Oh ho ho ho, before you ask why do you sound like Santa I'm doing that because this special, the second one released, was so damn fun to watch. And this is a special based on a kid's show...
So in this one Thomas finds the long lost town of Great Waterton and everyone tries to restore it to it's former glory. Then Stanley walks into his life and oh dear, Thomas starts thinking everyone likes Stanley more than him. So he runs off at nights but silly Thomas, he ends up falling inside a deep mine and goes missing.
If there's one word to call this special then right from the get go, that would be...
FUN!
There's some really darn good moments here from the bridge collapsing to Thomas ending up in the mine. (You see that, Magic Railroad, ya see that? That is what you should have done instead of giving us a mopey looking Peter Fonda.) The story here is much better than Calling All Engines and BAH DA DA DAAAAAA, for the first and probably only time (unless HIT ever plans something like this again) we got a star narrator, in this case 007 himself Pierce Brosnan who does well with the material.
Oh yes and putting the absolutely overblown WELCOME STANLEY! meme aside, Stanley was a fairly interesting character. Crying shame he's hardly seen if you ask me.
What a fun special this was and a perfect sendoff for the models. Sadly though even with the latest CG technology the specials kinda went downhill for a bit as we'll see next with Hero Of The Rails...
