The best homemade Thomas train videos on YouTube (2024)

Sometimes, when I’m trying to keep the Older Boy distracted — whether waiting for a table at a restaurant or to calm him down at family gatherings — I’ll pull out my iPod Touch and start hunting for kid-friendly YouTube videos.

And often, given my three-year-old son’s love of trains, he’ll ask to see a video of a “steam train” or a “Thomas train”.

It was during one of these hunts about a year ago, while looking for clips fromThomas and Friends, that I discovered a whole subculture of homemade Thomas videos. Basically, folks take their expensive Thomas-branded wooden train sets and use them to create their own Thomas movies, complete with kids’ hands moving the trains around.

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For Thomas traditionalists who don’t like the new computer-animated version and long for the handmade quality of the old shows, these homemade Thomas clips are just what the doctor ordered.

For reasons I’m not entirely clear on, the Older boy adores them.

Maybe because they seem like his own train set coming to life, the homemade Thomas videos on YouTube seem to spark his imagination in a way the show itself doesn’t. Indeed, while the Older Boy has more or less lost interest in the episodes of Thomas and Friends that we have recorded on the PVR, he still often asks to see his favourite homemade Thomas clips on YouTube.

There are lots of people out there making these kids of Thomas videos but unquestionably the best, and most prolific, of the bunch is Steve Sklepowich, whose YouTube channel features more than 15 videos dating back four years with nearly 40 million total views.

Below I’ve pasted some of the Older Boy’s favourite homemade Thomas videos, most of them by Sklepowich. Next week I’ll have another post, based on an email interview with Sklepowich, talking about how he and his son make the videos and his reaction to how popular they’ve become. If you’ve got your own favourite homemade Thomas videos not shown below, please post a comment and let me know.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgC8dHXs0ic&list=FL0FIRkU7CdudD7kisSN2Nkg&index=21&feature=plpp_video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqMT8Buwpho&list=FL0FIRkU7CdudD7kisSN2Nkg&index=1&feature=plpp_video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FqnarEbQgs&list=FL0FIRkU7CdudD7kisSN2Nkg&index=6&feature=plpp_video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdMXgUBb8bM&list=FL0FIRkU7CdudD7kisSN2Nkg&index=9&feature=plpp_video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9pIS6hOL0w&list=FL0FIRkU7CdudD7kisSN2Nkg&index=11&feature=plpp_video

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