Thomas the Tank Engine and his surprising Jewish connections (Jonathan Myers, 9/16/26, Jewish Chronicle)
The first connections begin not in Britain but, in what was then, Mandatory Palestine. Long before he became one of the world’s best-loved children’s authors, Awdry spent three years in Jerusalem. Between 1933 and 1936 he taught at St George’s School while preparing for ordination as an Anglican priest. At the school Awdry met Margaret Wale, a fellow teacher, whom he married two years later in 1938. Their son Christopher, born in 1940, became the original audience for the bedtime stories that eventually grew into The Railway Series. Had Awdry never gone to Jerusalem, Thomas’s story might never have been told.
During those Jerusalem years Awdry lived in a city served by the famous Jaffa–Jerusalem Railway, the first railway built in what he would have called the Holy Land. It owed its existence to Joseph Navon, a Jerusalem-born Sephardi Jewish entrepreneur who, after years of persistence, secured the Ottoman concession to build the line, overcoming formidable political and financial obstacles before French investors eventually joined the project. By the time Awdry arrived, the railway had become part of the British-administered railway system. There is no concrete evidence that it directly inspired Thomas, but it is difficult to imagine that such an enthusiastic railwayman as Awdry would not have known the line that climbed spectacularly from the Mediterranean coast into the Judean Hills. Put it like this: it is an intriguing coincidence that, before creating the world’s most famous fictional railway, Awdry spent three years living in the vicinity of one of its most remarkable Jewish ones.