Being a parent and now grandparent that went through the Thomas phase, I understand your issue. The new stuff isn't nearly as nice and fp probably did this as part of a cost reduction.
May I suggest stocking Lego trains? I only say this because, (long story short hopefully).....
Have a son that loved Thomas, we've got bins and bins of the "old" wooden stuff. For some reason we held onto it. Fast forward 20 years, had grandson, loves Thomas, still had our sons setup, bonus. Grandson was out growing Thomas, still had my son's o-gauge set that I had built for him put away in boxes.
Before I invested more time, money and space in resetting up the o gauge trains I wanted to see if it was "worth it". Decided to spend some money and bought a bunch of Lego trains as an intermediate. Find Lego trains are great, most kids love Lego and they can build their own Lego train creation.
Once grandson got the idea down of operating the Lego trains, switches, bluetoothish connectivity he loved it. I decided this was a good gauge to determine if it was worth setting up the "real train".
Best of all, Lego trains are on par, (generally) with Thomas stuff $ wise and found it to be a great stop-gap measure between "baby" kid toys to o gauge setup.
And since it's Lego, the kids can build a Thomas/James/Gordon or Herald the helicopter looking piece.
This may not solve the toddler stage issue for you but........just my 2 cents, (may not be worth that much).
