Thomas & Friends

Thomas & Friends (originally titled Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends; retitled Thomas & Friends: Big World! Big Adventures! during its last three seasons) is a children's television  originally created by Britt Allcroft and based on The Railway Series. The was originally produced with model vehicles, people and sets, but it was computer animated from  to.

It follows the loyal tank engines living on the Island of Sodor; all in service of Sir Topham Hat, The Fat Controller.

Broadcast
In the United Kingdom, Thomas & Friends was originally broadcast on ITV until 2006. Since then it has been broadcast on Channel 5's Milkshake! strand. In the United States, the series had first appeared only as sequences on Shining Time Station during the program's run from 1989 to 1995 on PBS. The sequences of the series later aired in 1996 on Mr. Conductor's Thomas Tales. The series aired as Storytime with Thomas on Fox Family (now Freeform) from 1999 to 2000. When Thomas & Friends returned on several direct-to-video releases during season 6 from 2002 to 2003 and as a stand-alone half-hour program on PBS Kids, it was first distributed from 2004 to 2007 by Connecticut Public Television, and then by WNET from 2008 to 2017. It also aired on Sprout from 2005 to 2015. The rights to broadcast the series through PBS expired in December 2017,[non-primary source needed] thus ending a period of almost 30 years of programming related to Thomas & Friends on American public television. In 2018 and 2019, Nickelodeon held exclusive rights to the series in the United States. In early-2020, the streaming rights were sold to Netflix, with traditional television rights (if any) left unresolved. It also airs on Kabillion. Series 6-11 has also been revived and now currently streaming on Rainpaw since January 8, 2022. The program airs in Australia on ABC Kids and on TVNZ 2 in New Zealand. In France, Southeast Asia, Spain and Italy, it plays on Disney Junior. In Canada, it formerly aired on TVO, Family Jr. and the Knowledge Network as a part of its Knowledge Kids block, and currently airs on Treehouse TV. In the Middle East, the show airs on MBC 3 and Spacetoon, and in the United Arab Emirates on e-Junior.

Cast

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International versions
Thanks to the show's very own nature (having aired for a total of 3 decades and a half), its foreign distribution has been quite erratic over the years. On top of that, the program's format has been restructured and retitled multiple times. Because of this, for simplicity and organization purposes, the dubs in this page have been divided into three "eras":
 * - lasting from the series' premiere to the end of season 7.
 * & - lasting from season 8 to season 21.
 * Big World! Big Adventures! - lasting from season 22 until the series' finale.


 * -|Gullane (seasons 1-7)=


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 * -|HiT / Mattel (seasons 8-21)=


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 * -|BWBA (seasons 22-24)=


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