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Tomy Trains Thomas the Tank Engine Basic Sets
Originally written May 7, 2024Basic Set box added March 1, 2025
Instead of creating two individual pages for these two small Tomy Train sets, they are both covered here.
Tomy Train Thomas the Tank Engine Starter Set (1993)
The #1134 Thomas the Tank Engine Starter Set is a basic oval Tomy Train set in the Thomas the Tank Engine series that includes Thomas and Annie and Clarabel with an oval of track. This set was released in 1993 in TOMY TRAIN style packaging in Europe and in Thomas the Tank Engine Battery Powered Railway packaging in the United States in 1994. It was rereleased as the Thomas the Tank Engine Starter Set in 1996 in the U.K. under the Tomy Trains range. The American and later European boxes can be seen on this page about the set on the TrackMaster Wikia.
Set contents
| Quantity |
Item |
Photo |
|---|---|---|
| 5
pieces |
Thomas with Annie and Clarabel |
 |
| 1 | Driver figure |
 |
| 2 | Straight Rail |
 |
| 8 | Curve Rail |
 |
| 2 | Tree |
 |
| 2 | Stoplight |
 |
The train in this set is, of course, the cheeky tank engine Thomas himself with his two coaches Annie and Clarabel. The chunky Thomas has a nice mix of plastic colors and paint and sticker details and has an open cab where a driver can sit or stand.
The track layout is, of course, very basic, and I suppose it fills the niche of wanting to get into the Tomy Train Thomas system without any other sets (otherwise you could just buy the train pack version of Thomas) or wanting (or being able to afford, or fit) the bigger Deluxe set. The two trees are nice, although the stoplights were always a bit of an odd choice for a rail system... two of the signs from the Road Crossing might have looked better, but its cool that you get two of them either way. A reverser rail and half rail in place of one of the straight rails also would have been neat.
This set remained on sale in the U.S. into early 1997 before being supplanted by the Plarail-based Battery Operated Rail System. In Europe and the U.K. it was rereleased in Tomy Trains packaging in 1996 as simply Thomas the Tank Engine. This version can be seen on the TrackMaster Wikia.
Thomas the Tank Engine Basic Set (1996)
The #1353 Thomas the Tank Engine Basic Set is a very small American Tomy Train Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends Battery Operated Railway system basic set that includes Thomas, one coach, and a circle of track.
You can see that the larger photo of Thomas pulling Clarabel is actually edited from the shot of Thomas pulling Annie and Clarabel used on other boxes - they changed Annie's face and name into Clarabel's but the coach windows do not have Clarabel's guard's compartment. The box shown here is sealed - a few of these sets showed up brand new on eBay in early 2025. All of the components are common, and the set shown below was compiled from my existing collection before buying the set brand new in box, so I have no reason to open it...
Set contents| Quantity |
Item |
Photo |
|---|---|---|
| 3
pieces |
Thomas with Clarabel |
|
| 1 | Driver figure |
|
| 8 | Curve Rail |
|
| 1 | Tree |
|
| 1 | Stoplight |
|
This is a really small and somewhat odd set, coming with Clarabel but not Annie. The opposite was occasionally done on later Asian-market Plarail sets but seldom done on any American Thomas toys, with most sets across all toy ranges in all regions either including neither or both.
The layout is also a very small circle. This was towards the end of the American run of Tomy Train, remaining in the range into 1997. To keep things a little more interesting, here's Thomas running backwards.