TrainDad

Today our lit­tle guy, Jonathan, turned three years old. The biggest adven­ture cen­tered around “Day Out With Thomas” at the North Car­olina Trans­porta­tion Museum. This event hosted the “real” Thomas — the live steam Porter-conversion brought in from the Strass­burg (In case you don’t know, the major­ity of these events use non-powered ver­sions that rely on local power). I’ve not planned on par­tic­i­pat­ing in one of these events, because the price is crazy for some­thing that you don’t even really get to expe­ri­ence. I mean, if you could actu­ally ride on Thomas him­self, that would be some­thing spe­cial; but rid­ing in a pas­sen­ger car behind Thomas is no dif­fer­ent than rid­ing in the same car behind any other loco­mo­tive. And doing it with 400 other scream­ing tod­dlers isn’t exactly my idea of a “day out” — a day out of my mind, more like it. In any case, a lov­ing uncle bought tick­ets, so there we were.

The ride was about what I expected; Jonathan enjoyed it, though, and I’m glad we had the oppor­tu­nity. We got much more excite­ment out of watch­ing Thomas drive. If you go to one of these events, I rec­om­mend ask­ing right up front where the best view­ing loca­tion is to see Thomas start up. That’s the excit­ing moment, as he belches smoke and steam and the dri­ving wheels slip. We also watched him from above, stand­ing on a bridge. He tooted his tinny Eng­lish whis­tle once as he went under, his engi­neer lean­ing out the win­dow and waving.

One of the things Jonathan enjoyed most was the Norfolk-Southern engine on a side track. They allowed vis­i­tors into the cab, let them sit in the driver’s seat and han­dle the con­trols. With the engine run­ning, it was a great expe­ri­ence to push the throt­tle and hear the diesel roar. And it’s always a delight to blow the horn!

Other high­lights included rides on a “caboose train” and a large HO-scale model rail­road set up by a local club.

Finally, Jonathan received a Geo­T­rax Grand Cen­tral Sta­tion set as a birth­day gift. This is the “expanded set” with extra cars and a DVD. JB was so excited he just didn’t know how to express it. Aero is his new favorite — he asked if he could sleep with Aero tonight.

Lots to talk about over the next few days… notes on Thomas and Geo­t­rax and Track­Mas­ter and more. Stay tuned!

I’m get­ting a lot of inter­est in get­ting Track­mas­ter and Geo­t­rax trains and track to work together. With­out any mod­i­fi­ca­tions, here’s how they work:

• Geo­t­rax trains run eas­ily on both the old blue track and the new brown. They don’t have a trac­tion sur­face (track top), how­ever, so they can’t pull much.
• The wheels on Track­mas­ter cars will fit between the rails on Geo­t­rax track, although they have a very bumpy ride.
• Unfor­tu­nately, the drive wheels on Track­mas­ter engines are a tiny bit too wide to fit between Geo­t­rax rails. That means you can’t run Track­mas­ter engines on Geotrax.

I assume that’s the sticky wicket; I think peo­ple are want­ing to run Thomas on Geo­t­rax, not the other way around.

I’ve been pon­der­ing this for a while, and I don’t have a good solu­tion. There is a cheap Thomas (the $6 Pull-Back) that is approx­i­mately the same size and pro­por­tions as Geo­t­rax trains, but it’s not a sim­ple con­ver­sion to mount the shell on a Geo engine. As Geo­t­rax trains get big­ger, due to adding the gear com­plex­i­ties of reverse and the abil­ity to fit lit­tle peo­ple inside, those pull-back shells seem smaller each day. The trains in the Mail Deliv­ery set have similarly-sized shells: just a bit too small to make an easy con­ver­sion. Does any­one know of a Thomas toy that is a lit­tle big­ger than the pull-backs? For exam­ple, how large is the whistle-and-go Thomas?

You can always put a Track­mas­ter Thomas on the back of a Geo­t­rax gon­dola, then tell the kids that Thomas broke down and Geo has to save him!

Any thoughts? I’d love to develop a sim­ple and inex­pen­sive con­ver­sion that peo­ple could eas­ily do themselves.

My son saw a photo of the Rope ‘N Ride Ranch and imme­di­ately said, “where’s the smokestack?”

Quick to be help­ful, I answered, “It’s right over h… uh… where’s the smokestack?”

That’s right. Geo­t­rax, well known for their great detail (check out the horse­shoe prints on the hill), for­got to put a smoke­stack on this steamer.

This is an engine rem­i­nis­cent of the clas­sic 4–4-0 Amer­i­can. But it doesn’t have a ten­der, either; that only leaves three options.

1. Maybe it’s a sad­dle tanker (just being obvi­ous here, since it has sad­dle tanks on the sides). But a sad­dle tanker needs a smoke­stack, so this really isn’t an option after all.
2. Maybe it’s a “fire­less.” That’s the only kind of steam engine with­out a smoke­stack; it’s just a big tank that would be charged with steam. But then it doesn’t need the sad­dle tanks, so what’s up?
3. Maybe it’s a fake — a gas or diesel or elec­tric engine that just has a steam-like facade built around it. We fre­quently take rides on a sim­i­lar “steam engine” locally. Unlikely, though, since they are plac­ing this in the era of the Old West. The great irony of this pos­si­bil­ity, of course, is that it really is an elec­tric engine made to look like a steam engine.

While I’m whin­ing about picky lit­tle things, I might as well give you one more: the Ama­zon page linked above lists the engine’s name as “Rusty the Steam Engine.” Not quite right: Fisher-Price named it “Old Rust” and even trade­marked the name.

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.