The Missing Coach

Firstly, I don't know where to begin with this tape... For those who are long fans of the running TV show Thomas The Tank Engine then you probably might have heard of the cancelled episode known as The Missing Coach. It was meant to be one of the first episodes we saw of Donald and Douglas: The Scottish Twin Engine. However it was cancelled during filming. Supposedly there was some footage they taped before cancelling it. I was the only one who was mainly interested in finding the footage because most of the people thought it was an obvious hoax. After months of trying to find it I eventually gave up but someone emailed me saying how they had the tape and if I was interested in owning it. I of course said yes and had it shipped to my apartment. The guy stated that he didn't know what was on the tape because he found it in a box in his attic. I put the tape the VCR as I grabbed a bowl of chips and prepared to watch the video.



The Video started off the the intro like usual but the quality was really bad. I guessed it was just that the tape didn't age pretty well. The episode had no narrator, I expected that because the footage was taken before any dubs were made. The Models of Donald and Douglas were weird and very different to their final versions. Donald's model had no mouth, nose and eyebrows all it had were very tiny eyes while Douglas on the other hand had the same features as Donald except his eyes were these big black dots and he had a painted red smile on his mouth that dripped near his buffers. All the footage was of the models moving back and forth, pulling coaches and trucks. The strangest thing about the footage was that a distorted voice repeated the phrase "Embrace me" or "Embrace it" or something like that. I swear I felt like I could hear faint screaming in the background of the tape...I honestly don't know if the screaming was their or if it was me and that I had gone bat shit crazy. Eventually the footage showed Donald and Douglas picking up passengers at Knapford station. They took off and puffed off to what appeared a broken bridge. As they kept puffing panicking could be heard in the coaches. The 2 reached the bridge and fell to their deaths... and the video ended.

I was disturbed by the video on so many levels. It was just so disturbing just to see this video of my favorite show as a kid be turned into a demented, random and strange film. I immediately destroyed the tape because I honestly couldn't take the demonic footage of the tape. I had nightmares for weeks of the video... Just when I started to forget about the video a box arrived! The Box contained 2 model trains of Donald and Douglas, they looked exactly like they did in the video, A note was also in the box. I picked up the note and read what it said. as I read it said "Muckle Nuisance"