When I was a child, I had all 24 of the original books and I loved them desperately (and the beautiful, technically detailed paintings facing every printed page). However, I did later note that:
The Fat Controller, in his tailcoat, is a caricature of the Victorian capitalist.
The locomotives were all male.
The carriages that they pull around are female (Annie and Clarabel), and they are submissive and girly.
There is a female diesel railcar in one story (I forget her name) and she stops in her tracks because she is afraid of a cow. She is eventually towed away as a result.
The goods wagons (our only contact with industrial labour apart from the paternal and benevolent engine drivers and guards) are dirty, ugly, disobedient and like to create trouble for its own sake.
In one story, Henry and Gordon (and maybe James) go on strike and refuse to pull any trains. Edward, however, continues to pull his trains normally. In the shed at night, the striking engines conduct a whispering campaign against him and call him a "blackwheel". Edwards tells the Fat Controller about this, and the Fat Controller tells him to carry on working and not take any notice. Eventually, the strike collapses and the other engines resume work. As a reward, the Fat Controller gives Edward a fresh coat of paint and a branch line of his own.
Finally, there is a story where some schoolboys throw stones at Henry from a bridge. To get revenge, the next time they are there Henry's driver teaches Henry to blow a cloud of filthy ash and cinders at them. And (said my edition, printed in the late 1960s, and amended in biro by mother), "the boys ran away black as n#####s."
That's quite a lot of subtext (and in the case of the n-word, its not even sub-text, it's right there in print).
Still, I guess none of this can have done me any lasting damage. After all I grew up a good bleeding-heart leftie ....
