I first became acquainted with Thomas the Tank Engine and the new world of wooden toy trains when my first child, Andrew was about 2 1/2 years old. That is when he first started watching the Thomas video series on PBS. I was surprised how quickly he learned all the main toy train characters, their names, colors and numbers. Of course we then had to buy the VHS and DVD copies of the programs which led to buying his first wooden toy train. But he wasn't satisfied with just Thomas; he had to have all the characters and enough wooden tracks to make room-sized railroad layouts to push his line of 20-30 magnetically-coupled trains around on. A train table and a semi-permanent track layout with several tiers and bridges, switches and branch lines were soon added. To tell the truth, I was having as much fun playing with the wooden toy trains as Andrew and got a lot of satisfaction in building as intricate a track layout as I could with the limited amount of pieces I had.
At one point I even bought a huge encyclopedia on the history of trains and railroading. Of course I said it was for Andrew's education. But, Andrew and I spent hours looking at the wonderful color pictures of all the old steam locomotives and comparing them to the wooden toy trains. We wanted to determine what size and model of steam train each little toy was patterned after. I believe we actually matched up quite a few.
I didn't stop with the Thomas line of wooden toy trains though. Their wooden tracks and other accessories are really somewhat expensive. So I looked around and found the Brio line of wooden toy trains. But they were even more expensive than the Thomas brand. I did however find another brand at Toy R Us, Imaginarium, which is less expensive, yet is still compatible to both the Thomas and Brio brands. We also found the generic wooden toy trains and tracks found at Wal-Mart and Target (they only come in big bundles of tracks and wooden trains) were even cheaper. Plus the generic brands were also compatible with the Thomas and Brio line of wooden toy trains.
Well, now my son is six years old and he has moved on to video games, Spiderman and Transformers as his favorite toys. So we've stopped collecting wooden toy trains, the tracks and the accessories. It makes me kind of sad. I miss playing with them. Now the question is: What am I going to do with all the wooden toy trains we've collected? Luckily my 2 1/2 year old daughter, Sara, has taken an interest in Thomas!
Interested in Finding Old Wooden Toy Trains? Check Below
