I think as a community we should try to fix this British Steam locomotive on the Illinois Bicentennial Coin. Contact the state, tip when talking to the media they won't care if it is a British locomotive but if you tell them it is TTTE they will probably run with that.

Headline: Illinois Bicentennial Coin causing confusion and delay

A number of people have already met with the state about this. I had a long discussion with the office of the Treasurer and provided a number of suggestions and corrections about a month ago, the day after the design was made public.

They are pretty aware of the issue as they received a number of e-mails and phone calls about the issue. The good news is that they were going to have a professional artist rework the design. The bad news is that the reaction of some people was pretty crude and really turned off some in the office to even including a train.

Bart

It would have been helpful to post a photo, as it took a few minutes to find what you're talking about:
https://i2.wp.com/www.route66news.com/w ... =300%2C292

Add a few more support hoops to the Conestoga wagon while we're at it.

That looks amazingly bad, even if you ignore Thomas. This a high school class project or something? This coin should be filled with quality artwork and details. This looks like clip art found on the web.

That's exactly what a graphics professional friend of mine said. He also stated that the fine lines might not come out too well in stamping and even if they did would be hard to see.

I wouldn't be surprised if it actually was 'designed' with clip art.
I have a degree in graphic design/commercial art (back in the pre-computer days when most stuff was still don't by hand) and my instructor called that, "design by committee" where a bunch of seemingly random elements get shoved together with no real attempt at true design work.
I call it, "10 gallons of idea in a 5-gallon bucket". It's amateur hour when you see something like this, but sadly it's reasonably common.
One word? MEH.