ALL The Railway Series Illustrators Ranked 

My personal favorite illustrator is Edwards. He's illustrations looks so realistic.

My favourite illustrator is a tie between and Kenny and Edwards. Their illustrations look absolutely amazing and for some reason look something out of stained glass window in terms of colours. I wished Hodges was kept on because his illustrations look amazing and consistent. Marshal is so underrated it's shocking. Her illustrations look very nice.

Great to see another huge John T. Kenney fan! One of his many great qualities to me were his human characters, they really brought the world to life with things like smoking, lifting boxes and digging holes. Great seeing Hodges so high, it's a shame he couldn't have done more because just imagine how insane it'd be if he got to really shine.

I'm glad you included Edgar Hodges. He's highly underrated, he's definitely the best illustrator out there, and it's a shame Chris Awdry didn't get him to illustrate his books. They would've been much better than the Spong illustrations. I'm personally not a fan of Loraine Marshall's illustrations. I'd say her art shines the best with A Scarf for Percy, as it was almost all new illustrations due to it being more closely followed to the TVS episode, and not the original Percy and the Trousers. There's almost no confliction of style, and looks fairly nice. I do like some changes she made to some illustrations, too, like giving the engine that overturned on the points in Gordon goes Foreign a face. I do have to say, however, that there are inconsistencies with proportions at moments, and at the times where her original illustrations combined with her re-illustrations of the originals is just very conflicting with the art style. My personal ratings for all of them: Hodges: 11/10 Edwards: 10/10 Kenney: 9/10 Payne: 7.5/10 Marshall: 5.5 to 7.5/10 (Trucks! at the low end, A Scarf for Percy at the high end) Dalby: 6.5/10 Spong: 4 to 7/10 (Really Useful Engines at the low end, Thomas and Victoria at the high end) Middleton: 2/10

I’d never heard of Mr Hodges until now, and I’ll have to agree with you on his placement!

Brilliant, although I still have a bias to spong for the most part, I prefer his engines by far, although his faces are rather lacking.

Peter Edward’s is just.. 😩 chefs kiss 👌👌👌

Studying other art styles to see what I like is one of my favorite things to do, so this video is always nice to come back to. I like your editing and your commentary. My notes for my favorites are: Clive- I LOVE his colors. They’re both so bright and livley. The trains look wonderful too, though I find it distracting how similar the faces can get. It’s a bit unnerving. I do like the expressions a lot though! Payne- I like the colors and the faces a lot. The smoke looks so good I can taste it 😋 The specific illustrations you showed had a warm looking tone I really liked too! Marshall- Her colors too are vibrant as you said, and that one at 6:01 has my whole heart! Very magical indeed, I could stare at it for hours~ Kenny- I tend to lean towards more stylized styles, so his work is like eye candy for me! I love the colors and the textures and the FACES. Oh the faces! Chefs kiss~ Edwards- I love the colors, especially the darker ones. Really stands out and creates a cool mood! The expressions stand out so much to me, oh and I love the little details he adds. And that illustration from Stepney’s special? THE LIGHTING. THE LIGHTING it’s so gorgeous and warm and I WISH I could color like that so much~ the perspective looks great too! Hodges- I love those smoke rings they’re so cute! I love how his looks like pictures taken at the scene. The watercolor textures are lovely to look at as well~ A quick TLDR is that I really love colors and bright ones at that 😅

Dalby at least gets points for the faces, I actually think he was the most impactful to the TV show in terms of the characters' expressive range. He's the only guy that gave James his iconic shit eating grin for example. :P I think like I'd rate Spong higher if he had kept up the more varied cartoony faces he used in Really Useful Engines while still refining his artstyle. Could have been the best of both worlds.

Cool choices. My ranking would have to be, from best to worst: 1. Peter Edwards 2. John T Kenny 3. Edgar Hodges 4. C Reginald Dalby 5. Lorraine Marshall 6. Reginald Payne 7. Clive Spong 8. William Middleton

9:20 So Thomas march has been around since the 60s interesting

8:41 I didn’t knew it either

3:39 Hmm, why am i imagining the silhouettes of two men beating eachother up..?

I honestly think that the Edward's, Kenny and Hodges are OUT OF THIS WORLD, like their soooooooooooooo good Also you forgot Stephen Lings if he even counts 😐

My personal favorite is edwards, their illustration is art. And that one illustration of henry, that is the most hardest illustration of RWS

I love all the illustrators who brought the series to life.

There is also an illustrator that started it all... The Reverend W Awdry!

My favorite illustrator is without a doubt peter Edward's

4:24 Bert not being in his rebuilt form i can understand as said rebuild was never in a story, so having him be suddenly in a new shape with no explanation would've confused readers.

10:46 Percy looks like Peter Sam in that Meet Percy picture.

I love all The Railway Series illustrations

My personal ranking: 6: William Middleton: his illustrations look awful, and not colored in good. 5: C. R. Dalby: made a number of inconsistencies and had a pretty.. “interesting” experience working with Wilbert Awdry. 4: Clive Spong: His illustrations started off terrible, but got much better as the series went on. 3: Reginald Payne: he set the groundwork for things to come. With the future illustration styling. 2:John T Kenny: his illustrations often times looked hilarious in tone. I liked them. 1: Gunvor and Peter Edwards: WHAT ELSE IS THERE TO SAY?? THERE ILLUSTRATIONS ARE F**KING WORTHY TO BE PUT IN AN ART MUSEUM.

Edward is fantastic in main line engine and Enterprise engine

7:29 LOL

The inconsistent proportions and the terrible perspective in every illustration something i struggle with alot

2:37-2:45 I never notice that before but I don’t consider it a big deal. Also Henry looks the same to me.

8:44 What about that book on the ground?

6:06 WHY IS PERCY DEPICTED AS A 0-4-2???

8. William Middleton (1/10) 7. Clive Spong (6/10) 6. Clarence Reginald Dalby (7/10) 5. Lorraine Marshall (8/10) 4. Reginald Payne (8/10) 3. Edgar Hodges (9/10) 2. John T Kenny (10/10) 1. Peter Edwards (10/10)

I'd say that dalby wanted more if a individualness to the engines, but I cant disagree with shit like the 4-6-0 james and missing buffer edward

Man, Lorraine over Clive Spong is certainly a choice. Her stuff always felt like (admittedly good) fanart to me.

I think I am the only Payne fanboy.

Doesn’t Wilbert Awdry count as an RWS illustrator?

My Favorite was dalby

I could probably draw something better than the first guy

DUDE WHAT THE HECK IS UP WITH THE SHIRT IN THE Reginald Payne discussion LIKE THOSE ARE SONIC CHARACTERS THAT ARE (ahem) *kissing*why would you show that picture. What just for a meme? 🤣

The reason that Middleton's illustrations look so lifeless probably has something to do with the fact that he didn't care about The Railway Series whatsoever. He's stated that he didn't think it would succeed since it was about "dirty old locomotives". So it was like he just went "This series is gonna fail no matter what, so why should I bother with this book's illustrations?"

Dalby, Kennedy, Middleton & Sponge are crap in my opinion except for Guvnor, Peter & Payne (the 2 of them are my favorite)

William Middleton, Clarence Reginald Dalby and Clive Sponge are trash I pefer John T Kennedy, Loarine Marshall and the Edwards