Toot! Toot! Its a Thomas Halloween Part 2!

 It took some considerable work through naptimes during the week and a couple of Sunday afternoons, but Thomas is finally finished! Just in time for the debut at the Great Pumpkin Fest nearby in West Chester.

If you missed Part 1, I had the body pieces spray painted and some of the detail pieces created. Next up was adding detail painting to the body. I used regular acrylic paint for Thomas's outlines, boiler stripes, his famous #1, and window outline. After a few coats were applied, I added glow paint over the yellow to add to visibility during the nighttime Trick or Treat.

Back up on the front boiler, it was time to add the smoke stack. To create the stack, I spray painted a veggie can and a solo cup black, then placed the cup down into the can to give the funnel appearance. Afterwards I used some chicken wire that I had from a previous project to sculpt the smoke. Battery operated lights were strung through the wire with the box attached via a black zip tie to the back of the can so that the lights can be turned on and off with ease. Next I draped a fake spiderweb over the wire to form the smoke appearance. I had a bag left over from years ago that is also glow in the dark!

With all the individual pieces complete, the last thing to do was to assemble. Since I plan to use this setup for multiple events and will still need to use the stroller in between, I left the body in three main pieces. Everything that needed to be permanently attached was done so using Gorilla Glue Super Glue Gel, which sets in 10 seconds! The Thomas face was attached to the front of the boiler and the black barrel portion was attached to the blue. The whistle pieces were attached to the main cab. For battery access, I attached the headlamp to the base with a Velcro strip. Once all the glue was dry, my first attempt to connect everything to the stroller with Velcro strips was a failure. The front end is much much heavier than the back and finding large enough contact points for the Velcro in the front was a challenge. The front base of the frame actually hangs out much further than the stroller itself. I managed to get it to stay and snap some pictures, but by morning, it had fallen off. 

Not wanting to waste the money I used to purchase the Velcro, I used the strips already attached to the pieces as reinforcement and poked holes through the middle to slide zip ties to attach to the bars of the stroller.  The front end was still sagging from the weight, so to stabilize, a board was slid under the middle of the base and along the length of the stroller. The board goes under one foot rest and over the other to wedge into place. I didn't get close up pictures of this process because I was in a scramble the morning of the West Chester event to finish in time.

Thomas was the main event, but what's a train without it's engineers? To dress the boys, I used Middle's snazzy dress up apron from his train loving Uncle Cheese. It's a tad big on him, so I needed to pin it on the shoulder straps, but it was perfect, and included all his tools, his train schedule, walkie-talkie, and his engineer ID. The day of the West Chester event was very warm so he wore denim shorts, his Thomas t-shirt, a red bandana and his engineer hat. In the event of colder weather at any of the future events, we can switch out for a long sleeve shirt and jeans. For Little, I ordered a pair of Hickory overalls from OshKosh in a larger size so he's guaranteed to get at least a few wears out of them. A solid color onesie and his bandana bib and he was all set!

Even Momma and Papa got in on the action. Papa R dressed in a denim shirt, jeans, boots, and an engineer hat to round out our group of engineers. And of course, Momma K was the conductor, leading the rag-tag bunch and keeping everything on schedule. Both the conductor hat and Papa R's engineer hat were ordered from Amazon, Papa R used pieces of his clothing, and Momma purchased a black button up vest from a local thrift store.

All the work paid off, our costume got quite the reaction at our first event. We even had some people taking pictures with our train. Middle loved walking around with his bucket and met a few animals at the petting zoo.

We've got a few more events where Middle will get to strut his stuff before the big night of Halloween. All in all, the entire group setup cost less than a two adult store bought costumes, especially since we had a lot of craft supplies already in house. 

Total Purchases:

Spray Paint: $11.36

PVC pipe: $0.78

Battery operated lights: $2.79

Duct Tape: $3.49

Gorilla Glue: $7.27

Glow Paint: $0.97

Bandanas: $2.16

Velcro Strips: $7.97

Touch lights: $4.99

Conductor Hat: $9.95

Engineer Hat: $6.84

Baby overalls: $19

Vest: $5.99

Total Cost for train build plus 4 costumes: $83.56