Web Animation / TRAINS-FORMERS

3 Following

(site here)

The first four episodes features Thomas and his friends battling the forces of evil by transforming into Humongous Mecha with Vector's help. After the fourth episode, however, Farr received a Cease & Desist letter from HiT Entertainment, and was forced to remove them due to copyright violations. That seemed to be the end for the series until Farr found a way around it and created the fifth episode.

Farr has said in his YouTube comments that the series is not over, and that there will be a TrainsFormers 6. However, he has also said that he wants to finish some other projects first. As a 500K subscriber special, the long-awaited TrainsFormers 6, now known as TrainsFormers Reborn, released finally in 2021, and James Farr announced at the end of 2025 what he'd been doing since then...

...and announced TrainsFormers The Game, to release on Steam... when they get it past certification. He eventually found a way, and on the fifth of October, 2025, Super Conductors was announced.

See also The Sky-High City of Steampuff, Farr's other steam-punk children's series which also features a transforming train.

The series contains the following tropes:

• Adaptational Villainy: Lady of all people! Salty and Cranky too!
  • Sir Topham Hatt is revealed to be the big bad in Reborn and the one who is responsible for all Decepticon activity in the series.
• Better than a Bare Bulb: Towards the latter third of the series, this got especially egregious, when the fifth episode is nearly Cut Short by The Fun Police and the sixth has the fact Vector is much older by 2021 be a plot point, with the railyard sealed up by a 'Video Not Found' error icon.
• Big "NO!": In Trains4mers, when Lady sees Rosie and her friends teaming up to take her down, she all but growls "Nooooooo!!!"
• Call-Back: The final battle of Reborn shows Sir Topham Hatt's mech fall into the same exact signal crossing as Megatrain in the first video. Lampshaded by a sign saying Caution: Falling Callbacks.
• Cameo Cluster: Near the end of Reborn, Vector and Opthomas summon the entire Really Useful Crew, for unvoiced cameos, with James Farr later doing a poster depicting the core cast of Thomas & Friends in their TrainsFormers robot modes.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Remember that mysterious villain at the end of Trains4mers? Yeah, he's an Original Character, meaning the Fun Police didn't take him away. So he's still on the loose!
  • Dropped a Bridge on Him: Zig-Zagged during the end of Trains4mers. Thomas came back to kill the evil Lady in his upgraded form but Scrapwave came to destroy him shutting him down before the Fun Police pulled the plug in TrainsFormers 5, he eventually came back again in TrainsFormers Reborn.
• Darker and Edgier: While not that dark, TrainsFormers 3 and Trains4mers are noticeably moodier and start from a darker tone compared to the more straightforward action of the first two episodes, and compared to 5 and Reborn. Trains4mers in particular has Vector and Thomas hauling secret cargo from a military base, only for Bertie to suicide bomb the escort and reveals Track Arachnia/Lady, who then summons Scrapwave...who promptly kills Thomas in a single attack, leaving the story on a cliffhanger.
• Humongous Mecha: Well, duh.
• Ink-Suit Actor: Vector is the creator's son, and is even voiced by him, with his design changing between the fifth episode and Reborn due to time passing.
  • James Farr and his wife Claire appear as themselves in both the first video and Reborn.
• Killer Gorilla: Vector's new Humongous Mecha at the end of TrainsFormers 5.
• Knight of Cerebus: Decastator and Track Arachnia end up being this prior to the story change in TrainsFormers 5. Decastator gives Opthomas a tough time before and after he buffs up with the Samurai Supreme upgrade, even managing to intercept an attack from Supreme's naginata and clock him. It ultimately takes Vector using his steam powered jetpack to redirect the Steam Seekers to defeat Decastator.
• Last-Second Word Swap: A heartwarming example. In the remastered widescreen version of the episodes, Claire Roby's credit changes to Claire Farr, her married name.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: When Vector is cornered by Scrapwave, he finds a giant gorilla robot and uses it to destroy him.
• Original Character: Deconstructed. The lack of original characters ends up being a plot point in TrainsFormers 5, when the Fun Police shut down the in-universe show because Vector wasn't supposed to be using copyrighted material. The only people who are spared from this are Vector himself and Troubletron. It gets deconstructed even further when it turns out that Scrapwave is ALSO an original character because his design isn't obviously based on a pre-existing Thomas character...much to Vector's detriment, since now he has to fight against a very powerful final boss meant to be fought against by all of the Steam Team by himself. Fortunately, Troubletron is able to fill in the gaps and help him to victory.
• Punny Name: When Thomas transforms into his "robot" mode, the name of the form is "OpThomas Prime", a clear reference to Optimus Prime from the original Transfromers franchise with Optimus rhyming with Thomas’s name.
• Rhymes on a Dime: the second, third, and fourth episodes, along with Reborn, have virtually ALL their dialogue written this way.
• Screwed by the Lawyers: Both in real life and In-Universe. TrainsFormers 5 opens up with the Fun Police confiscating the sets and telling Vector that he's been "playing with someone else's toys".
  Vector: But... I love those toys!
  Fun Police: Yeah? Well, they don't love you.
• Shout-Out:
  • Obviously, entire series is a combination of the original Thomas & Friends and Transformers.
  • Opthomas Supreme is designed after the Dino Megazord from Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, complete with its theme song being a riff on that show's theme.
    • His Samurai Supreme upgrade seems to be a combination of the RX-78-2 Gundam from Mobile Suit Gundam mixed with the Samurai Gattai Shinken-Oh/Samurai Megazord from Samurai Sentai Shinkenger/Power Rangers Samurai.
  • In Trainsform3rs, Decastator is designed after Devastator as he appeared in Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen.
  • Track Arachnis (likely intended to be Track Arachnia, but spelled wrong) is based on Blackarachnia from ''Transformers: Beast Wars'' (with her energy siphoning abilities coming from her Animated counterpart).
  • Scrapwave is designed after Shockwave, specifically using the dulled-out colors and red cycloptic eye seen on his designs in Transformers: Dark of the Moon and Transformers: Animated.
  • Rosimus Prime's name is a homage to Rodimus Prime, however her design seems to be a mixture of different mecha designs seen in Mobile Suit Gundam Wing.
  • The intro to Trains4mers was meant to be a deliberate reference to Super 8. Specifically with a train crashing into a countryside and the cargo containing a giant monster of some kind.
  • "Tracks? Where we're going, we don't need tracks!"
  • The whole fact that Vector, when he can't use Opthomas Prime, due to the Fun Police, uses a gorilla robot instead.
• Spider Tank: Lady is one, emphasis on spider.
• Suddenly Voiced: Vector Farr, in the first two episodes, just uses baby talk with Opthomas reacting. Starting from episode 3 however, he actually does his own lines.
• Take That!: "Take that, Michael Bay!"
  • All of TrainsFormers 5 is one of these against HiT Entertainment and their attempt to have the series taken down, with them slyly pointing out that Trouble-Tron and Scrapwave both are original characters, so even if Mattel hadn't stepped in, they'd be able to continue.
  • Reborn also has a couple of good take thats, in that the way Vector proves he's himself is to say that The Fun Police suck and tried to take down the show, then the sheds that Opthomas Prime smashes through have the YouTube symbol for when a video is no longer available.^note Like the entire first four episodes of TrainsFormers.
• Unreadably Fast Text: The Fun Police's warning in the very beginning of TrainsFormers 5.
• Vocal Evolution: Opthomas Supreme's voice initially sounded like it was being pitched down in his debut in episode 2. By Episode 3, he speaks more confidently and in a lighter, more robust voice.