info on collecting thomas needed

i know there are many different makers of thomas trains. I am thinking of collecting the non train vehicles eg patrick bulgy ect. what i would like to know is did all different makers do a version of these or where they only in certain series. also any recomdations on what series is the best to go with thanks

All the series are great. It really depends on how much you are willing to spend. Generally speaking any character made from wood is the most expensive. I personally prefer the Tomy/Trackmaster series as most of them move under their own power using batteries.

There's no toy company out there which has had a toy range that has made every character ever. I believe when it comes to road vehicles, the Wooden Railway range is the best bet as they've been around the longest so there's more variety. That just means it would be harder to find some characters more than others. The TrackMaster range is quite good for the Sodor Construction Company vehicles specifically but Wooden Railway has caught up with making a lot of those characters.

the trackmaster vehicles can be quite hard to find for a decent price as they were limited in release. characters like alfie which command several hundred each make it a daunting prospect. they are mostly unpowered, and essentially havent been around since the HIT days.

the battery tomy vehicles are cheaper, as they had a much longer run and wider release. tomy made bulgy [red and green], bertie, lorry and elizabeth, plus terence who was in one set. they also made unpowered trevor, caroline and terence

my friend has an HO scale island of sodor layout and uses the take along/take n play diecast vehicles. means he also has the fat and thin controllers.

[Ucwepn]

I would go with wooden as mentioned above it probably has the biggest variety of characters due to a long continuous manufacturing run under various ownerships.

I just reminded myself that the Ertl Company's die-cast range made quite a few background vehicles if they take your fancy, such as the Sodor Soft Side Truck, a Quarry Crane, Sodor Taxi, and the Canal Boat. Of course if you want to look for them, you'd have to do a lot of eBay and second hand shop scouring.