Shining Time Station

Tom-

Haven't seen it on DVD, but Amazon has a few DVD listings for Thomas and Friends' episodes narrated by Ringo Starr (which were shown on Shining Time Station).

-John

The DVD set "Thomas and Friends: The Early Years" are some of the Thomas episodes from Shining Time Station. I've never seen the entire show on DVD.

Sadly, the show never got on DVD. It did, however, get on a few VHS's, but they're quite scarce and with the obsoletion of VCR's today, not many bother to keep them apparently.

There should be some of the episodes on YouTube though, as well as the Mr Conductor episodes which focused only on Thomas episodes.

It was on for awhile. Ringo Star was the first Conductor and then it was George Carlin. I belive it was a production out of Canada sponsored by PBS Boston. Shining Time Station was built around Thomas and I believe it finally became Thomas and frends in the states. I have kids this is why I know this. It was on AFN Europe at 0730 Monday thru Fridays in the early 2000s then it became Thomas and Friends. Although Thomas originated from England, It was also very big in Germany. After my move to Stuttgart, my kids would watch it on German TV in German. I was so used to hearing the Thomas songs in German that it was very strange to hear them in english when we moved back to the states in 2009. I did come across Shinning Time Station on VHS but never bought it. Have you tried googleling it?

The show was on for three seasons.  It was an offshoot of the ITV show Thomas and Friends done with WNET (NY PBS Station).  The show wrapped the Thomas and Friends video's with live action sequences and music numbers.  Ringo Star did the voice over for the first season and played Mr. Conductor.  George Carlin did season's 2 & 3.  Of the 76 episodes only a small hand full made it to VHS.

Both of my sons liked Shining Time station. They watched it on our local PBS station. I thought the stories narrated by Ringo Starr were the best, but George Carlin was OK too. I think we had six VHS tapes.

While they were actively interested, we also got just about every Ertl die cast Thomas piece that was available. Some of the wooden ones too. We'd visit our local train store regularly. I'd look at the Lionel, and they'd look at the Thomas. More often that not, we would get one or two pieces of Thomas.

Loved Shining Time Station when I was little. I was watching it before I was even a year old - it's really the major reason I got interested in trains. My mom recorded about 12 of the earlier episodes on VHS when I first got in to watching it. I still watch them occasionally. Total, I probably have 14-15 episodes recorded on random VHS tapes, along with two of the hour-long specials that they made in 1996.

Unfortunately, I doubt we'll ever see it on DVD. Britt Allcroft was the creator of Shining Time Station (and the the Thomas TV series in UK), but around 2000 the rights to Thomas were bought by HiT entertainment. The problem would be getting the rights to air the Thomas segments in the show again.

What is sad, Is that the updated Thomas and Frends uses computer graphics instead of the real trains and layout. I though the kids like it, I still prefer the originals using actual trans and a real layout. 

Seeing as how old kids shows like Animaniacs and Tiny Toon Adventures as well as Happy Days are now on the Hub channel, it wouldn't surprise me if the classic Thomas episodes made it to that channel first in the future.

This was done in 2009 because the cost to make the show using model trains was becoming much more expensive. Quite a few of the models are on display at Drayton Manor in the UK. Nonetheless, I agree the original model series was superior overall, especially before 2003 when HIT Entertainment bought the Thomas name off of Britt Allcroft (after that was when the show started to take a slow but gradual nose dive in quality).

Shining Time Station included "music video" numbers as part of the show.  The show was also a joint venture with a major US PBS station.  I wouldn't expect to see the Shining Time Station shows out on DVD any time soon.  

The Thomas segments have been released on VHS and DVD

Or, make your own personal DVDs. Download episodes / seasons you want off YouTube. Check out this guy, looks like he uploaded the entire American version of the series:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lz7kF9iBaVE

I don't you will see it on the HUB but I'm happy to see Tiny Toons and the Animaniacs on the HUB now if I can get Freakaziod I'll be even happier. As for Shining Time Station I remember selling the VHS copies when I work at the Great Trains Store in Pineville,NC.  So far there's serveal shows on Netflix for Thomas and Friends. 

I haven't looked to see if the show is on Hulu or Crackle.

I don't think they are looking for just the Thomas stories, which are available on DVD, but the whole Shining Time Station, which was a show which had a story, and the Thomas episodes were used to teach a lesson to move the story along.

Of course, a youtube search does show whole episodes.

I actually had no idea the Thomas episodes were part of a larger show. Never saw it 

I'd like to google Didi Cohn.

Here is an episode guide for the entire series.  Sorry to say no videos.

http://www.tv.com/shows/shining-time-station/

STSepisodecentral has quite a few videos including Season 1 Episode 1

Interesting casting in Didi Conn from a Happy Days spin off to Benson to Shinning Time Station.