Train set for a 7 year old

[Tiredsahm84]

Ds loves trains still and has asked for a train set

Ideally nothing to £ as unsure if he'll outgrow it soon

He had a wooden one but gave it to his cousin and he said it was too young for him now

What about a Lego one? Ds liked his set a lot.

Yes to a Lego one. Ds2 is 9 and has asked for the Lego RC Train this year. We’ve got him extra tracks to go with it.

I'm not sure on the Lego one, he gets really frustrated with building Lego models as his fine motor skills aren't quite there yet

The Ikea one is simple but can add extra track and buy other non branded accessories to go with it

When my son outgrew the brio style wooden track, we bought him Thomas Trackmaster as the trains are motorised and i’d Heard good things about it. However, the stuff we bought in the shops was absolutely shit. You only had to look at it and the track fell apart and the trains fell off the track. I couldn’t understand why people thought they were great. But after a little digging, turns out the old style Thomas Trackmaster was absolutely fab and robust to boot, but ‘they’ changed the design and gave it a rebrand- but they changed it for the worse. You can’t buy the old style in the shops any more so
I went on eBay and got a job lot of old style Trackmaster (Tomy- it’s a beige track) and a few trains and it’s absolutely fab. My boys play with it for hours.

What about a second hand lego one that is already built? The lego track clicks together really well, and stays put. And if you bought the train for a bit less you could buy extra track (Lego 60205) to build more interesting and complex layouts.

I have an old model train from my childhood stored in the attic. I don’t think it would be suitable before the age of ten, or even twelve. It’s very delicate and fiddly.

My DS got a Hornby Blue Rapier set for his 5th birthday and although he's upgraded his train connection the tracks and mat are still in use now at 13!

They seem to have discontinued that particular one but this is it in a different livery.

We also have the Lego City Express and it doesn't really get much play as it's really fiddly and guzzles batteries.

It might be worth showing him YouTube videos of car racing tracks and hexbugs and see if either appeal more than the trains.

DS got some of this at 7 www.marklin.com/products/my-world/ - another one whose fine motor skills weren't enough to make full use of Lego. It's good and still comes out two years later, but limited track/accessories means the Brio is still played with more (though not as frequently, he is moving onto F1 as an obsession now!)