Zach Dundas:

Jowly, dressed in sinister undertaker’s garb, stentorian and bullying, this Topham Hatt commands the railroads. Thus, he rules all of Sodor as a kind of industrial–feudal dominion. (I have recently learned that Topham Hatt also answers to the icy Orwellian sobriquet “The Fat Controller.”) … Certainly, he wields unchecked authority over Thomas and the other trains, enforcing a capricious discipline through verbal abuse, “shunning” and arbitrary changes in work assignment pour encourager les autres.