Breaking it Down: Thomas Toys!

Eighteen months ago, drowning in a basement flooded with trains and trying to keep my toddler boys entertained, I wrote an email to a close friend and fellow mom asking for HELP with all things Thomas the Tank Engine. Her response was thorough and useful and became the jumping-off point for me to figure out how to manage this phenomenon in my own household. Here’s are the highlights of what I’ve learned:

1. If you want to build an expansive train and track collection, go WOODEN ONLY! (You'll see our rationale in a minute.)

Tracks:

All the wooden train tracks from different brands fit together--some better than others, but they are all at least sufficiently compatible! This makes it so easy to add to your collection relatively cheaply, and as long as grandparents and other present-givers know to seek out wooden tracks, they don't have to worry about finding specific brands. Wooden train tracks are easy to spot, of course, but here are some images to give you a picture of what to look for:

Conductor Carl 100-Piece Set

Thomas & Friends 5-in-1 Layout Pack

Brio Beginner’s Expansion Pack

Melissa & Doug Swivel Bridge Train Set

You can see by clicking through the links that the price points DO vary, and buying cheaper (wooden!) tracks is a good place to save money unless you’re a stickler for tracks that fit together perfectly. (In that case, you just need to make sure you’re loyal to one brand.)

Trains:

I’m sorry to say that this is where things get trickier. If you're building a wooden collection, you still need to go all-wood and look for trains that say “Wooden Railway,” like this:

James from Learning Curve’s Wooden Railway

James from Fisher Price’s Wooden Railway

Trains that DO NOT fit on wooden tracks look like this:

Take Along Thomas or Take-n-Play trains like the Thomas pictured above are metal or plastic and have smaller wheels...that don’t fit into the grooves of the wooden tracks. They do work with the corresponding plastic tracks, so the Take Along/Take-n-Play series is a great choice if you're seeking a cheaper, more self-contained train set. The tracks are also expandable--but only with other plastic tracks. The benefit to these is that you can find them at a ridiculously steep discount at stores like TJ Maxx.

Early Engineers Thomas trains are wooden, larger-bodied versions, supposedly for younger kids with smaller hands. While they do fit on the wooden tracks, they tend to look awkward once you’ve built up your stash of standard-sized trains. (Also, their bigger, more exaggerated kabuki faces? Not my favorite.)


2. If you want to get fancy with your train sets, expand with the Talking Railway collection.

Seeing a friend’s Talking Railway set put my older son over the edge into full-on Thomas worship. Check it out:

Great Discovery Set

Sir Topham Hatt and various station masters recognize and greet the Talking Railway trains that look like this (notice the gold-not-silver connector magnets):

 

Talking Railway Thomas

These trains work fine on all wooden tracks, so you can just buy individual Talking Railway pieces to intermix with your non-talking (and non-painfully-expensive...) track collection. And yes, you guessed the downside--these sets are the pricey ones.

Other funky buying options are motorized trains that move on their own, light-up cars and Pull-n-Zoom versions--notice that the first two are Wooden Railway trains while the last is compatible with Take-n-Play system.

3. If you’re looking for the holy grail of train tables...there isn’t one. (But there are some good options.)

When you’re starting out and want a place to set up tracks, store trains, and centralize your kid’s play, use a tester table. You can buy a pretty cheap one on Craigslist; some kids lose interest in trains too quickly to scratch up their tables, so a KidKraft like the one below is often being resold for $25-50 even though it's in great condition. (I've found that generally it's ONLY the table itself being sold, accounting for some of the price drop--still, that's a serious steal!)

You can also just use a kid's-height table you have on hand, since the kids aren't all that interested in the painted-on tabletop scenery anyway. We used a Pottery Barn Kids Carolina table we'd bought on clearance as a floor model. The downside is that those standard tables lack both a lip around the circumference to keep trains from falling and any storage capabilities for your extras. To solve the latter problem, we used a set of Rubbermaid drawers already in our possession and turned two of the drawers into train and track repositories. It was frankly easier than having to get out of the way to access an under-table storage drawer, and now that we're past the train-table era, we still have the same storage system for those beloved tracks and trains.

However, if your kid has developed Thomas mania, you've invested in the Talking Railway and a plethora of wooden tracks, and you're ready for a worthy table, you might invest in something like this:

Modern Tots Play Table

There are so many things going for this table: no picture on top to limit set-up options, a non-toxic natural wood finish, a solid lip to keep trains on track (so to speak!) and a nice, large surface for lots of building. AND, you can always convert a table like this into Lego Heaven once train play is in the rearview mirror. (Don't worry, we'll launch into Lego collecting another time!)

4. Keep your collection focused!

Once the boys were heavily into Thomas, I couldn't help but notice Thomas-related paraphernalia EVERYWHERE. Somewhere in that year, they became proud disinterested owners of various plush Thomases, bubble-blowing Thomases, Thomas whistles...I couldn't help myself! And although I'm a sucker for books, the fifty-page, small-font paperbacks killed just enough brain cells that after the thousandth reading I can, no exaggeration, compose entire emails in my head while reading aloud to my kids.

My best recommendation is to indulge your Thomas aficionado with a couple of those monotonous (albeit cheap) (especially per word!) books:

and then grab a bunch of the early reader editions:

They're shorter, and thinking longer-term, your kid can still benefit from them when she's learning to read by revisiting some familiar stories and characters.

The boys have gotten a bit of enjoyment out of sticker books like this, although they'd be even more useful for sit-down-and-craft kids:

The Thomas whistle and musical Gordon? Those are long since forgotten and donated. But the books will be fun for a good while--if you don't trash recycle them in a fit of rage organization one day, of course.

Good luck on your Thomas toy journey, and may your home be filled with the dulcet tones of Very Useful Engines for as long as you can endure it!