Customer Reviews

Thomas And Friends Wooden Railway - Battery Powered Thomas

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

This metal battery operated Thomas engine and his metal battery operated companions (Percy, Lady, etc.) are for use with the wooden track. There are larger plastic battery operated engines that fit both the wooden track and the blue plastic track by Tomy.

This is a great product. Very well-constructed. Very durable. It can be switched on, go forward or backward, and it can be pushed manually--another reviewer complained that it could not be pushed, but it can be pushed.

Purchasing recommendation:
* Wait until appropriate age: Our son started with Thomas when he was 18 months old, but we did not buy any battery engines until he was 3. We wanted for him to use his imagination in pushing and pulling for a while. Now he sometimes sits back and just watches the battery engines, while at other times he pushes them.

* The metal engines are more durable: The metal engines cost more than the larger plastic battery-operated engines, but they are far more durable. They feel solid in the hand. They go both forward and backwards, while the plastic engines only go forward. They pull the wooden cars that your child may already have. They're just a better fit!

My son was initially thrilled to get this addition to his figure eight set, but once the novelty wore off, it seemed like more aggrevation that it was worth. For starters, once he saw battery operated Thomas do his thing, my son no longer wished to push the trains around the track himself. The durability is not great - we are about to return our second to Learning Curve. The second was even worse than the first - after only a few turns around the track it would not go up ascending track even by itself. This would frustrate my son considerably. The noise it creates is also considerable for such a small toy. Again, the second was worst than the first. We adore all our other pieces but my recommendation would be to skip this one and let your children push their own toys! --Update - We are about to send back Thomas for the third time. My son has grown tired of his always broken battery operated Thomas and has gone back to pushing his own trains.

Apparently one cannot have enough Thomases : -)

We have metal Thomas, plastic small Thomas, plastic large Thomas, and even wooden Thomas and now battery powered Thomas and each was a welcome member of the family.

We like them because each has a realm of play and each goes in and out of favor while all remain loved. Each one of them (with perhaps the exception of the wooden Thomas who has lost a good portion of his paint-LOL) has been a rugged little engine.

Battery-powered Thomas is no exception. He has braved sand and soil and continued to run for hours on end without a break and never once has he been less than a most useful engine.

Being pushed manually does not seem to bother him; nor does being stuck in a corner churning away for hours at a time.

A great purchase for the 3 and above set.

Note: it is helpful to have a small screwdriver handy. A fingernail file doesn't work all that well.

Pam T~

It's Christmas Day, and believe me, the only thing that would get me to sit down at a computer is the level of dissatisfaction I've had with the Thomas battery powered engines. These trains derail constantly. I think it is because all four wheels have power, and the front wheels have too much traction, so they are able to climb out of the grooves. Took me all night to set up a really cool track, and they derail every 40 seconds or so. Read: 3 year old yelling at train. Thank goodness I also bought a Brio battery powered engine as well (the Polar Express one). It works much better. It has not derailed once all morning. It also is better in the following ways: 1) It shuts off after 2 minutes so you don't lose battery power, 2) it can go into freewheel mode when you want to use it without power, 3) it goes in reverse, 4) it makes train sounds, 5) the coupling to other cars has a swivel which means it is less likely to derail and more likely to maintain the magnetic connection, 6) it comes with batteries installed. If "Santa Claus" had not disposed of all the packaging last night, I would return all the battery operated Thomas Trains and go with Brio ones. Note: there is a good thomas battery powered car which is the jet engine. This jet engine has the swivel, and seems not to derail, maybe because it pushes the other cars in front of it.

PROS:
- Very powerful, can pull a long chain of trains on a wooden track (or take it off-track to watch it pull a train across the house on smooth floors)
- Moves relatively slow, but not too slow (slow enough that it's not racing around the track and derailing, but not so slow that it's sluggish)
- Runs on a single AA battery
- Grippy rubber-lined wheels
- 4-wheel pulling (the two front and two rear)
- Center wheels lift up and out of the way around tight turns
- Strong die-cast metal housing lasts long with rough play (kind of like a matchbox car)
- Heavy weight helps give it good traction to pull trains
- Gears disengage when not turned on (so kids can push it along the track without breaking the gears)

CONS:
- Stupid battery-draining incandescent light that's too weak to see, but drains the battery quickly (I cut mine off; see below)
- No auto-shut-off (on the model I have), so the battery dies quickly after a child lets it run into an object and never turns it off
- No visible indication for when it's turned on other than a slightly depressed power button (the black patch on top of the train)
- Motor brushes wear out sooner than I'd expect (see below)

I bought this train here on Amazon on March 1, 2010 (~19 months ago) for my 2.5-year-old kids. They loved it and have played with it often. It has survived many droppings, slobber, being left running against a wall, tossed in toy boxes, etc. The train is unbelievably strong -- I've had it pull about 10 other cars around a track and up ramps with no hesitation. It's heavy and has grippy rubber-lined wheels, so it doesn't slip. My kids play with this train both on and off the track; sometimes they just put a long train to run across the whole house on the floor. My kids have played with this often and it has caused me to stock up on AA batteries.

The things I don't like is that it has a stupid lamp in the front that isn't even noticeable, but drawn a lot of battery power (kind of like running a small flashlight in addition to the motor). Battery life increased substantially after I made a small incision above the front-right wheel to cut the red power wire for the light (used a Dremmel with a cut-off wheel to carefully cut through the housing and snip the wire).

