James

James is a mixed-traffic tender engine who works on the North Western Railway, usually working along the the Main Line. He can be vain and sometimes boastful, but means well and is a hard worker.

Personality
James is very proud of his splendid red paintwork. He dislikes pulling trucks and believes that he should only pull coaches. He thinks himself superior to the others and can be shallow, boastful, overconfident, naughty, and vain, particularly to those who appear old-fashioned, weak, slow, or dirty. This has caused him to have somewhat of a rivalry with Edward, Percy, Toby and Duck. However, on a number of occasions, he has found himself in need of help from those whom he has insulted and is, in the end, apologetic. Even before he was repainted red he was rather boastful.

James was the last of the steam engines to retain a prejudice against diesels. However, after stalling on a cold day, he was rescued by the Works Diesel and James had to admit that nothing was wrong with diesels. This appears to be one of the few lessons that has stuck.

Since the seventeenth season, James has also been portrayed as a prankster, often tricking or scaring the other engines for fun, or to get out of jobs he dislikes doing. Following a particularly mean-spirited prank he played on Percy in Tale of the Brave, this gimmick seems to have died down.

Despite everything else, James has shown a caring side, is normally hard-working and like every other engine, wants to be responsible, reliable and really useful on Sir Topham Hatt's railway.

Basis
James is based on the L&YR Class 28, a class of 0-6-0 mixed-traffic tender locomotive designed by George Hughes for the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway and built by Horwich Works between 1909 and 1912. It was a rebuild of Aspinall's Class 27, with the addition of a Belpaire firebox, a Schmidt/"twin-plug" superheater, and the extension of the footplate and front sandboxes.

According to The Island of Sodor: Its People, History and Railways, James is an experimental member of the Class 28s; he is fitted with a front pony truck (thus making him a 2-6-0 instead of an 0-6-0), 5'6" driving wheels instead of the class' original 5'1" ones and a Fowler tender. His front sandboxes also appear to be mounted underneath his footplate rather than his splashers.

Trivia

 * A large scale working replica of James was built by BBC Visual Effects for a tour in 2003, along with Thomas, Percy, Harold and Jack. The battery powered locomotive is listed in the 2004 Guinness Book of Records as the largest model railway engine ever built, at 2.64 x 1.5 x 6.52 metres.
 * James is named after James Furze, a friend of the son of the man who published the second book in the Railway Series.
 * James was illustrated into The Three Railway Engines as the red engine who tried to push Henry out of the tunnel. However, children began sending letters to Awdry asking why James was painted red prior to the events of Thomas the Tank Engine. Awdry then decided to make the Red Engine a new character altogether.
 * In the first season, James was formally introduced in Thomas and the Breakdown Train, which was said to have been his first day on the railway. However, he had appeared in every prior episode as a background character. This may have been done to populate the sets, similar to how the Märklin Engine was used in later episodes.
 * James has been painted in more liveries than any other engine in the television series, with a total of four.
 * Andrew Brenner has said in an interview that James is one of his favourite characters, along with Toby, Bill and Ben.
 * In Toby's New Whistle, James revealed that he once had a three-chime steam whistle.
 * Although he is now has the same voice actor in both dubs, James speaks with a different accent in each; he speaks with an American accent in the US dub, but speaks with an English accent in the UK dub. He is the second character in the show to be in this situation, the first being Belle.