Christopher Awdry is in a way responsible for the creation of Thomas and
The Railway Series, which started off as
bedtime stories told to him by his father during a bout of
measles in 1942. When his father retired in 1972, he wrote an additional 16 books for
The Railway Series. The series came to be called
Thomas The Tank Engine & Friends after that. In 2006, the current publishers, Egmont Books, decided to reprint the entire series in their original form; the then-14 books by Christopher were re-released at the beginning of August 2007. His favourite character is
Toby. The new interest from the publishers has gone beyond merely re-releasing the existing books. Christopher Awdry has written a new book for the series, titled
Thomas and Victoria, which focuses on stories relating to the
railway preservation movement. This, the 41st book in the series, was released on 3 September 2007. In April 2010, Egmont Books confirmed that another Railway Series book, No. 42 in the series, would be published in 2011. The publication date was later confirmed as 4 July 2011, and the illustrator as
Clive Spong. It was published under the title
Thomas and His Friends. This book would become the final book in the Railway Series to be published. ==Other works==