EP53, formerly known as EricPierre53 and Eric Drouin, is a Canadian/American YouTube user that joined the TWRC in June 2010. He is known for his reviews and his series, "Railway Tales". He currently has over 7,000 subscribers.
Joining YouTube[]
ericpierre53 started YouTube to enter Leokimvideo's Mad Bomber Contest but never had time to enter. He was a big fan of shows like Knight Rider, Dukes of Hazzard, etc. and started making clip-shows with images. Then he started watching people like ThomasWoodenRailway and Mtwilliam (A.K.A. HiroTheJapeneseTrain) and decided he wanted to make videos
with his wooden trains. His first remake was Thomas and Gordon that he filmed with a cheap video camera and narrated himself. He also did other Thomas videos plus some stop-motion animations and some singing videos.
Later...[]
He made more and more videos but still only had way under 100 subscribers. He started to instead make his Thomas videos with stop-motion and also started to buy models off of eBay. At one point, he deleted a big part of his Thomas videos for personal reasons. In October of 2011, he stopped making videos for reasons of being injured in an accident and lack of enjoyment in Thomas and YouTube in general. In 2012, he came back to YouTube but just made more clip-shows, a few fake trailers and also tried to concentrate on his music videos. But finally, in June of 2013, he started making Thomas Wooden Railway videos again and saw his subscriber number almost quadruple. It was then when EP53 started making a mark in the Thomas Wooden Railway Community.
EricPierre53 wanted originally to make a TWR series using his original character, Chris. After 3 episodes of this series, he decided to stop production and focus on writing a brand new series which would be more focused on humour. The show took a while to finally be released but soon got cancelled after only 4 episodes due to lack of interest and hesitation due to outdated footage and uninteresting scripts which may be released someday but Eric would rather not for the time being.
2015-2016[]
He works commonly on reviews, rants, and crossovers. Over the summer of 2015, Eric and Matt (AKA MrMPS) met up in real life to do some crossovers, which can be found on their respective accounts. These were the 'last' few crossovers in MPS' then current overarching crossover plot before the new one began.
His recent video is a rant on the 'Roll N' Whistle' Emily. At the moment it is implied that he and MrConductorfan1406 are working on a crossover on an 'X' item.
He is also working on many other crossovers, and bigger, and grander reviews, not all on Thomas Wooden Railway items. So far one of these non-TWR items has been Take'n'Play Mike, which was uploaded on June 11, 2016.
He has also released reviews of the two 2015 Thomas specials, "The Adventure Begins" and "Sodor's Legend of the Lost Treasure", the latter being 50 minutes long. Eric is unsure if he would do any more of these movie reviews as they are very time-consuming.
Eric's newer series, "Railway Tales" takes place in the Railway Series. However, instead of just being remakes of certain RWS stories, they are new stories that could have happened in between the stories, somewhat of an extension to The Railway Series. He had released the pilot not expecting such an overwhelming response. He did not plan at first to turn Railway Tales into any sort of series. As of January 2019, the series has 6 episodes.
TWR Community Radio[]
After WoodenRS left the TWR Community Radio channel, Eric was brought in to replace him with a show called "The Sodor Workshop." Four episodes of The Sodor Workshop would be uploaded until the channel quietly ended in early 2016.
MusicofSodor[]
MusicofSodor is a collaboration channel between ericpierre53 and Oliver Duck to make 100% free-to-use Thomas music due to the fact that there were many Thomas music makers on YouTube at the time who declined to let people use their music. It was opened in July of 2014, and the duo managed to occasionally release instrumental covers of Thomas songs, which continue to be well-received by the community to this day.
In Oliver Duck's 'goodbye' video, he stated that he made Eric the sole admin of the channel and was free to upload or do whatever he wanted with it. Eric continues to upload, albeit at a slow rate. Oliver Duck would eventually return in late 2016, and MusicofSodor would return to being run by both Eric and Oliver Duck.
Contributing Member[]
In spring 2019, Eric would change his channel name from Ericpierre53 to his name, Eric Drouin. On Twitter, he would announce a loss in interest of trains and film. His YouTube bio would state "For a long time I wanted to do film but I recently realized my purpose is to bring back Rock and sing to the masses. I’ll look at you from the stage and scream." With Eric still being active on Twitter and not having plans for more TWR videos, he is now considered a contributing member in the community. He still makes Thomas music on MusicofSodor.