I was terrified of the scary movies my mom would rent from Blockbuster when I was little. The most menace I could handle was Brendan Fraser's The Mummy, though I'd get squeamish at the scarab scene. One day, my mom rented the VHS of Thomas and the Magic Railroad, thinking it would give me a break from habitually re-renting Dragon Ball: Curse of the Blood Rubies and serve as an appropriate flick for a kindergartener to watch without any scary violence. She was wrong. Thomas and the Magic Railroad was terrifying, and its villain, Diesel 10, gave me nightmares.
On paper, Thomas and the Magic Railroad had the set up of a lighthearted, amusing, and charming children's film. Its story sees the Island of Sodor suffering from a magic gold dust crisis—the resource Mr. Conductor (played by Alec Baldwin) uses to travel to and from the human and train worlds. Thomas discovers a portal to a magic railroad and a long-lost train named Lady that could help them procure the magic dust they need to keep their quaint little society going. The only being standing in their way is Diesel 10.
Diesel 10 be demented
Whenever an opportunity arose for Diesel 10 to be an asshole to Thomas and friends, he took it. He'd spook them by barrelling past them on the railway, kicking up dust in their eyes in his wake, and revel in it. Diesel 10 is sick in the head. Instead of clearing debris off train tracks using his crane claw attachment (which he'd nicknamed Pinchy), he used it to threaten the livelihood of Mr. Conductor, Thomas, and his friends. Whenever he wasn't lurking in the shadows, he used Pinchy to destroy their houses and scare them away from fixing their resource issue.
Diesel 10’s only weakness is sugar, which Baldwin threatens to pour into his fuel tank and kill him(?). That wasn't enough to stop the lunatic from spinning the block on Baldwin, abducting him in broad daylight, and threatening to drop him off the edge of a bridge if he didn't tell him where the magic railroad was. Thankfully, after cutting a cord on Pinchy, Baldwin avoids certain death and is safely flung miles away from the crazy train.
Diesel 10 is also a fascist
On a good day, Diesel 10 deplorably refers to tank engines like Thomas as puff balls. On bad days, Diesel 10 calls them steamies. While the former doesn't hit the ear quite as harshly as the latter, Thomas and friends tolerate the louse's slurs on account of them needing him to do his fucking job. In 2005's Calling All Engines!, Thomas and crew butter Diesel 10 up, calling him "the most useful engine of all" to coax him into clearing the rubble from train tracks with Pinchy so they can fulfill their duties.
I only know the above after retroactively looking up more information about my sleep paralysis demon on rails a couple of days ago. My friends thought I was joking when I claimed Diesel 10 was terrifying because they only remember him being Thomas' grumpy, reluctant ally in Calling All Engines. Diesel 10's characterization in the film my mommy rented for me was far from Calling All Engines' chummier portrayal of him. Looking back on it, dude was kind of a Nazi.
Diesel 10's sole purpose in Magic Railroad was to cleanse the Island of Sodor of steam engines like Thomas. He plans to destroy Lady, whom he failed to kill in the past, and transform Sodor into a land dominated by engines like himself. I was used to villains thwarting heroes in some vain attempt to gain something in return in Disney films. But Diesel desiring to wipe out all of the tank engines to fulfill some warped ethnic purity was a lot for my child brain—which was still stuck on Pinchy being the vilest weapon known to man— to quantify.
Diesel's mania wasn't helped by Baldwin breaking the fourth wall to thank me, the viewer, for placing his safety cushion in place after getting yeeted by Diesel 10. Now Diesel 10 knows I'm involved, Baldwin! All that stress was enough material to shape nightmares. In my anxious dreams I was aboard Thomas, getting chased through the magic railroad tunnel by Diesel 10 for having the gall to thwart his genocidal plans by breaking Alec Baldwin's fall.
In the final moments of the film, Diesel 10 is abandoned by his lackeys, who decide he's too much of an unhinged asshole to be their friend. Diesel doesn’t give a shit because he'd set his warped, villainous mind on chasing down and destroying Thomas and Lady once and for all. In my earliest example of schadenfreude, I witnessed Diesel 10's heavy, wide-load ass fall through a gap in the same bridge he threatened to drop Mr. Conductor from. After desperately hanging off a broken rail with his stupid-ass claw, Diesel 10 plummeted off the bridge to his doom. Although director Britt Allcroft denied me the satisfaction of watching him plummet to his doom—which we all know is shorthand for him dying a miserable off-screen death—she did give me the satisfaction of watching him land in a sludge barge pulled by a tugboat. Fuck that guy.
