Riding that train Backstage with Sir Topham Hatt BY MEGAN GRUMBLING
	A Day Out With Thomas Maine Narrow Gauge Railroad, 58 Fore Street, Portland | Aug 26-28 | Imagination Station is free; tickets to ride on Thomas are $16 | 207.774.1067

When I met up with my actor friend Keith Anctil at Ruski’s a few months ago, he was drinking a Michelob Ultra. This was for the sake not of swimsuit season, he assured me, but, rather, an upcoming gig. I ran through a mental list of roles that might require emaciation, but as it turned out, Keith would be portraying neither Mick Jagger nor Jesus Christ. No, the beer diet was for the sake of stepping into the shoes — and pants and head — of Sir Topham Hatt, Chairman of the Railway and fast friend of Thomas the Tank Engine.

I have not yet procreated and thus needed a little more information from Keith. Those of you with children have doubtless already encountered Thomas and his friends at the library, on TV, or in toy stores. For the rest of you: Both Thomas and Sir Topham are characters in The Railway Series. Created by the Reverend W. Awdry as stories for his own son, the Railway celebrates its 60th anniversary this year, and Portland is getting in on the party. For one more weekend, the Maine Narrow Gauge Railroad and Portland Yacht Services will host A Day Out with Thomas, a registered trademark and a traveling show that brings Thomas — an actual engine, with the signature blue smiling face, which attaches to the Narrow Gauge train — along with a moon bounce station, temporary train tattoos, and lots of Thomas merchandising. Highlights include appearances by Sir Topham Hatt, and it is Keith (alternating with fellow Portland actor Andrew Shuttleworth) who constitutes the local "Body Talent" inside of Sir Topham.

Paying gigs for actors are notoriously hard to come by, and at $600 for 12 hours over two weekends, this one seemed pretty lucrative to Keith when the emailed call came his way. He was a little tall for their preferences, and 10 pounds too heavy, but it didn’t really matter, since there was no actual audition, anyway, and after a phone chat with Jan Love, the events coordinator at Portland Yacht Services, Keith was in. All he had to do was silently animate the large bulk of Sir Topham, shake hands with the young folk, pose for photos, and uphold the quiet dignity of the Chairman of the Railroad by not doing anything lewd or otherwise out of character.

Actually getting into the character of Sir Topham takes a little doing, but the outfit’s planners provide an illustrated manual and a traveling trainer, while local volunteers found Keith what in the industry is called a "wrangler." Keith’s trainer, event coordinator Tracy Poe, has been working in the big-costume industry for years and on several continents, helping the folks inside Barney and other icons in such incongruous locales as the United Arab Emirates and Costa Rica. As for the wrangler, her charge is to get the talent in and out of the get-up, usher him safely to and from his appearances, and to keep the kids happy and in order. This job fell, on the first day of Keith’s gig, to capable Cape Elizabeth schoolteacher Janet Amberger. She teaches third grade, and so was amply prepared to both herd children and do a lot of zipping.

The Chairman of the Railway is a portly, clean-shaven fellow with the round, sweet visage of a serious little boy. To become him, Keith first steps into the black pant legs, and then Janet slips two pouches over his head to hold cold packs that will help keep him cool. She then helps Keith pull up what the manual calls the "Body Novik," an armature of hoops that look like tent poles, which gives Sir Topham his signature roundish midriff. Foam padding bolsters the internal structure at the shoulders, and the padded sleeves end in fuzzy, fingerless hands. Janet zips all this taut at his back, helps him into his black jacket, and shoe-horns his feet into the tennis shoes velcroed into the heavy, near foot-long, black Sir Topham shoes.

Finally, and most recognizably for the scores of young fans, there is Sir Topham’s pink and benevolent head. Crafted of polymer, it allows for limited vision through two eye holes of fine, scrim-like mesh. There’s a huge blind spot between the eyes, at the bridge of his nose, and essentially no peripheral vision. There is also a battery-powered fan inside Sir Topham’s hat, which wicks heat and moisture away from the talent’s face and out through a mesh panel at the top. To be inside the head of Sir Topham, fan whirring away, reportedly feels a little like being in an MRI tube.

Not surprisingly, Keith can’t move, or see, all that well as Janet finally leads him for the first time out of the dressing room and to his public. That, along with his reception as he steps through the curtains, makes Keith feel rather like a rock star. Cameras flash, and Sir Topham is immediately approached from all sides by dozens of mostly infectiously delighted children in railroad overalls and hats, with tattoos of Thomas on their foreheads, gifts of acorns and Sir Topham-stamped child art in hands. As the kids clutch his hands, hug his belly, or cower three feet away as their parents cajole for a photo, Keith cannot actually see much of the adorable action.

But Wrangler Janet cues him well, and before long Keith has the hang of not just the logistics (nodding, waving, even bending his knees) but the psychology: Frightened kids get a shy wave or a high five; if a kid starts screaming in fear, Keith puts a hand to his own mouth in a cute "Oh, no!" gesture. He gets a few kisses, one boy confides that he’s worn Sir Topham underwear for the occasion, and as the afternoon wears on, Keith makes his way into a couple hundred family archives.

"I know they can’t see my face," Keith confesses after his first session, "but for every picture, I couldn’t help smiling anyway." They say you burn calories every time you smile, so between all the sweat and all the smiling, Keith may just come out of this gig more svelte, and more sanguine, than when he came in. Glamorous? Maybe not, but he sure fills some big shoes.

Megan Grumbling can be reached at mgrumbling@hotmail.com