Dear polob
The GeoTrax stuff looks like a lot of fun. We might get him a GeoTrax set for his birthday.
Thanks for responding. I sent you a message.
'Tis difficult to become educated in trains, isn't it? Without forums such as these, it'd be a total shot in the dark for me.
--Jaddie
Hello Jaddie,
Your circumstances sound very similar to mine, except that my son has just turned 5. He is a train freak.. who gets it from Dad. Anything and everything Thomas. We've got tons of wooden trains, we've got plenty plenty plenty of the Trackmaster Thomas sets, we've got a Lionel set... and even a G-Scale set for the Christmas Tree. I bought him the Bachmann HO Deluxe Thomas/Annie/Clarabel set last year for his birthday to see how that would go. He did very well with the small nature of HO, for a then 4 year old. So, having seen a Sodor Island HO 4x8 layout that Bachmann built for show purposes I decided that was the route I was going to take. I studied the layout they built here:
Bachmann Trains - Sodor Island Layout
...and started on the journey of building our own Sodor Island.
Long story short is this... The layout is for him (and my daughter), but it is also to help satisfy my model railroading desire. This particular layout and theme was perfect for me because of there reasons:
1. It was Thomas themed.
2. It was a relatively small layout in terms of space.
3. Not too incredibly expensive.
4. It's relatively easy to build, but great because you can adapt it to suit what you want to have.
5. And the really big thing for me is that there are 4 independent loops, which means 4 trains can run at once... meaning less fighting over who gets to drive a train. The Bachmann layout has 3 levels, or 5 loops, but I only went with two, and I changed it some to fit my desires.. and budget.
My Sodor Island Thomas HO Layout
The link above is to my web album which shows my progress on this layout since I started. We're pretty much at the same point now as the last picture, except that I just bought him the Bachmann Salty and Spencer for his birthday. We are very soon going to start adding our scenery details and the exciting thing about that is we get to do that together. I'm going to let them do a good bit of the tree planting and stuff themselves (with supervision). And, it's all hands on. It's also small enough to hold attention for semi-extended periods of time.
I'd be happy to share more details or information if you desire, including track plans and what track (kind and quantities) were used. Just send me a PM on here.
Happy railroading.
Chuck