Thomas the Tank Engine - very confused mum.

[forevared]

I'm hoping to buy DS1 some Thomas stuff for Christmas and specifically some railway tracks for his bedroom. I've been looking on the ELC website and am getting very confused. Everything seems really small and I'd like for him to have a big(ish) track for his floor. I wondered if I bought different pieces whether they'd all click or link together somehow or do they stay as separate pieces?
Also do all the engines fit the tracks or only some types?

what type are you looking at?? the wooden brio type track, or the plastic type?

Th wooden brio stuff is really good, my son had his thomas set from age 2 up until 4 and he still secretly plays with it with his little brother. You can also get wooden track to bump up the set from tesco and asda, that all fits in together. We just bought lots of that and then bought the character trains and some of the moving bits. Ebay is very good too, I bought a moving cranky the crane from the US and it was brand new and much cheaper than in the uk.

I was looking at the figure of 8 starter set. It looks wooden but doesn't mention whether it's made by Brio.

The stuff you buy from the ELC is the wooden stuff and I would agree that it is lovely - my DS has a lot of it and has been enjoying it since he was about 18m. My tip is to try TK Maxx - we bought a huge set reduced from £160 to £50 and they always seem to have accessories in there reduced to at least half the price of the ELC.

yes the figure of eight set we bought last year then have added to it, its brilliant. We have thomas trains which are expensive from elc but track and things like bridges and tunnels you can get non branded from tesco's or independent toy stores. We have wooden cranky too, he was expensive but played with every day so a good buy!

my dad has just bought this too for the boys for xmas which is a fab bargain i think...
train table

If you get the wooden track you can get (cheaper) track from tesco which is the same and fits the thomas track and the brio track.

Thanks everyone, that's really helpful. As daisycat suggested, I'm now looking on eBay. Wow, what a choice.