Stanley (Thomas & Friends)

**Stanley** is a silver saddle tank engine and one of Thomas' friends and one of Twilight Sparkle's best friends. He works as both a shunting engine and a mixed traffic engine.

## Bio

Stanley was brought to Sodor to take care of Thomas' workload during the restoration of Great Waterton. Upon his arrival, Stanley became very popular and enjoyed the company of the engines.

Stanley's popularity caused Thomas to feel jealous and later neglected. Thomas felt that Stanley was newer, bigger, and stronger than he - and would take over his place on the railway. Thomas then planned to make Stanley look weak - the trick backfired and caused Thomas' friends to consider him mean and incompetent.

When Thomas later went missing, Stanley was the first to realise Thomas' feelings. He searched for Thomas until he finally managed to find him in a ditch and rescue him. Then, both became friends and with a combined effort made it back to Great Waterton in time to prepare for the opening celebrations.

Stanley later worked in the yards with Thomas and James during the winter and helped with the rebuilding of theSodor River Bridge. Also, he went to Great Waterton with Gordon to pick up passengers, and when Gordon bumps into a flatbed being pushed by Ben, he warns Stanley about the fallen logs and is able to warn him just in time.

Stanley was amongst the engines at Knapford who were worried about Percy's whereabouts when Percy was spending his time with the Diesels at the Dieselworks. Later on in the winter, he suffered from a faulty firebox and Thomas came to his aid once again.

In more recent seasons, Stanley can be seen working at the Shunting Yards, the China Clay Works andFfarquhar Quarry. Salty also mentioned that Stanley, in one of his spooky stories, was an old engine who lost his flatbeds while climbing a hill, and ever since then his flatbeds haunt the rails.

In Sodor's Legend of the Lost Treasure, he helped with the construction of the Harwick Branch Line. He was the first engine to cross the unstable track that the Pirate Ship was under.

In The Great Race, Stanley was one of the many engines who wanted to go to the Great Railway Show. Like most engines, however, he was not chosen and was left on Sodor.

## Personality

Stanley is the "boy-next-door" of Sir Topham Hatt's Railway. Cool, courteous, and cheery, he is a little bit bigger, a little bit newer, and a little bit stronger than Thomas, which, at first, made Thomas jealous when all focus seemed to be on this shiny, new arrival, especially when he began helping with the restoration of Great Waterton. However, even Thomas was soon won over by Stanley's positive attitude, charm, and friendliness and came to see why he was so popular and well-liked among the other engines. As such, Thomas and Stanley are now firm friends.

Stanley is incredibly compassionate and empathic: there is nothing he would not do for another engine. And if he could not do it, he would find someone who could. He is sleek, smart, and stylish, and his silver and light grey appearance, with striking red wheels and a shining smokebox certainly makes him look the part as he eagerly goes about his work.

## Trivia

* Stanley is best friends with Caramel.
* Stanley's popularity with the public has grown following an online video called "A Toy Train in Space", in which a Wooden Railway model of him was sent into space. As a result, both a Take-n-Play and a Collectible Railway "Stanley in Space" have been released.
* Stanley's smoke box is silver, however in real life, UK locomotives have black smoke boxes.
* Stanley is Rosie's boyfriend.
* Stanley guest star in Thomas and Twilight Sparkle's Adventure Series to be with Rosie.
* Stanley has had a different voice actor in the US dub for almost every single one of his appearances. This makes him the first character to not have a consistent voice actor in one of the English dubs.
* During his debut, he was temporarily the ninth member of the Steam Team.