We had a Thomas the Train Party for my daughters 3rd birthday. She loves Thomas! For the invitations,we used basic card stock. We made the invitation to look like a boarding ticket to the train.  We had a departure time listed with an arrival time. We had the location listed as LBF's Temporary Train Station (as we had the party in our church's dining/commons area). We decorated with items purchased from Oriental Trading Company. We used conductor rubber duckies on each table. We had 2 Lionel Coin Banks at the exit door of the Hall. These were purchased on line by Mother as a gift for my daughters, and i have to say, they were adorable. My daughter wore her Thomas the Engine Bib overalls. As you entered the door, we had a booth set up where tickets and engineer caps were provided. The tickets had a colored picture that said, Day Out with Thomas printed on it.We were able to find this picture on the internet.  The child was then directed to the storage compartment, a gift table set up behind the ticket distributor at the entrance. The child's ticket was stamped at that time. We made Thomas cars for the kids to play with from Egg boxes. My husband painted the boxes, used numbers that were relevant to my daughter, for the engine numbers. Such as 3-since this was her 3rd birthday, 1-since her birthday is in Jan, 05-the year of her birth, and so on. When everyone arrived we headed to the craft room, at entering the room, the children's tickets were again stamped. The kids worked on a Train door hanger purchased from Oriental Trading. They loved it!!  From there, the children were led to a Thomas Tattoo table, where each child picked 2 tattoos and had them applied. Their tickets were once again stamped. The next event, although not Thomas related, is my daughters favorite, Elmo arrived. She had an Elmo 2nd Birthday party, and had expected Elmo to visit. Our local party store had no Thomas related costumes.  The kids played and danced with Elmo and the Thomas boxes that we had made. We had each child's picture made with Elmo. When Elmo left we had everyone go to wash their hands so we could eat. At the  entrance of each bathroom, the tickets were once again punched. The kids loved counting the number of punches they had. We served Railroad food..hot dogs, pretzels, chips. We had a Thomas cake, which was awesome and a cookie cake with a train on top. Of course, while the kids were getting their food, they once again got a ticket punch.  After the traditional happy birthday song with eating, she opened her gifts.  We allowed our daughter to hand out gift bags to each child.  The bags had railroad gum, Thomas stickers, engineer whistles, in each bag. The kids seemed to enjoy themselves. I think they were most fond of the box trains and getting their tickets stamped.