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Fictional island in The Railway Series books

The Island of Sodor is a fictional island that is the setting for The Railway Series books by the Rev. Wilbert Awdry (and his son Christopher). It is also the setting of the Thomas & Friends television series, though it is significantly different from the island in the books. Sodor lies in the Irish Sea between Cumbria and the Isle of Man.

Awdry wanted a consistent set of locations for The Railway Series. He wanted them to be in Great Britain, but sufficiently isolated from British Railways to allow him to write the stories he wanted. He was inspired during a 1950 visit to the Isle of Man, which forms the Diocese of Sodor and Man. Awdry, a Church of England cleric, noted that while there was an Isle of Man, there was no island of Sodor. He decided to create a fictional island of "Sodor" as the setting for his books. Sodor would be between England and the Isle of Man, isolated from the British railway system, but somewhere that readers could easily imagine. Awdry and his younger brother George worked out Sodor's history, geography, industry and language ("Sudric"). Inspiration came from various sources. Dryaw was an anagram of Awdry. Elsbridge was named after Wilbert's parish of Elsworth in Cambridgeshire. Some place names were Sudric equivalents or near equivalents of those in the real world (for instance, Skarloey was a rough Sudric equivalent of the Welsh Talyllyn: logh and llyn mean "lake" in Manx and Welsh respectively). They created more details of Sodor than would ever be used in The Railway Series stories. Their abridged notes were published in 1987 in a book titled: The Island of Sodor: Its People, History and Railways (republished with some minor modifications by Christopher Awdry in 1992 under the title Sodor: Reading Between the Lines).

The Island of Sodor in the Thomas & Friends television series differs significantly from that in the books. Wilbert and Christopher Awdry's notes have been largely overlooked. The television version of Sodor appears quite larger and has more industry. The connection to the British mainland was not acknowledged until the 2013 feature length film special King of the Railway, which introduces "The Vicarstown Rolling Bridge", connecting Sodor to mainland Britain. The connection was further acknowledged in that special (though perhaps indirectly), by having King Godred's crown hidden secretly below Ulfstead Castle in a chest.