As a father with a small child, I am exposed to children's TV programming. In my son's case, the favored show is the Thomas the train series. Now having seen several episodes more than a few times, the mind tends to wander into the area of random thoughts.

I've seen some of the earlier shows on DVD and it seems that the role of the driver has diminished in recent years. The engines seem to increasingly work more independently only interacting with humans when loading/unloading and getting their tasks to do for the day and the 'drivers' seem to have almost completely disappeared at times. Tasks they do under the premise and desire of remaining and 'being a really useful engine' (with the implied threat of being sent to the scrapyard if they aren't). Kind of sinister in one respect.

In any case, I got to wondering how this small island could afford what to me increasing look like an artificial intelligence experiment controlling the trains. So all of these little occasionally rambuncous AI units driving around the tracks of the Island of Sodar all day seems appealing. I mean, they get their feelings hurt, the run off and other trains have to go find them... sounds like an AI unit to me. Perhaps primitive AI's that will form the foundation for the SciFi Bolo tanks of the future. Perhaps HAL9000 was once one of the engines that wasn't 'really useful' and he ended up on a spaceship without his friends and that was the cause of his insanity.

Ahhh random thoughts and children's shows.