Jones and Dai are relaxing when they spot some strange objects in the sky.
Charlie Banger, is coming to Grumbly town. Brangwyn provides a boot for Alice to wear until her foot heals.Īlice's circus, run by Mr. Jones and Evans the Song have great difficulty bathing Alice and giving her medicine. Jones and Ivor take the elephant, named Alice, and her keeper to Mr. After a few embarrassments, Jones and Ivor find Idris in the most obvious place.Ī rock on the line turns out to be a wounded elephant. Idris is still missing when the representative of the antiquarian society arrives to interview Jones about him. While everyone is enjoying a fish supper, Evans the Song spots a worrying article in his bit of newspaper. Thomas, whose fish fryer is on the blink. So where has Idris got to?Īfter choir practice Idris helps out Mrs. He orders him into a box, which catches fire and then scares him off trying to extinguish it. During the practice there seems to be a voice coming from inside Ivor.ĭai Station isn't too pleased about Ivor's new friend, Idris, travelling in his firebox. Dinwiddy doesn't have any idea what it is so they go off to choir practice. He puts it in Ivor's firebox to keep it warm. Jones discovers a fire inside the hill and a strange egg. Going past Smoke Hill, an extinct volcano, Jones and Ivor spot smoke coming from the top. There follow some amusing attempts to get them down.
Thanks to Evans the Song, they end up escaping and on Miss Pryce's roof. He ends up sending Ivor and Nell, the sheepdog, to get help. Jones tries to rescue it but ends up stuck himself. In the morning, the package has gone.Ī silly sheep has got itself stuck on a ledge in the hills. However, Jones and Dai discover it's a new telescope cover for Professor Longfellow and go home for the night. Jones and Ivor bring back a package, which is supposedly a hat for Mrs. Ivor delivers Coal to Grumbly Gasworks, tomatoes to Mr Davy and Fish to Mrs Thomas. We see a typical day in the life of Ivor the Engine.
#PAINT THE TOWN RED GAME ENGINE WIKIPEDIA SERIES#
When the colour series was subsequently released on DVD, some of the episodes whose content linked, were edited together, with the relevant closing and opening titles and credits removed. In October 2010, however, film copies of all 26 episodes were discovered in a pig shed. These would often each form part of a longer story.Īlthough the six original black and white episodes were subsequently released on video, the two longer black and white series (totaling 26 episodes) were not and for many years were thought to have been lost. The colour series consisted of 40 five-minute films. In the 1970s, the two longer black and white series were re-made in colour, with some alterations to the stories, but they did not revisit the original six.
Black and white episodes were 10 minutes each. There then followed two thirteen-episode series, also in black and white. The original series was in black and white and comprised six episodes which told how Ivor wanted to sing in the choir, and how his whistle was replaced with steam organ pipes from the fairground organ on Mr Morgan's roundabout.
Anthony Jackson provided the voices for Dai Station, Evans the Song and Mr. Voices were performed by Oliver Postgate, Anthony Jackson and Olwen Griffiths. The music was composed by Vernon Elliott and predominantly featured a solo bassoon, to reflect the three notes of Ivor's whistle. The sound effects were endearingly low-tech, with the sound of Ivor's puffing made vocally by Postgate himself. The series was written, animated and narrated by Oliver Postgate. The series was originally made for black and white television by Smallfilms for Associated Rediffusion in 1958, but was later revived in 1975 when new episodes in colour were produced for the BBC. Ivor the Engine used stop motion animation, of cardboard cut-outs painted with watercolours. The story lines drew heavily on, and were influenced by, the works of South Wales poet Dylan Thomas. Postgate decided to locate the story to North Wales, as it was more inspirational than the flat terrain of the English Midlands. Ivor the Engine was Smallfilms' first production, and drew inspiration from Postgate's World War II encounter with Welshman Denzyl Ellis, a former railway locomotive fireman with the Royal Scot train, who described how steam engines came to life when you spent time steaming them up in the morning. Having produced the live Alexander the Mouse, and the stop motion animated The Journey of Master Ho for his employers Associated Rediffusion/ ITV in partnership with Firmin, Oliver Postgate and his partner set up Smallfilms in a disused cow shed at Firmin's home in Blean, near Canterbury, Kent.