Much like the range in 2013, any vehicle with more than six wheels has a plastic chassis instead of wood. The very first prototype Gordon features no face, no paint, and wheels that are entirely wooden, being held in to the bogies by nails. Unlike the contemporary Motorized and Push Along ranges, the Wooden Railway range uses designs primarily based on the original television series style with a combination of the All Engines Go television series art style. At 25 years, Wooden Railway was the longest-running and most popular Thomas & Friends merchandise line (with ERTL being the second longest-running at 20 years).

Much like the Take Along and original Take-n-Play range, some of the models have altered wheel arrangements due to size constraints. As a result, Nia is depicted as a 2-6-0 much like her All Engines Go redesign, while Gordon, Hiro and Rebecca are depicted as 4-6-0s. In 2007, several Wooden Railway products were recalled by RC2 Corp due to traces of lead in the paint, which posed a poisoning hazard. About 1.5 million products were recalled, although no cases of children being affected were reported. The recalled products included: Bertram's original model depicts him in his proposed tank engine form, with a completely new design. In his TV series appearance, he uses Duke's model with Smudger's face. When he was reintroduced in 2016, he was given a tender, but retained his bunker. Gordon is strong, physically and mentally, so sometimes he seems wise beyond his years. This means he looks out for his friends and does anything possible to help when they get into trouble. Changes [ ]In late 2011, TOMY bought out Learning Curve and as such acquired the rights to the Wooden Railway line. They sold the products previously planned to be released by Learning Curve for early 2012. The products due to be released in late 2012 coinciding with the special Blue Mountain Mystery were cancelled because Learning Curve had only developed the computer generated prototypes, before they were acquired by TOMY. Most of these cancelled releases with the new CGI style models were re-constructed by TOMY and sold under their name and a few others were later released by Fisher-Price. TOMY held the licensing until the end of 2012.

The 2022 Gordon is the first version in the Wooden Railway range to contain the accurate amount of wheels for his tender at six instead of the usual four earlier versions received, as well as the first version to have an accurate dome size. Early 2002 (new larger face, bigger smokebox, wide boiler with stripes, no ledge on rear, new details, shorter dome, funnel hole removed)Being one of the most detailed iterations of the Wooden Railway line, one of the new features for some of the steam engines is their firebox glow reflected in their cab windows and doorways. Fergus' reintroduced model has entirely white wheels despite his original model having the correct red wheels with a white rim. Features Skarloey with Gravel Cars; Gravel Cars are repaints of the Boulder Cars from Rheneas and the Boulder Cars. As of Big World! Big Adventures! The Movie and Big World! Big Adventures!, Gordon is one of the four remaining engines from the Railway Series to be part of the Steam Team, and Gordon and Thomas are the only members of the Steam Team to be the exact same colour.