Thomas and the Magic Railroad unfortunately failed as a movie because it wasn't a story centered around the actual Thomas engine characters like one would expect an actual Thomas movie to be. It was instead centered around a bunch of human characters that had very little to do with Thomas and the plot with the human characters was confusing. Shining Time Station was basically filler to fill the 30 minute time slot on American TV for the actual Thomas episodes were only 5 minutes long. Kids only watched STS for the Thomas episodes and STS stopped being in production since 1995 and by then, kids mainly watched Thomas through VHS tapes, some kids never even saw STS, especially the UK audiences, that's another big problem with the movie, UK audiences never knew what STS was and accused Britt Allcroft of 'Americanizing' Thomas. When original cut of the movie was shown to test audiences, it was mostly footage of human characters and not the engine characters, what the kids actually came to see in the movie, all that human footage just bored them. The plot with the human characters was also confusing. The only way there could've been an idea Thomas movie if the whole plot line of human characters was completely gotten rid of and there was a plot line of an actual story centered around the engines, you like every other episode of Thomas.
