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Britt Allcroft, the producer who adapted Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends for television, has died. She was 81.

According to Allcroft’s daughter Holly Wright, she died on Wednesday, Dec. 25 in Los Angeles, The New York Times reported.

Allcroft was responsible for bringing Reverend Wilbert Awdry’s books The Railway Series to British TV in 1984 as a children’s show narrated by Ringo Starr. The series ran for 24 seasons through 2021, before the animated series Thomas & Friends: All Engines Go debuted on Netflix. The show also spawned multiple specials and movies, as well as popular toys and merchandise.

In 1979, Allcroft met Awdry while making a documentary about British steam engines. Falling in love with the characters, she brought the book to television then-husband, producer Angus Wright.

Allcroft wrote and directed the 2000 feature adaptation Thomas and the Magic Railroad, which premiered in theaters with a star-studded cast that included Mara Wilson, Alec Baldwin and Peter Fonda.

Britt Allcroft, a British television producer and writer who helped to develop “Thomas & Friends” based on “The Railway Series” books and its characters including Thomas the Tank Engine, died on Dec. 25, 2024. She was 81.

Allcroft’s daughter, Holly Wright, confirmed her death to the New York Times. Director Brannon Carty announced her death on X earlier today, writing: “It is with great sadness that I share with you the passing of Britt Allcroft…Britt was an adoring mother and wife. A visionary producer. She brought so much joy and happiness to people everywhere during her time on Earth.”

Born Hilary Mary Allcroft in 1943, she later changed her name to Britt at the age of 16 as her career in British television expanded.

Hailing from Worthing, England, she served as a producer on a number of British television shows throughout the 1970s. Among her first projects was “Get It-Got-It-Good.” She eventually secured...

While my DVD collection is filled out with used copies of movies from Amazon, and my toy collection comprised largely of vintage treasures found on eBay, I draw the line at previously owned items that I have to actually wear or sit on.  There's just something about secondhand couches that skeeves me out like nothing else, and I'm willing to bet that a woman named Holly Wright is feeling the same way right about now.

Located in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Wright took home a couch found on the side of the road a few months back, which she thoroughly cleaned and placed in her bedroom.  What she didn't notice, at the time, was that a stowaway snake made its home inside the secondhand sofa.

As reported by The Huffington Post, the woman noticed the four-foot-long python hiding out in the coils of the couch last weekend, which finally emerged and soon thereafter died.