Ivor The Engine

Something was the matter with Ivor. It wasn’t that he hadn’t enough coal in his fire, he had plenty. It wasn’t that he hadn’t enough water in his boiler, his boiler was full. It was just that — as Jones the Steam (his driver) put it — he just wasn’t pulling right.

So Jones the Steam and Dai Station took Ivor to see the Chief Engineer. They took him all the way down the Main Lines as far as Pontypool Roads, where the big engines are. The Chief Engineer and his assistants gave Ivor a thorough examination. They looked in his boiler, blew on his tubes, dismantled his pistons, and tapped his little wheels with a hammer, but they couldn’t find anything wrong with him, not anything mechanical, that is. No, it was something deeper than that, something that couldn’t be mended by an engineer.

Jones the Steam, with the help of nearly everybody else in that part of Wales, set out to find the trouble and put it right. They found it all right, and soon Ivor was the proudest and happiest little engine in the whole country. 

This book is a hardback reprint of the first ever Ivor the Engine book, originally released in 1962. The book is beautifully written by Oliver Postgate and contains the original artwork of Peter Firmin.