As a new Bachmann Thomas fan over the past year. I have collected all of the Thomas the Tank items in their catalog. both new and discontinued items.
What is missing?
HO Scale Faces for the trains they provide. This must not be popular as they have not done this already but it is mind blowing to me that i cant purchase these. They have over 20+ engines. a face pack for each would be amazing. i do not know how much they would cost but if i paid $20 for face exchange that's over $400 for Bachmann. shoooot even $30 i would snag these. i hope the people are successful and if so then hopefully faces can be looked at.
Even Digital download STL files would be great so your local hobbyist could print out their own faces. i know why they would not do STL files and thats fine but let me buy faces from you.
That much would be insane. It has certainly been discussed, most fans make their own. $25 for a pack of 5 would be more reasonable.
This has been discussed with Doug on Thomas Tuesday Livestreams, the market and interest may be there, but the fact is that the faces on the locomotives are not meant to be removed by the average consumer. There is no designed way to remove them. It is quite easy to damage the products by removing the faces and- depending on the engine- the eyes come out with the face. which makes them incredibly fiddly to refit. There will be no alternate face options unless the loco toolings themselves are updated to accomodate the feature. I recall talking with Doug about this to which he said something along the lines of "we would end up with many broken thomas' in the repairs department."
Niche modifications like this are well covered in the fandom already too. there are many options to purchase STLs or face prints from lots of different individuals. Kato has recently released a thomas face and while I believe its only available in japan, the fan ones are still of higher quality. We are now at the place where scans of actual prop casts exist digitally and for free! https://x.com/thomasmodeller/status/1920301786302177469?s=46
thank you for the reply and informational response.
The way Lionel trains did the faces is something to take note off with them being made of rubber .