Plarail TOMY Thomas NEW RELEASES

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the more it looks like painted die-cast metal rather than red plastic?

That was exactly my first thought too Dr Chris but my mind quickly slapped me as it sounds impractical. You would think that it would be a heavy load to pull being so long let alone loading it up with Diecast cars as we have seen pictured before. My mind can't come to terms with that. Imagine if it is metal and someone wanted to have a rake of a few back to back how hard that would be to pull.

From that photo it looks like it was taken at a show like maybe the Plarail Expo or Tokyo Toy Show and the lighting sure makes things shine. Could this be the metal prototype that they use to make the molds for production? It may be such an early sneak peak that production hadn't started yet.