Horrid Lorry (Alternate Episode)

I have been a huge fan of Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends since I was little, and I still do. I still love the show after it happened recently. And it turns out that Horrid Lorry originally is intended to be in Season 4, and the Horrid Lorries' accidents are meant to have them get killed off.

One day, after the last day of school was over, me and my dad decided to go to Goodwill to see if there are any good VHS's and DVD's. When we got there, I was looking at VHS's, when something caught my eye. It was a VHS of A Bad Day For Sir Handel and Other Mishap Stories. The distributor is Video Treasures, and the date says 1995. I looked at the stories in order: A Bad Day for Sir Handel, One Good Turn, Rusty Helps Peter Sam, Trust Thomas, Diesel Does It Again and Horrid Lorry, plus one song: Rules and Regulations (the music video wasn't seen before). The storyteller is George Carlin. That's strange. Horrid Lorry is a Season 5 episode, and I never thought George Carlin narrated the episode. We decided to buy this, along with recorded VHS's of Sagwa episodes, and VHS's of Toy Story and Hercules.

When I got home, I went downstairs with the tape, turned on the VCR/DVD combo, and put the Double Trouble VHS in, and pressed the play button. Everything played out normal, til we get to the sixth and final episode, Horrid Lorry.

When the episode starts, the Season 4 models/sets/music are in place of the Season 5 models, and George Carlin is heard narrating instead of Alec Baldwin, and we hear his tone from the 1993 US narrations of Seasons 1-3, and also the stories on the Rusty to the Rescue and Other Stories. The episode plays normal otherwise, as we see the engines working hard, pushing and pulling freight cars about. One day, when Percy is late, Cranky the Crane is quick to critizize about it, and says a lorry shall do his work, much to Percy's shock. The story is normal so far.

Percy tells the other engines what Cranky has said, and James and Henry don't believe him. Percy wonders if a lorry does arrive, and soon it did, along with two more. Cranky is delighted and declares the lorries are taking over, and one of them wants to talk to Percy. One lorry is rude to Percy and calls him a steaming scrap iron. Later when Percy meets Thomas and James, another lorry is rude to them and when he sees Percy, he calls him a green goblin on wheels. Thomas and James are cross. Later, Toby finds another lorry at the quarry, and the lorry insults him by saying Toby shall belong in a museum, angering Toby. Toby's driver tells him not to bother with him, and they'll head off to the flowermill instead, and by the time they get there, they see the same lorry who insulted Thomas and James, who has to deliver flour. The lorry confronts Toby that the three are doing his work - he's too slow. The manager of the flour mill speaks with Toby's driver, and the driver explains that Toby may be old, but he's reliable, and he decides that they'll go to the farms.

The line runs through a narrow mountain gorge, in which vehicles have to tackle a steep and dangerous road, except the mountain ledges is a lot taller and have a lot of jagged rocks. And when Toby arrives, he sees the lorry from the quarry again. When the lorry is running out of control, loaded with rocks, Toby wonders why the lorry is in trouble and his engine on fire. This is where alternation begins. And by the time the lorry fell off the cliff, and instead of having severe damage, but still surviving, he hits jagged rocks, and pieces fly everywhere, and by the time he lands on the ground, he was completely mangled and smashed up. The driver has jumped clear, instead of being thrown clear, and says "Rotten roads", like in the normal version.

The lorry was taken to the docks, like in the normal version. His cab was crushed, his flatbed was mangled, his wheels, his face, and his lights were gone as well. When Percy arrives, he looks at the lorry and taunts him about his crash, like in the original. Instead of the lorry who fell off the cliff saying the line in the normal version, the driver explains to Percy "He fell off the mountside and was crushed to pieces.

Then Butch the Breakdown Vehicle arrives, and is towing the lorry from the flourmill, like in the normal version, except the lorry he is carrying is mangled and burnt. The lorry's face, lights and wheels are gone, his cab and flatbed are mangled. Toby has arrived as well, like in the normal version.

"What happened?" aksed Toby's driver.

"He was out of control with his load with flour, and crashed into a bomb."

Toby taunts the two lorries by saying "Not useful, are you?" like in the original, but the lorries didn't growl like in the normal version, because they're already dead.

Meanwhile James whistles excitedly like in the normal version. But instead of being nought by the barge, the lorry who "fell in the sea" is taken on the breakdown train to the docks. The lorry is crushed, his face and wheels are gone, his lights are smashed, his flatbed and cab was smashed. Even worse, his windows are broken.

"They're bringing the third lorry on a breakdown train! What happened to that one?" James asked the tow truck man.

"Stupid lorry was heading towards a old mine and was crushed by a avalanche." the tow truck replied.

It then cuts to Thomas coming by. George Carlin is speaking.

"Later, Thomas arrived. He looked at the three wrecked lorries and laughed."

"Well well, the brothers grim. They're destroyed alright."

It later cuts to the engines working harder, as the narrator said...

"The lorries were taken to the scrapyard to get scrapped, and the engines worked even harder to make sure they never came back."

The episode ended, and after the final nameboard sequence, I saw the music video for "Rules and Regulations", and it was interesting.

After the music video ended, and the end credits rolled, and after the tape ended, I decided to contract with Britt Allcroft about its origin, and here's what she responded:

"Dear (with held name)

This episode is originally going to be intended to be the 19th episode of Season 4, and the Horrid Lorries' accidents are originally going to have them get killed off, but the idea of having the horrid lorries getting killed off isn't kid friendly enough, so they scrapped it, and we adapted Henry and the Elephant as the 19th episode of Season 4 instead, and we had to have Horrid Lorry as the 2nd episode of Season 5, and the lorries' accidents will have to have Lorry 2's mountain crash with him surviving the crash and remaining alive, Lorry 1 falling in the sea, remaining alive, and Lorry 3 breaking down with flour on its back, turning out to be alive still. We made several cuts with the episode to make it more kid friendly. It was in the second take before the version everyone knows today. This must of have been put on the tape by Anchor Bay Entertainment who used to be called Video Treasures. We are sorry in advance for letting you come across this tape. We will track down the person who put the episode on this tape.

Yours truly, Britt Allcroft"

Yeah, that makes sense. It turns out that Horrid Lorry is intended to have 3 lorries who get killed for being jerks to the engines, and it was originally intended for Season 4.