A tin toy, or tin lithograph toy, is a mechanical toy made out of tinplate and colorfully painted by chromolithography to resemble primarily a character or vehicle.

History
Tinplate was used in the manufacture of toys beginning in the mid-19th century. The toys were made from thin sheets of steel plated with tin, hence the name tinplate. They were a cheap and durable substitute for wooden toys. The toys were originally assembled and painted by hand. Spring activated tin toys originated in Germany in the 1850s. In the late 1880s offset lithography was used to print designs on tinplate. After the colorful designs were printed on the metal, they were formed by dies and assembled with small tabs. The lightweight of the toys allowed them to be shipped less expensively and easier than the heavier cast iron toys.

Germany was the major producer of tin toys in the world in the early 20th century. The most famous German manufacturer of tin toys was Ernst Paul Lehmann who is said to have exported 90% of his toys. France and England joined the fray and it wasn't long before hundreds of thousands of these tin toys were being manufactured.
 
A clicker toy made of tinProduction of tin toys in the United States started earlier, but began in earnest when tin ore mines were opened in Illinois providing easily available and cheap raw materials. A number of manufactures scrambled to catch up in the beginning of the 20th century, but it wasn't until after World War I, with anti-German sentiment high, that they began to make real gains. There was a growing demand for American produced products and by the 1920s American firms had overtaken the competition. The largest and most successful firm from the 1920s to the 1960s was Louis Marx and Company. Marx produced a huge number of designs and depended on large sales volumes to keep prices down.

Aircraft carrier, cruise ship, and submarine made of tinThe production of tin toys was discontinued during World War II because of the need for raw materials in the war effort. After the war, tin toys were produced in large numbers in Japan. Under occupation and the Marshall Plan, manufacturers in Japan were granted the right to resume production. The idea was to give Japan all of the low profit; high labor manufacturing and the US companies could sell the imported product. It worked better than they had expected and Japan became a tin toy manufacturing force until the end of the 1950s. In the 1960s cheaper plastic and new government safety regulations ended the reign of tin toys. Presently, China has taken over the role of the leading tin toy manufacturing country.

Tin toy robots
Tin toy robots are a highly collectable type of tin toy. Classics like the Mr Atomic Robot, and Robby the Robot from the movie Forbidden Planet can sell for several thousand dollars.

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A locomotive (from lat. loco motivus) is a railway vehicle that provides the motive power for a train, and has no payload capacity of its own; its sole purpose is to move the train along the tracks. In contrast, many trains feature self-propelled payload-carrying vehicles; these are not normally considered locomotives, and may be referred to as multiple units or railcars; the use of these self-propelled vehicles is increasingly common for passenger trains, but very rare for freight (see however CargoSprinter). Vehicles which provide the motive power to haul an unpowered train, but are not generally considered locomotives because they have payload space or are rarely detached from their trains, are known as power cars.

Traditionally, locomotives haul (pull) their trains. Increasingly common these days in local passenger service is push-pull operation, where a locomotive pulls the train in one direction and pushes it in the other, and is therefore optionally controlled from a control cab at the opposite end of the train. This is especially true of "High Speed Rail lines", such as the Japan’s Shinkansen and France’s TGV trains.

Origins
The first successful locomotives were built by Cornish inventor Richard Trevithick. In 1804 his unnamed locomotive hauled a train along the tramway of the Penydarren ironworks, near Merthyr Tydfil in Wales. Although the locomotive hauled a train of 10 tons of iron and 70 passengers in five wagons over nine miles it was too heavy for the cast iron rails used at the time. The locomotive only ran three journeys before it was abandoned.

In 1813, George Stephenson persuaded the manager of the Killingworth colliery where he worked to allow him to build a steam-powered machine. He built the Blucher, the first successful flanged-wheel adhesion locomotive. The flanges enabled the trains to run on top of the rails instead of in sunken tracks. This greatly simplified construction of switches (called "points" in UK) and rails, and opened the way to the modern railroad.