Our club bought a new Thomas last month. The kids just love it!
One problem --
It ran backwards of all other largescale locos.
2 other club members had the same problem with their Thomas engines.
The fix was to open them up & reverse the solder connections on the back of the motor circuit board.
Shouldn't have to do this right out of the box!
-- Bill
Sounds like a factory error. Sometimes the wires are attached to the wrong points. I had the same problem with my HO scale James. Seems like a case of quality control screwing up. Could be worse though, these could be Hasbro products.
as to me, but my old lhs used to test every loco before i bought it.