Ceremony marks 80 years since release of the Rev W Awdry’s first book and coincides with railway bicentenary
Eighty years since the first of a beloved fleet of trains was introduced to the world, a national blue plaque is being unveiled at the redbrick house in Gloucestershire where the Rev W Awdry worked on his railway stories.
The addition of the new Historic England plaque to Wilbert Awdry’s old address in Stroud is expected to prompt fans of Thomas the Tank Engine and his fellow locomotives to make a pilgrimage to the street to pay their respects.
Awdry’s daughter, Veronica Chambers, said the family was delighted: “It’s an enormous privilege and an honour. Father would have been very surprised.”
The unveiling ceremony at Awdry’s former home, named Sodor after the fictional island his anthropomorphic engines inhabited, also forms part of this year’s Railway 200 celebrations.
