So, how long before we start seeing seeing these on layouts?
Probably not long and that’s okay with me. Anything that introduces kid’s to trains is fine by me.
Someday they will grow up and think about their childhood and will turn to Model Railroading as way to return to a more carefree time.
Brent[C):-)]
Heck of a long time before they show up on MY layout!
I will go one better, never!
However…
I’ll never forget the little ones smiles and looks as they watched Thomas and his two passenger cars run around a modular HO layout at a train show…
I’m glad that club allowed such fun trains to be ran…
So the Isle of Sodar is now in the steam to diesel transition?
What’s next? No more cabeese?
How about a double deck Roundhouse on the layouts…
I thought they had Diesels on the island for a long time - hey, Thomas and friends started in 1984, at least on TV.
Did they even have cabooses on Sodor? If anything, they’d have brake vans (it’s like Britian, except BIgger!)
The books introduced the first diesel on the Island of Sodor back in 1957, and there are several diesel characters.
More about Sodor here (including railroad net schematics) , for those who want to know : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodor_(fictional_island)
Grin,
Stein
I’m not so sure.
Kids are exposed to an endless parade of licensed properties these days, such as Thomas the Tank Engine and these…things. To them, it won’t be remembered as “trains”, but rather just the phase they went through in between Barney and Star Wars. I don’t see a correlation between the Thomas franchise and model railroading, especially now that Thomas has gone CGI.
This isn’t to say that they won’t be nostalgic, but instead of model railroading, they’ll probably just concentrate on the original source material. it’s not hard to find college age kids (especially online) who still obsess over Super Mario, but I doubt it inspired many of them to become plumbers.
The “Thomas the Tank Engine” books were written by Rev. Aubry, an Englishman, beginning right after WW2. After his death, his son began writing some new stories. Sodor is meant to be an island off the coast of Britain, and all the engines, coaches and “wagons” are British. The TV show started in the early-mid eighties, and was produced in Britain.
“Chuggington” is fairly recent new show which as best I can gather is a joint venture between folks from several countries. The human characters generally speak with American accents (there is one Asian character) and the engines are based on real engines from North America, Britain, France and Japan from what I can tell. The track they use appear to be based on Japanese “Tomy” co. plastic track used for battery operated toy trains (the track is blue) and the couplers look to be based on the old Lionel knuckle couplers from the fifties…although the characters say “buckle up” rather than “couple up”.
The main characters are “train-ees”, young engines doing exercises in handling freight and passenger cars, switching, finding their way etc. Most of them are diesels, there are two old steam engines still working. They don’t use cabooses or brake vans on the Chuggington trains.
Well, one possible connection is that parents (and especially Dads) who have a kid that is very enthusiastic about Thomas the tank engine might be tempted into building a model railroad layout.
Which then eventually turns into “Dad’s layout” 
Steps on the way:
Grin,
Stein
Absolutely, any excuses to spend time with the kids down on the floor playing with toy trains and then slowly working up to bigger and better things in a positive manner is good for the hobby. I still have some of my childhood toy trains such as this one that I played with long before we had TV in our home.
Well Stein, I could post an almost identical set of photos!
Instead here are a couple a few years apart!
The wooden trains on the floor, to a Hornby Thomas on the layout were very much stepping stones.
Chugginton has been around for 4 years now. Unless it gets significantly more traction I would think it unlikely that a MRR company would want to license them. Hornby and Bachmann based on past history would be the most likely to do it.
That’s why I posted the question since being upgraded to a Hallmark ornament it will get more exposure and thus maybe a model train will be coming out later if popularity grows from this.
[4:-)]
A handsome son, and some nice looking trains. Good job
,
Stein
My story is a lot like Steins and Simons.
My son was so in to Thomas and all the relatives spoiled him to death and bombarded him with everything Thomas. I eventually set up a 5’ x 10’ sheet of plywood that had been given to me by a sign maker. It sat on saw horses down at his level and he lived around that layout. He had many battery operated engines and he would run around that plywood flipping switches all day. ( We learned early to not place turnouts too far from the edge of the layout ) The plywood was completely jammed with Thomas stuff.
One day when he was a little older he ask if I had Thomas when I was little. I told him I had an electric train that I use to play with. He asked what happened to it. I told him it was in the crawl space. Within a couple of minutes I was making like Indiana Jones battling my way through the lower depths of our abode to retrieve said train set that had not had power coursing through its metal encased workings in over forty years.
Upon opening those old wine boxes that held that “Lone Star Treble O” trainset I thought about how it would be nice if it held forty year old wine instead, but only for a brief moment. I moved on to reading the forty year old newspaper headlines that were found in the box and that stopped the guessing as to when I had put the old set to bed as the dates were staring me in the face.
Thomas was carefully pack into a huge tupperware chest (that now resides in the crawl space) and my old electric train was set up. It also did a good job of covering that large 5’ x 10’ sheet of plywood, however before I set it up, the legs on the sawhorses were raised as my son had grown somewhat since the Thomas empire had been started. Once the rubber bands on the drive were replaced we played and played with that old electric train and the rest is history.
My son is a teenager now and has little interest in model trains at this stage of his life, but along with his sister is very knowledgeable in the history of the CPR and th
Don’t forget to give one of those kids your set someday; he/she like me when I got my Dad’s Marx’s set was a very welcomed gift.
Hello Batman I know that Thomas bug it bit my daughter to. But now she has moved on to other things but comes up to my train room from time to time. This is a pic of her layout it was on the floor for weeks at a time.
Have a nice day Frank
That’s an impressive setup!!! [8D]
Hi Frank.
That brings back memories except we had the wooden one. I was very surprised that you could get operating switches in the wood stuff. Those along with the handful of battery powered engines my son had, made for hours of fun. He also had more of the other push by hand engines, in fact I think he had more engines on his Thomas layout than I’ll ever have on mine. My daughter asked for the Emily engine for her birthday and she spent hours pushing Emily around the layout.
I built risers out of 2" x 2"s and plywood and we had a really long climb up through the Sodor Rockies. My son use to build long trains and add battery operated pushers to the rear. It was all fun.
My daughter takes much more interest in our current empire than my son does. She is always ready to roll up her sleeves and help out.
Here she is painting some of the two billion unpainted figures someone gave me.
Brent[C):-)]