Any thoughts on the Chad Valley train table for a 3 year old?

[mamadiva]

Was thinking of getting one of these for my DS' christmas, he is train mad and I reckon he would love one but most are expensive so when I seen this one I thought we could get it!

But there are no reviews so if anyone has one can you tell me

Is it huge?
Do they have to stand all the time to play with it?
Can you add more track?
Is it well made?

That's enough of the questions now

TIA x

Hmm must be good if noone has one...

when ds was smaller (18mo - 2.5y maybe) we had the traintrack on a coffee table that was that sort of size - it was great because you could make a small layout and he could chuff away without tripping over the track etc.

He is now 3y8m - he would hate to be constrained to that small space, the track layouts meander around and sprawl all over.

Plus when they aren't using it you have an ffing big table in the way, instead of a box of track.

Toys r us have one on sale at the mo, reduced from £199 to £99 - saw it in store today - looks better than the Chad Valley one.

We're just letting our train sets sprawl about - mainly because we don't have room for the table.

Thanks Lucky but doubt will have the money for another few weeks yet and knowing my luck by then the offer will be done .

We do have room for the table but now you've both got me thinking maybe the talbe is not the best idea LOL, I don't think he would mind it and it seems an awful lot of hassle to build and take apart every night, well we have a space for it but if it was a HUGE track then I'd have to tidy it away.

Is there a way round that?

most of the fun is BUILDING the track though - which the table takes away from.

The way around you tiding up the track every night is either to leave it out (you would be leaving the table out) or get HIM to put it away. A 3yo is more than capable of putting track away. My rule is that if I have to put it away then it is going away somewhere where they won't be able to play with it again - the bin!

I agree with chasingsquirrels, my DD uses the track like a giant jigsaw and has so much fun just putting it together. We then play the tidy up game at night and learn how to put things away

If you're worried about it taking up loads of room/getting in the way, GLTC do one on trundles that slides under the bed. A bit dearer though.