ThomasNATION Classic Reviews - Fergus Breaks the Rules
October 04, 2025
If you should travel along the Kirk Ronan Branch Line and find yourself at the Sodor Cement Works, then you may just find a little blue railway traction engine by the name of Fergus. And man, it doesn't take long to know what this guy is like. While an engine like Duck will talk endlessly about the Great Western Way, anyone who does know that it's about common sense. An engine like Fergus on the other hand knows the railway rulebook by heart, and he makes sure that the others follow them with his catchphrase "do it right". His insistence on doing everything absolutely according to the rules can annoy the other engines, and I can kind of see where they are all coming from since it does come across as dangerous perfectionism where he never approves of anyone's work but his own. But under all that dust and his chronic cough, Fergus is still a decent engine at heart and will not hesitate to help other engines in trouble while also being friendly to nearly everyone he meets albeit being suspicious of diesels whom he considers as "new-fangled" according to the Thomas and Friends Writers' Bible. But in this week's review as we bring Fergus' short-lived time in the original Thomas & Friends series to a close, let's see what happens on the day that Diesel came to cause trouble at the Cement Works as "Fergus Breaks the Rules"!
FERGUS BREAKS THE RULES: Fergus has to work with Diesel, who later tricks him into going to the smelter's. After Fergus ends up breaking the rules for the very first time, Thomas is sent to search for his friend.
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Now, before we get into the actual episode itself, I want to bring up something from my previous review of "Bill, Ben and Fergus" in order to help you remember as to why Fergus never appeared again in the series following this episode. Back in "Bill, Ben and Fergus", the model prop used for Fergus was damaged in the landslide scene even knowing the fact that they had planned to give him a dented funnel to use for his damage which sadly ended up going unused when production started. Now, the model can thankfully still run, but the flywheel no longer turned after this which may be why the character was sadly dropped after Season 7 even though it looked like he was considered to make a return in the HiT Era going off of reference sheet photos. Heck, the former series railway consultant Sam Wilkinson did say in a 2015 interview with Sodor Island Fansite had expressed his interest to reintroduce Fergus into the CGI Series. However, this never came to fruition thus making the little railway traction engine one of the many characters who fell into the void and are honestly forgotten about by the general public these days, and I guess it's up to the fandom to make that switch to CGI for Fergus possible in their own online content now. To whoever the new owners are of Fergus' Gauge 1 model with his ten faces used or unused as well as his close-up model from the results of this year's Propstore online charity auction done to celebrate the eightieth anniversary of Thomas & Friends, I congratulate you guys on winning them and hope you take very good care of these pieces of television history.
Now that I've got you all up to speed, let's talk about "Fergus Breaks the Rules" and apart from having to take a shot every time the words "cement works" are mentioned in this episode which I don't recommend doing yet I know there will be several people in the fandom who would do this anyway, I just straight-up do not understand this episode at all. Answer me this, what rule did Fergus even break exactly? The fact that he left the job at a place that he technically was not even supposed to be...what? You know, these characters really have a bad habit of not asking especially when Fergus' crew was literally right there when they heard this bulls--t story and they didn't think to confirm this with Sir Topham Hatt if they knew ahead of time that Diesel causes trouble. I think it could've been better if it were Diesel who was the one to find Fergus as punishment for tricking him to make Fergus leave the cement works. Thomas can still be in the episode, but there are ways of using the face of your franchise without feeling the need to constantly shove him in our faces especially if he ends up adding nothing to the overall story. And to wrap things up with one final nitpick, that camera zoom in on Sir Topham Hatt at the end of the episode. What was that, what was it there for? Maybe one day, we'll find out whether or not that was an outtake that had gotten snuck into the final version of the episode kind of like how the restored versions of the first three seasons turned out.
So, overall, while I do think that "Fergus Breaks the Rules" is an okay watch, it's just not that good an episode looking back on it - and it really is a shame that this is the note that Fergus went out on as there was potential for him to be paired up with other characters in the franchise as the fandom has shown multiple times whether it's with Duck in comparing common sense with perfectionism or with D199 (a.k.a. Spamcan) in proving the usefulness of fog detonators. But for now, it's sadly back to the void of forgotten Thomas & Friends characters again for our railway traction engine who ran away as we give Fergus a "toot-toot, farewell, goodbye" and while I give "Fergus Breaks the Rules"...or "Thomas and the Search for Fergus", whichever you prefer to call it, a rating of a 2.5/5.
Final Rating: 2.5/5
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