TrainDad

The Nor­folk South­ern Cor­po­ra­tion is offer­ing a free col­or­ing book to any­one who asks. All you have to do is send an e-mail request­ing one to contactus@nscorp.com. You can see the offer on their web page.

Toby the Train talks about trains and tracks arrives in an official-looking manila enve­lope with the NS logo. That’s a pretty excit­ing thing in itself! Toby the train takes you through pretty stan­dard rail­road PR:

• We do very impor­tant work
• Our work­ers are the best
• Stay safe around trains and tracks
• Don’t play on tracks
• Stop at crossings
• We’re a green company

But our three-year-old is obliv­i­ous to all that — he just knows it has pic­tures of trains, and cross­ing gates… excite­ment on every page!

While you are the Nor­folk South­ern site, it might be worth check­ing their com­pany store. They have a good bit of NS-branded mer­chan­dise at very rea­son­able prices, such as a child’s engi­neer hat for $4.75.

With “grand­par­ents” writ­ten all over it, the Thomas Track Rider set and acces­sories are about the best toys a Thomas fan could get. The ride-on battery-powered toy comes with a 6-foot cir­cle of track. Of course, if you have $250 to spare for the train, you might as well spend a lit­tle extra to get things like the track expan­sion set, Annie and Clara­bel add-on car, and the bridge and cross­ing expan­sion set. Oh, and another site sells a tun­nel and track expan­sion set. Your lit­tle engi­neer dri­ves the train by push­ing a but­ton — a prob­lem for chil­dren that are too lit­tle, since it only dri­ves as long as you hold it in. It also can’t hold up to very wig­gly chil­dren, since they can tip it over or make it jump the tracks. I think it’s ideal for ages 3–5.

Not a big Thomas fan? That’s okay! The man­u­fac­turer, Peg Perego, has made a John Deere train — and it’s much cheaper, to boot — as well as a Santa Fe Express and another Santa Fe Express with caboose. These sets also have a figure-8 expan­sion track set available.

If that’s all too rich for your blood, you can always step back to the Thomas Pop-Up with Annie and Clara­bel for $45 or, if that’s too pricey, just the Thomas Pop-Up by itself for $19.72.

Track­Mas­ter prod­ucts are hit­ting the shelves every­where, and I’m excited at the changes. The prod­uct line is improv­ing in numer­ous ways.

It’s all about track

You can never have too much track! HiT finally got it, and they are fill­ing the need with the Back­pack of Track and the Track Expan­sion Pack. Both are just packed full, lots and lots o’ track. Good stuff!

I noticed that the pack­ag­ing says “requires assem­bly.” Well, duh!

One of the Geo­T­rax advan­tages is their fan­tas­tic sys­tem of ele­vated track, and Track­Mas­ter is try­ing to com­pete. Every track set comes with a num­ber of ris­ers and ele­vated pieces. Unfor­tu­nately, these still use the same sys­tem as the old blue track. It’s not a sta­ble or sturdy as Geo­T­rax and really doesn’t allow for com­plex multi-level designs. Sim­i­larly, they have con­tin­ued to use the same bridge sys­tems — wimpy. Over­all, though, huge improve­ments here.

Remote con­trol

The cen­ter­piece of the Track­Mas­ter makeover is Thomas at Tid­mouth Sheds. This set even gets its own adver­tis­ing video! It’s a beau­ti­ful round­house and turntable, and of course that remote con­trol — they’ve learned some­thing from Geo­T­rax. If this is the future of Thomas toys, I like where it is going.

More rolling stock, bet­ter detail

Numer­ous trucks and track sets are now avail­able. I’m pleased to see both a focus on new rolling stock — these cars are what make up a real train, after all — and on much bet­ter detailing.

Lots of sets for the grandparents

And aunts, uncles, sib­lings… prod­ucts like these are easy gift options, and always hav­ing “one more set” out there to add to the col­lec­tion is good. Track­Mas­ter hits the ground run­ning. The prod­uct line has only been avail­able for a few weeks, but look at what is already available:

• Thomas at Tid­mouth Sheds
• Hard at Work at Brend­ham Docks
• Sodor Lum­ber Yard
• Thomas at the Station
• Sodor Cop­per Mine
• Birth­day Celebration
• Sodor Adven­ture Set

More activ­i­ties, bet­ter prices, and flexibility

Most of those sets con­tain a build­ing or fac­tory that is a good toy by itself; many have func­tion­ing parts that inter­est­ing. These are much more use­ful toys than the old Tomy sets! Sets can be had for as lit­tle as $15, which is bet­ter than past offers. And all sets come with adapters to con­nect them to the old blue track, so you aren’t aban­don­ing your cur­rent system.

All things con­sid­ered, HiT has made some huge steps to close up the gap with Geo­T­rax. They still have some weak­nesses, such as the lousy cou­pling sys­tem, but over­all this is a greatly improved line of products.