North Western Railway

The North Western Railway (abbreviated as NWR) is The Fat Controller's Railway and was first created in 1914 after a government-funded joining of the Island of Sodor's standard gauge (4'8½") railways. The railways involved were the Sodor & Mainland, the Tidmouth, Knapford & Elsbridge Light, and theWellsworth & Suddery Railways. In 1948, it became the "North-Western Region of British Railways", but this term was never used as the railway kept its operating independence. With Privatisation in the early 1990s, it officially became the North Western Railway.

The railway's works are at Crovan's Gate; the NWR's headquarters were at first in Vicarstown, but were relocated, along with the main engines sheds, to Tidmouth in 1925.

The railway's motto is "Nil unquam simile", which, translated from Latin, means "There's nothing quite like it!"