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Ivor The Engine puffs his way back to Wales 26/4/2004
One of Wales' best loved characters, the inimitable Ivor the Engine, is steaming back to Wales to promote digital TV.
Ivor's original creators, Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin, have teamed up with BBC Wales' promotions team to make three new short films which will be used to plug the digital channel BBC 2W.
The last new Ivor programmes were made almost 30 years ago when the original black-and-white animations, some dating back to 1959, were remade in colour for the BBC in 1975.
BBC Wales' Head of Promotions, Phillip Moss, says Kent-based Postgate is delighted Ivor has been brought out of retirement in the railway shed.
"He has voiced the new films and we were able to track down Anthony Jackson, the original voice of Dai Station, to replay his part," says Moss.
"The next stage is to use a bassoon player from the BBC National Orchestra of Wales to be Ivor's 'voice'."
Though Peter Firmin's original animation used what Moss describes as "Meccano and elastic bands", the new versions, using Firmin's illustrations, will be animated by computer.
All the old favourites feature in the three new films - the longest lasts just 40 seconds - which will be screened by BBC Wales next month.
Dai Station - a stickler for the rule book - is caught out watching BBC 2W when he shouldn't be; Ivor himself refuses to move further along the tracks when he is captivated by 2W in a TV shop and there's trouble in the signal box when the signalman is glued to his TV set - tuned to 2W of course.
Ivor the Engine was voted one of the 100 Welsh Heroes in a poll sponsored by the Welsh Assembly Government last year.
Ironically Postgate had no connection with Wales and the only Welsh person involved in the original animations, Olwen Griffiths who was the voice of Idris the Dragon and the series' women, has since died.
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