Wooden train set or Take along Thomas?

[mamadiva]

DS' 3rd borthday at the end of the month, want to buy a train set which is better wooden or thomas?

My DS loves Thomas and I like the idea you can just pack it away, but I also like the wooden tracks as you can add to them.

Have heard though the wooden ones come apart easily.

TIA.

I'd go for wooden - it gives you much more scope to add to the layouts etc, and from different sources (ELC, Brio, Tesco versions all fit together).

agree with Hassled

wood is good.
for us the fun is in building a different track every time.
i expect the wooden one breaks less too.
and environmentally i suspect wood is better than plastic landfill.

I'd agree with going for wood

We have the wood (I asked the advice of MN at the time!). Wood is much more expensive, but my 3yo loves it.

wooden here too. its more versatile (ikea train set fits it too) it lasts longer and they dont outgrow it as quickly. ds only plays with his wooden track now, we sold his take along and tomy because he never used it

Our DS has both and I would def recommend the wood,

The wood is much easier for a 3 yr old to build themselves but the take along is much more difficult and seems to come apart really easily so DS is constantly having to ask me or DH to fix it for him.

And as someone else mentioned Brio, ELC, and Tesco wooden tracks are all compatible.

Right so wood is the way to go then

Are they all compatible with each other then? We have a Tesco and Argos near us so will buy from them to start and see how we get on then will add to collection if he likes it.

I'm sure they're all compatible Mamadiva DS got 2 lots of wooden track for his birthday, One was ELC and the other was tesco and they fit together great. And if you DS likes thomas you can get wooden Thomas characters to fit the track.

Yes we've got loads for brio, tesco, ELC and ikea. I think the brio is better quality though - the other stuff has broken in parts.

Would like to buy Brio because I guess it would be sturdier we have a toy shop here but at the prices, as much as I would like to support the smaller shops now.

Sometimes you can get brio sets on offer - Toys R us sometimes have good offers on.

My Dad has picked up loads of Brio at car boot sales. It's noticable that the real Brio hardly ages at all, wheras the Ikea is thin and breaks.

Def check out the car boots - dad pays a fiver for a huge bag

We have alsorts.
The wooden stuff is good, and I like that you can add to it easily, and fairly cheaply from Ikea and Tesco.
We have a bit of the Take Along stuff, but my DS (nearly 3) finds it hard to put the grey track together.
We find that the Tomy Thomas (the blue track, with the battery trains) are best for us.

The Take along Thomas has more detailed engines but the wooden track is easier to play with. If you find Brio too expensive, get cheap track and match it up with some nice bridge/accessories.

We have a mixture of track/accessories from all sources but DS's favourite trains are the Railway Series characters. He takes one or other of them with him everywhere he goes and often to bed .