Turtlesandthomas, or simply turtles, (A.K.A Brady McGrath) was a user who started making Thomas Wooden Railway videos in the summer of 2014. He was known for his fan series Sudrian Conflict, which gained popularity in early 2015. Before he privated his subscriber count and then deleted his channel, he had over 14,000 subscribers.
Before Wooden Railway[]
turtlesandthomas created a variety of videos before transitioning into becoming a Wooden Railway user. He produced many short skits, typically using miniature models and emphasizing comedy. His longest ongoing series was Clam and Waffle, a series filmed using models of stick figure characters based on his comic strip of the same name. He produced Clam and Waffle videos since Summer 2010 and went on an indefinite hiatus with the series after Summer 2014 (Around the time he started Sudrian Conflict.) His channel had less than 100 subscribers prior to joining the TWRC. When he started uploading TWR videos, they quickly became very popular so he gradually switched to doing mostly TWR videos. Sudrian Conflict has a noticeably darker and more serious tone than his previous series, as well as contrasting sharply with the traditional tone of Thomas content as a whole. His growth in popularity could likely have been due to the fact that his take on Thomas the Tank Engine is far different from what viewers had come to expect.
Sudrian Conflict[]
turtlesandthomas's main TWR videos are Sudrian Conflict. This series is a drama and action series and is focused heavily on the human characters, not just the engines.
Early episodes were composed of several unrelated stories that eventually became intertwined as the story progressed. He uses an unconventional style of storytelling with TTTE, as each episode takes place on an exact date, and each episode takes place the day after the previous one. However many days pass within an episode, that number is added to the date of the next episode. turtlesandthomas has a large layout in his basement, which he has been working on since approximately January 2010.
Until the end of season 2, turtlesandthomas did all the voices for his series himself. EnterprisingEngine93 was the very first voice actor from within the TWR community to make a voice appearance in Sudrian Conflict, and in season 3 the number of voice actors increased substantially. The first two seasons are set in 1945, season 3 is set in 1954, and season 4 is set in 1954-68, and a small portion in present day.
After the first three seasons were produced, the series went on a 7-month hiatus as turtles worked to fully plan out and script the fourth season, something he never did with previous episodes.
Season 4 began on May 11th with an hour-long episode entitled Lineage. Due to length, Season 4 was divided into two parts- Season 4a, and Season 4b. The latter, the final season, ended on June 20, 2018 with the episode Sins.
Other Videos[]
In addition to Sudrian Conflict, turtles did many reviews, sketches, commentaries on his series, and discussions on Thomas the Tank Engine in general. His reviews often featured his friends such as MrMPS2002 and Eric Drouin. He also made a number of specials for subscriber milestones.
Many of his review videos contained sketches that followed an ongoing story arc revolving around his fictional twin brother, thomasandturtles, who wears a blue hoodie instead of a green one. Some of these videos also feature turtles' unnamed cousins. The initial storyline was heavily based on the TV show "Gravity Falls." The plot went on to include a storyline about the "Artifacts," objects related to major TWRC members which held immense power. The Artifacts plotline has since carried over to some of MrMPS2002's videos.
turtles announced that he would be going on a long-term hiatus on September 26, 2018. His final video was a review on the item that got him back into Thomas, the Recycling Cars. The video explained that he would be moving away to go to college and thus would not be able to make further videos until the following summer. All of this culminated with a face reveal.
In August 2019, turtles announced season 6 of Clam and Waffle, along with a new series called turtles' ERTLs. The latter, as the name suggests, uses ERTL trains instead of Wooden Railway. The series primarily (but not exclusively) adapts existing Thomas episodes. During summer 2019, he filmed 12 total episodes between the two series that planned to air during the school year.
Tank Engine Society[]
In February of 2020, turtles made a video announcing that Shining Time 2020 (The Magic Railway Show) would be public to anyone and would now be a full-blown train show, whereas it had been a smaller-scale private meetup in previous years. Ultimately due to the Coronavirus, The Magic Railway Show 2020 would be cancelled, with plans to do it again in 2021. turtles would also announce turtles' ERTLs season 2 shortly after the initial Magic Railway Show announcement.
Season 3 of turtles' Ertls came out in the fall of 2020. Shortly after the third-season finale, an adaptation of the episode Fergus Breaks the Rules, turtles revealed that the series would get a full-length movie, split into parts, after Season 4. The film was later revealed to be titled "The Great Discovery", named after the third Thomas movie, although the plot is unrelated.
After the passing of EnterprisingEngine93's dog Watson, turtles bought a softshell turtle and named it Watson. He went into detail about this process in a video uploaded in early 2021.
In late February of 2021, turtles' Ertls season 4 ended. According to turtles, the movie will come out in April after the release of a secret project.
In March 2021, turtles revealed that the secret project was a collaboration with EnterTRAINment Junction, the world's largest indoor model train display. The project, a Thomas story titled "Tumble Down the Line", was filmed on EnterTRAINMent Junction's colossal G-scale layout.
Departure[]
In June 2021, it was revealed that turtles refused to share SleepyHenry's experience of being a member of the LGBT community because he believed it was "too negative" for the Tank Engine Society's brand. As a result, he was cancelled on Twitter. Due to this, combined with the revelation that zMark Anthony had engaged in pedophilic activities behind turtles' back, he decided to take an extended leave of absence from the fandom, which eventually became permanent. The same day, it was announced that the Tank Engine Society had fired him, and later that day it was announced that it would be shut down immediately. Shortly afterwards, he deleted his Twitter account.
Following his swift exit, many other users and colleagues felt able to come forward with their own experiences with him, including Enterprisingengine93, Annie C., Eric Drouin, One Tram Band, TheToadTrain, TheIronEngine, Mavis M, The Buried Truck, Domeless Engine and BertramOldWarrior. Many other users who had felt too scared to come forward also spoke out against him. He was accused of bullying other users, gaslighting, transphobia, ableism, weaponizing his fans to shield himself from criticism of his work, making threats, causing breakdowns, and creating a toxic culture of fear within the fandom. He lost a large number of subscribers due to the accusations, to the extent that he made his subscriber count private.
A few weeks following his departure, turtles accidentally made all of his private videos public. Among these were season 5 of turtles' ERTLs, which was completed but cancelled following his ousting from the fandom.
In January 2022, he deleted his channel.
Turtles on other Wikis[]
- Sudrian Conflict - https://sudrian-conflict.fandom.com/wiki/Turtlesandthomas