Two-year-old Matteo Volpi’s eyes sparkled as he looked at a Lionel Train setup at the Hilton Hotel on Saturday. As Thomas the Tank Engine passed in front of him on a miniature train track, Volpi ...

The series aired as Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends from 1984 until 2021. Allcroft’s family remembered her as an “adoring mother and wife and visionary producer” in an emotional statement.

Thomas, the talking little blue engine, is in Baltimore at the B&O Railroad Museum's Restoration Center for two weekends of family fun to celebrate his 80th birthday.

Thomas the Tank Engine appeared in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade back in 2014. REUTERS “Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends” began airing in the US in 1989. PA Images via Getty Images ...

Britt Allcroft in 1973, more than a decade before “Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends” debuted on British television. C. Woods/Daily Express, via Hulton Archive, via Getty Images ...

Britt Allcroft, Creator of TV’s ‘Thomas the Tank Engine,’ Dies at 81 She discovered the character in a series of 1940s children’s books and thought Ringo Starr would make a great Mr ...