diesel Engine (1958) by the fact that the list in the book and the list on the jacket both end with that title. We have found the test stated by only one dealer, so treat it as a supporting check: a list that runs past the book in your hand means a reprint, but a list that stops at it does not on its own prove a first.

The imprint. Edmund Ward of Leicester on the title page of books 1 to 22; Kaye & Ward on 23 to 26. Dealers catalogue some later Edmund Ward titles as London and no two sources agree on when the address changed, so use the imprint name, not the address.

The text of the first two books. In The Three Railway Engines and Thomas the Tank Engine the railway's owner is "the Fat Director". He became "the Fat Controller" in James the Red Engine (1948), after nationalisation, and Stella & Rose's Books records that the earlier books were altered to match from the 1947 printing onwards. A first printing of either book says "Fat Director" throughout (Stella lists the pages in book 1: 40, 42, 52, 54, 56 and 60). Forum Auctions used the same test in 2024, cataloguing a Thomas the Tank Engine as an "early printing with fat director".

The Thomas advertisement. The first printing of The Three Railway Engines has no advertisement for Thomas the Tank Engine at the end of the book. The advert arrived with the second book in 1946, and Forum Auctions, Stella & Rose's Books and Treasured Books all define the first printing by its absence.

The pictures. A first printing of book 1 has Middleton's pictures; a first printing of book 2 has Payne's pictures unretouched, including Thomas pulling his coaches forwards in the fifth picture of "Thomas and Gordon", which Dalby reversed in 1950. The points of issue guide explains how such tells are established.

The scarce titles and states

The Three Railway Engines, 1945. Published on 12 May 1945, four days after VE Day, in cream or beige boards lettered in green, in a yellow pictorial jacket. The fan references and the Collectables Blog both give a first printing of 22,500, a figure that appears to come from Sibley. Almost all were read to pieces, and Forum Auctions, Jonkers and Neverland Books all call the book rare in its jacket. The first state has Middleton's pictures, "Fat Director" and no Thomas advert; the 1946 printings with the advert, and the 1947 printings with "Fat Controller", are early but not first.

Thomas the Tank Engine, 1946. The first appearance of Thomas. Jonkers describes the first issue in tan boards lettered in black with a pictorial jacket and calls it very scarce; John Atkinson calls it rare. Wikipedia dates it 14 September 1946 and the fan edition list gives October, so do not rely on a month. Payne's unretouched pictures identify the earliest printings.

James the Red Engine, 1948, and Tank Engine Thomas Again, 1949. Dalby's first books for the series, in blue boards blocked in gilt with jackets priced 4/-. John Atkinson describes the James jacket as scarce, and Peter Harrington's Catalogue 87 offered first impressions in jacket at £1,500 and £1,250.

Toby the Tram Engine, 1952. Grey boards with a red title; Bauman Rare Books singles it out as the scarce seventh book.

Tramway Engines, 1972. The last Awdry title was issued in pictorial red boards with no jacket, as Bauman records and as Sotheby's 2018 run, "all except book 26 in dust-jackets", confirms. Do not pay for a jacket on it.

Traps

The "1945" reprint. Edmund Ward reprinted The Three Railway Engines seven times before Dalby's redrawing and many times after it, and the title page date did not always move. Thomson Roddick sold a jacketed copy catalogued as an "early edition 1945" for £50 hammer in March 2024; the price tells you what it was. Check the pictures, the Director and the advert, not the date.

Dalby on the 1946 Thomas. Because Dalby's name is on every printing from 1950, dealers and auction houses credit him with the 1946 book. If a "first edition" of Thomas the Tank Engine has the pictures in print today, it is a 1950 or later printing.

Married jackets. Jackets were reprinted with new prices and longer title lists, so a first printing in a jacket priced 4/6, or whose list runs past the title, has had its jacket swapped.

The 1972 text change in Henry the Green Engine. "Henry's Sneeze" in the 1951 book described soot-blackened boys with a racial slur; after complaints in 1972 Awdry changed the line to "as black as soot". The original wording marks a pre-1972 printing, not a first, since twenty years of reprints share it.

Catalogue dates. Even specialists slip: Forum Auctions catalogued its 2019 first issue of The Three Railway Engines as "[1946]", and Peter Harrington's catalogue dates Thomas's first appearance to 1947. Trust the physical tests.

What they have sold for

Public results are thin, because most Railway Series books change hands through dealers. These are the results we could tie to a named sale; they are not valuations.

Book	Sale	Price
The Three Railway Engines, first issue, rebacked, jacket restored	Forum Auctions, 26 September 2019, lot 105	£240 hammer (estimate £300 to £400)
Thomas the Tank Engine, early printing with "fat director", rebound in maroon roan, jacket laid down	Forum Auctions, 19 September 2024, lot 15	Estimate £150 to £200; Invaluable's record of the lot shows £100
The Three Railway Engines, catalogued as an early edition, in jacket	Thomson Roddick, Ayr, 7 March 2024, lot 310	£50 hammer
Complete run, 27 volumes, books 5 to 26 first editions, most in jacket	Sotheby's, The Library of an English Bibliophile VIII, 2018, lot 7	Estimate £500 to £700; result not published
The Three Railway Engines, first edition, yellow jacket	Catherine Southon Auctioneers, Chislehurst, 17 September 2025	Estimate £300 to £500; result not found
Two original John T. Kenney illustrations for Duck and the Diesel Engine and Gallant Old Engine	Bonhams, London, 28 March 2006, lot 23	£1,920 including premium

Dealer asking prices sit well above the auction results: Stella & Rose's Books listed a jacketed first printing of The Three Railway Engines at about $4,470 before it sold, John Atkinson asked £650 for an unjacketed first printing of Thomas the Tank Engine and £625 for James the Red Engine in jacket, Bauman Rare Books asks $700 to $850 for the Kenney and Edwards firsts, and PBFA dealers offer ordinary Dalby-era first impressions in jacket at £65 to £95.

If you own one of these books, grade it honestly, run the tests above against its page, and compare it with sold copies in the same state rather than with the asking prices.