The Miniature Railway Adventures

2019 Logo

The Miniature Railway Adventures is a series of railway stories created in 2008 by Michael White and close friend and fellow YouTuber, Casey Junior.

## About

The stories are set around a fictional miniature railway, located at the bottom of a transport museum, which is battling to keep going whilst in competition with a black market car dealership.

## How it all started

The stories were devised by Michael White in a bid to create a story that would buy him and his friend time to get a model railway video that they were making finished. The result was a quick, put-together storyline explaining to the audience what was the cause of the delay of that particular video which featured the cast and crew. But over the time writing and performing the story, less enthusiasm for the model video resulted more attention given to the other. During 2009, developments on the sequel to the first story, The Search of the Lost Engine, were already in development before the audio-play was even finished. But to get a good storyline took some time and by 2013, the series had a plot and a background with each character having their own traits and personality.

## Inspiration

One of the key inspiration for the series was when Michael first listened to the Sodor Island Forums' Audio Adventures. He loved the idea of creating stories on which his friends could participate in and get up to all sorts of adventures.

Another view on the creation for the stories was that many railway stories focussed on the engines and very little on the people that operate and care them. Every driver, shunter, signalman and station staff have their own backgrounds and stories to tell as they go about their day's work operating the little railway.

## Background

The stories are heavily based around the 7 1/4 gauge miniature railway of Model Engineers Society of Northern Ireland. Both Michael and Casey Junior are members of that society and keep and operate engines there. The setting and the people that run the society brings a lot of character which is incorporated into the stories and shown through it's characters.

## Where to find the stories?

Since 2008, the stories that have been adapted are available to listen as audiobooks or audio plays on YouTube or Soundcloud. At first they were shown on Michael's YouTube channel but in 2013, a new channel was made dedicated to the series to which the videos were moved to there. The last full cast audio play was produced in 2013. Since then all stories have been done in single narration by Michael White or guest narrators.

A Theme Tune for the Audiobooks and Audio plays was written and performed by Martin McManus in 2014. It has featured at the start and end of every story since. A small collection of character music was composed and have also featured in several audios.

Originally the 2nd half of the track *'Ru Baraba Dom Warrior'* from the Anime The irresponsible Captain Tyler was planned to be the series theme tune, but was changed to the newly composed one.

Any stories that haven't been converted to audiobook can be available to read online on the Sodor Island Forums and Michael's DeviantART page.

## Trivia

* it was originally going to be called M. E. S. (Short for Model Engineer Society) Adventures but was changed some time later as it felt that the audience wouldn't get the reference. The new title had more meaning to it.
* It took 4 years to develop the series so that it had good plot line to work from.
* Until 2019 the logo for the stories was of an old station sign by an ivy covered picket fence. A reference to old station signs on small branch lines.
* The new logo is a totem design with a blue silhouette of Lady Grange on top.