- "This is Bob. A large boulder that once sat just outside Crosby. It's been called the Stonehenge of Sodor due to the intense mystery surrounding it."
- — Edward, Trapped
Bob was a boulder who appeared in Season 2.
Biography[]
Bob was a popular tourist attraction and landmark on the Island of Sodor, along with his twin boulder, Val. Both boulders sat on opposing hills near Crosby and Wellsworth. It's unknown how or where Bob got its name from, but tourists and locals would often say hello to the giant boulder for good luck. On a particularly rainy day in 1938, the ground beneath Bob was heavily inundated with water and subsided dramatically, causing Bob to roll down the hill and crash into a goods train being pulled by Colin and Diesel. Bob blocked the line on both ends, preventing the Nor'easters and Midis from passing to either side of it. Toby arranged for himself, Gordon, Henry, and Colin to form a battering ram, placing three of the surviving goods trucks, filled with heavy machine parts for the Mid-Sodor Railway, in front of them.
Toby's plan was to ram Bob off the line with the makeshift ram. The effort ultimately smashed the trucks and failed to move Bob off the line, which Gordon had predicted would happen. On the other side of the blockage, Diesel reluctantly went to Killdane to fetch the breakdown cranes after being pressured by Thomas, who thought Bob could be lifted off the tracks. In the end, Billy Shoepack, the demolitions expert from Franks & Sons Munitions, showed up at the site and talked Colin, Toby, Gordon, and Henry into allowing him to blow up Bob with carefully set munitions. Shoepack's explosives were placed haphazardly, resulting in the unintended consequence of a giant crater being blown into the mainline by the explosives as well as obliterating Bob out of existence. Following the incident, tour guides bringing visitors to Val, the surviving boulder, would claim Val would cry out in mourning on foggy nights to the spot where Bob once sat.
Trivia[]
- He is the first faceless object to have a name.
- There is also an identical boulder named Val which people say is Bob's sister.
- Bob is presented as the tramp steamer being sent for scrap by Zorran and Zip during the in TUGS, during the episode titled "Trapped". He is also based on Boulder from the Season 5 episode of Thomas & Friends, titled "Rusty and the Boulder".
- Unlike Boulder in the TV series, Bob gets destroyed with explosives. This is in reference to the destruction of the tramp steamer in TUGS, which was also done using dynamite.