Thomas Has a Friend: Toby the Tram

My 1-year old, Ryan, is also into trains. He's a more destructive child though, and seems to enjoy making them crash into each other more than anything else. Nevertheless, after I began making Raymond's Thomas costume, I decided that I needed to make Ryan an equally cool train costume.

Now, lets keep in mind, Ryan just turned 1 in late-August. There's no way he could walk around wearing a box like Raymond. So I really had to get my creative juices flowing. I decided that I would fit a box over one of Ryan's walkers, decorate it like Toby (because he's fairly simple and should be easy to make), and let Ryan push Toby around.

And that's exactly what I did. To be completely honest, there's not really much to tell. I had a moving box that was just barely big enough to fit over our small walker. The box was 16" L x 12 1/2" W x 12 1/2" H. I cut a hole in the box for the handle to fit through and cut the back flap on the box so that it would not hit Ryan's feet while he walked. Then I covered the whole box with, you guessed it, paper tape.

Since Toby is brown, I didn't bother painting the box this time. I drew the lines on Toby's four sides with a black Sharpie. Like Thomas, the designs on Toby's sides were made with construction paper. I designed almost all of Toby's components on my computer and printed them onto the right color paper. I bought a styrofoam rectangle and cut it to a square. I then downloaded a head-on picture of Toby from the Thomas & Friends website, resized it to match my square, then printed out his face. Finally, I wrapped the styrofoam square with this print out just like you'd wrap a Christmas present.

Just like Thomas, I used red construction paper for trim along the bottom of Toby, and created bumpers in the front and back out of cardboard circles spray painted black. Toby's top is simply a light gray piece of construction paper. The whole box was set over Ryan's walker, and that was that. Toby was done!!!

*** Updated SATURDAY, OCTOBER 20, 2012 at 11:08 PM ***

Below are the templates I created when making Toby.

1. 2.

3.

4. 5. 6.

7.

*** Print on white paper unless otherwise stated. ***

1. Face
2. Light
3. Cowcatcher
4. Windows and Doors (print on brown paper)
5. Rails
6. Center Bar (print on brown paper)
7. Side Flap

Please note that the template for the windows/doors wraps around the edge of the box. If I'm not mistaken you'll print 2, flip the image and print the other 2. It's been a while, so I'm not 100% sure. I hope it'll be easy to figure out by comparing the pictures of the final product to the templates.

By the way, I do not seem to have a template for Toby's "7." I must not have saved that file.

Enjoy!

*** Updated SUNDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2012 at 7:55 AM ***

After sleeping on it, I realized that I would have created Toby's "7" in Microsoft Word as WordArt. When you create WordArt you can choose a border thickness and color, and a fill color. The border is red and very thick, and the fill is yellow. Let me know if you have any questions about this.