Books with title Thomas and the Freight Train

Thomas and the Brain is a tale of two friends, Thomas Dubois and Kevin Daniels, nicknamed The Brain because he is the smartest boy in the school. Thomas is a dreamer who reads too many comic books and believes in space aliens with deadly ray guns. It turns out some of the people around him actually are aliens. His father is not really his father but a Trell, a galactic policeman. (Thomas’s human father vanished when he was a baby) The Brain is an alien plant life who lives on earth with his father in order to arrange a peaceful invasion of plant creatures called Dibbers. Since the aliens are trying to blend in, space ships are disguised, sometimes as houses, sometimes as waste dumpsters. The Brain’s house is a spaceship. Thomas discovers this when he is accidently in it as Mr Daniels suddenly takes off to the Moon to meet the Dibbers High Command, led by a creature so old he is nicknamed the Twig. There they find human pensioners working in an allotment to produce seeds for the invasion. When Thomas’s mother finds out he is missing she persuades his stepfather to take off after her son. They all meet on the Moon and are joined by the very odd Mrs. Waterfall, who may be an old aged pensioner or a goddess, or something in-between! The Trell has the ability to send species through a portal into other worlds where they are not a threat to others and, so he claims, must be happier. He decides to remove the Dibbers on the Moon who are a threat to humans and sends them through a portal by means of music. The Brain, being a Dibber, is dispatched and Thomas loses his friend. Mrs. Dubois tells Thomas that his stepfather sent his real human father through a portal by mistake years ago and has been pretending to be married to her in atonement. Thomas persuades The Trell to help them all through portals to rescue The Brain and maybe find his real father. Mrs. Waterfall joins the group. As the story progresses her true nature is revealed. The worlds in which they find themselves include a Dibber landscape where the plant people are happy doing nothing and the home world of the Devola, a race so beautiful they judge everyone by appearance and look down on anyone who does not measure up. The Brain falls helplessly in love with a rude Devola called Ceresa. The adventurers find and lose The Brain. They find and rescue Mr. Dubois. Thomas and Mrs. Waterfall singlehanded prevent the invasion. His family returns to earth. In the search to find his friend and real dad, Thomas learns how to use his wits and imagination he did not know he had, to trust friendship and to judge people by their deeds not appearance.