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 Rev. W. Awdry. This article lists and details episodes from the 4th series of the show, which was broadcast in 1994 and 1995. This series was narrated by Michael Angelis for the United Kingdom audiences, with George Carlin narrating the episodes for the United States audiences on which was also his last series. This was also the final season where Thomas only appeared in the United States as a segment on Shining Time Station, after that it became a program on Mister Moose's Fun Time and Storytime With Thomas. Two of the episodes in this series have two titles: the original ones from the United Kingdom broadcasts are shown on top, while the American-adapted titles are shown underneath. It was produced by Britt Allcroft Limited.
Production
Filming
The 4th series saw the introduction of the smaller narrow-gauge engines. For ease of filming, series 5 would introduce larger-scale versions of the characters, and from series 6-7, these larger models were used almost exclusively. The working title for Thomas and the Special Letter was The Fat Controller's Engines. it aired on Nickelodeon UK from March 19, 1999 to March 23, 2001.
Stories
Half of the 3rd series consisted of stories written by the show's staff, but only one original story, "Rusty to the Rescue", was written for the 4th series. The episodes which used The Railway Series did take some liberties with the source material, in order to fill the runtime and make the stories more accessible. From series 5 onward, all stories would be staff-written, without using the Awdrys' books as a source. Stepney was given an entirely different background when he was introduced. This decision carried on into later series, in which he was seen on either a fictionalized Bluebell Railway or as a member of The Fat Controller's railway. The show had come under fire for having too few female characters, and a conscious decision was made to rewrite Rusty, who was always a male character in the books, as gender-neutral. Thomas' new owners, initially defended the decision, citing Rusty's gender neutrality since Series 4, later releases of the same episode substituted male pronouns in reference to Rusty.
Talent
Initially, each episode was broadcast in installments of the children's television programShining Time Station. 2 stories from Series 4 were aired in each of the hour-long "Family Specials" in 1995. The rest were broadcast in a 6-episode offshoot called Mr. Conductor's Thomas Tales. Later they would air in a new half-hour program called Storytime with Thomas, which also included a Series 5 episode narrated by Alec Baldwin and an episode of Britt Allcroft's Magic Adventures of Mumfie.
