Ivor The Engine
Another fine five minute animation series from the prolific
Smallfilms team of Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin.
As the name suggests, Ivor The Engine concerned the
adventures of a small green railway engine, operating for the
Merioneth and Llantisilly Rail Traction Company - located "In
the top left-hand corner of Wales" according to the
narrator.
The whole series was steeped in Welshness and gave its young
viewers a romantic view of the very industrialist Welsh lifestyle
the show portrayed.
The little world in which Ivor's track passed included many
landmarks from an industrial landscape. Firstly, there were his
tunnels and viaducts to help him navigate the valleys. Off the
mainline between Llangubbin and Tewyn there were the miles of
branch track that Ivor serviced.
There was the Smoke Hill (the volcano home of Idris the
dragon), the coalmine, gasworks, and chapel in the town of Grumbly
and the village of Tan-y-Gwlch.
The line even stretched as far as Tewyn-by-the-sea to enable
Ivor to take the workers away from the dark oppression of the
industrial landscape for a nice day-trip to the coast. But home
for Ivor was his shed on the outskirts of Llaniog.
Ivor was driven by Jones the Steam, whose colleagues were Owen
the Signal and Dai Station (the man who looked after Llianog
Station). Ivor's boiler was fired by Idris the dragon and the
little engines suitably Welsh ambition was to sing in the choir
like his friend Evans the Song (not to run a fine drinking
establishment then, like Pisshead the Pub?).
Like many of the Smallfilms productions, Ivor The Engine
was made in the barn of Peter Firmin's 18th century farmhouse near
Canterbury, with the cowshed acting as his artists studio.
Postgate was apparently assigned the pigsty..
The shows were originally shown in black and white on
Associated-Rediffusion before the company folded in 1968. In the
1970s, Monica Sims - head of BBC Children's - was keen to revive Ivor.
Enquiring about buying back the rights, Postgate was graciously
gifted these by Rediffusion Holdings.
Thus Ivor returned in forty colour episodes to enchant a
new generation and was nominated for a BAFTA in 1977.
According to Oliver Postgate the screening time of Ivor The
Engine (1.15pm) clashed with board meetings at Associated
Rediffusion, but not wishing to miss a single episode the board
members ordered a television be wheeled in and the meeting stopped
whilst they watched Ivor.
The television was then wheeled out again and the meeting
resumed. Nice to see a board with their priorities right for a
change . . .
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