Another thing is that it doesn't have an automatic off feature (or at least the version I have doesn't). So, often a brand new battery would go dead in a day because one of the kids left the train running after it smashed into a wall or other obstacle. The product description now indicates that it has an auto-off -- I hope that's the case.

The train's motor and gearbox is sealed using two triangular head screws, making it very difficult to open (if you want to try to make repairs). I got past this by using the Dremmel cut-off wheel to notch a flat head into the screws. I did this recently because after 19 months of abuse, the engine seems to be running sluggishly and batteries don't last. I figured the motor needed a little tune-up, so I disassembled it. I found that the brushes on the motor had worn out pretty badly and could not be feasibly replaced. I helped it a little, but it still runs like it's "tired".

So, I've just added a replacement train to my shopping cart! Yup -- this train was so worth the money that I'm getting a replacement for the old worn-out one my kids love.


UPDATE ON 10/10/2011:
The train DOES NOT have an automatic shut-off feature, as the Product Description claims it does (see the description from the manufacturer).

The new train I ordered is running GREAT (after I cut-off the battery-draining lamp); the train it replaces really was worn down from too much play. =-)

First off, the kids loved it. They love thomas, and a battery powered version was even better for them.

That's the only positive thing about this product. The engine does NOT go forward and backwards as other reviews have said. They must have been thinking of a different version of the product (mine was all metal, and matched the picture exactly). See the single black button which is the roof of the engine? You can turn it on or off with this button, and it only goes forward. There is a black dot on the back which looks like a button, but that is just a knob to hold the cover of the engine in place. The engine frequently runs off of the wooden tracks designed for the engine (the wheels are coated in rubber for traction, but they sometimes grab the side of the track and hop over the edge). It can be pushed without a battery, and apparently doesn't harm the engine, but it makes a horrible clicking sound, and doesn't push easily. The worst thing is that it will often get "stuck", where the headlight will come on, but the wheels won't turn. It gets stuck fairly easily, often just from bumping into a wall. When it gets to this state, you have to roll the wheels forward and backwards quickly to get it "unstuck", but if left that way (as the kids often do), the battery will drain very quickly.

I bought this toy for my son who loves the "Thomas" toys. You need one battery to operate the train and it seems to work well - it can pull other cars quite weel and climb up and down the tracks. However, what I was not happy with was the advertizing on the box - which clearly stated that the toy can be also be pushed manually by the child. THIS IS NOT TRUE (unless I had two faulty trains)!! My son likes to watch the train pull the cars on its own, but he also like to the the pushing himself. You are not able to do that with this train. It is just meant for watching.

I first purchased this train for my son when he was 14 months old (a little over a year ago). During this phase, he was in the process of transitioning from crawling to walking. This train was a blast! Thomas (yeh, that's what got me to buy the trains in the first place) went nuts over the train. He followed it everywhere. We never bothered with the tracks back then since he just caught the train and tried to eat it. It's a great thing the train is too big to swallow.

Well since that time, our Thomas the Train collection has grown a great deal. Here in Europe (where Amazon refuses to ship Thomas trains) I pay a premium of nearly 50% extra for the tracks and trains, but it is worth it. We have bridges and tunnels and elevated tracks. Yesterday evening, Thomas and I setup a track with all the features and we let battery Thomas and battery Percy chase each other around.

My Thomas is still extremely interactive with the trains. He likes to hold the trains as they go around the tracks. When he holds a rear car and the engine pulls away, he jumps up and down and cries so hard out of frustration that he seems like he's screaming for ice cream when he can't have it. This is forcing him to attempt many different methods of trying to reattach the trains together. For the moment, he has a very low success rate of reattachment since he doesn't like to turn the engine off to do it, but he is learning.

I recommend this toy highly for children of all ages. My daughter is now 9 months old and received her first Thomas train car to play with, it's the Sodor Cargo Car and she's chewing away on it. I believe she'll be a huge Thomas the Train fan soon.

As others eluded to, it states that you can switch into a freewheeling mode, but even following the directions on the Learning Curve website's FAQ page, 2 of these did not work. I returned the first one after speaking with Learning Curve. They told me that if it won't freewheel, then it is defective and to return it. Replacement unit did the same thing, click every time I push it.

Some off-brand wooden track also is not very compatible with this train. I had some Imaginarium track, and the grooves in the track are about a millimeter narrower than the Thomas and Brio track. Battery-Powered Thomas doesn't quite fit with all wheels in the grooves, so it derails on this track constantly.

I have had pretty good luck eliminating other derailments of this train (with Brio and Thomas track) by using SureTrack clips on areas of my layouts that tend to not stay very straight. These clips are pricey, but they help avoid a lot of frustration when a toddler is destroying the track layouts with every other push of a train. I bought 1 box, which is enough to keep key pieces aligned on most layouts.

Overall, it has been fun for the few days we have had it, but I am very disappointed that it won't enter free-wheeling mode. I guess I will have to buy the wooden Thomas now as well.

Broke down very quickly, because it is not possible to push it, the gears are engaged and when the power is switched off and pushed it grinds the gears. Some it started getting jammed very quickly, it would take a lot of hassle to get it going on its own again. I guarantee this will break very quickly, unless you do not let your kid play with it.