Sir Topham Hatt
(aka The Fat Controller)
And Swindon
2025 sees the 80th anniversary of the first of the Rev Awdry’s stories that have become linked with Thomas the Tank Engine. The first story was entitled The Three Railway Engines: the tale of ‘Edward, Gordon and Henry who lived in the same shed and who were always boasting and quarrelling among themselves until, after a series of adventures, they found it best to be good friends and to help each other.’
The early stories feature a fat director. This character who we later learn is Sir Topham becomes The Fat Controller after the real-world nationalisation of the railways in 1948. But what isn’t so well-known is that the fictive Master T. Hatt started his railway career in 1894 at the GWR Works in Swindon as an apprentice. I imagine he was quite slim then. I also imagine that his father probably worked ‘inside’ in the factory and that Topham might well have been born a Swindonian. There’s food for thought as you ruminate upon social mobility.
According to the Rev Awdry’s narrative, Topham became close friends with Swindon-born William Stanier, who went on to an illustrious career with both the GWR and the LMS and received a knighthood (There’s food for thought as you read this, thinking about a career on the railways). But the future Fat Controller never forgot his love of all things GWR: ‘All ship-shape and Swindon fashion.’
Now as regards my family, I have five generations who have worked in the railway works at Swindon, starting in 1851 with Wiltshire agricultural labourers on my mum’s side who tramped in from the villages. But my great grand-father, Charles Butler, moved to Swindon from Clerkenwell in 1886 as a carpenter in the carriage & wagon works. His son, my grand-father, also became a carpenter in ‘the Works’ and my dad an electrician there.
I have the planes of my carpenter forebears, stamped with their names and the GWR insignia. I also have my gramp’s clocking-in token. These act almost as talismans, opening up the tantalising possibility that my great grand-father knew this fictive young cove, Master Topham Hatt. And, of course, correspondingly, Master Topham Hatt knew my great grand-father.
More food for thought as I hear the ghost of the Swindon railway works hooter on the wind…