Hi! New to trains and excited to get started. I have 4 kids ages 8 to 3, 2 boys 2 girls. My grandfather passed away this spring and while cleaning out his house we found an old Lionel O gauge train set, two locomotives, a 1666 and a 229, with one tender and 3 passenger cars. I had them all refurbished at a train shop near me, then bought a ready to run set and plan to add a transformer and some more track so i can run both the old set and the new one. I’m thinking I’ll go with a 4x8 bench, then add another 4x8 in L shape, and we’ll be up and running. I’ve been reading and learning like crazy, i think it will be a fun hobby for us. What I’m curious about, and the reason for the post, is wondering if there are things i should avoid for kids this age as we play. For example I will probably avoid too much glued scenery. I’ll maybe do some on the wall behind the bench to give a little effect, but not a lot of foam and scenic detail around the tracks. I plan to add some buildings and roads for cars, you know i want it to be fun and interactive, but at the same time dont want to get to the point where i dont want them touching anything. We’ll evolve together, or maybe some of them will grow out of it. At the very least, I’ll have the experience of running my grandpa’s prewar train with his great grandkids.
Anyway wondering if there are specific things i should avoid or include to balance the play with the adult building and design fun.
Thanks!
Welcome to the Forum, volbrejd!
I can’t answer your questions very well, but you might want to post your comment on the Classic Toy Trains section of the Forum. I know there are Lionel users there who are pretty knowledgeable about that type of railroading.
Good luck, and I hope you will have fun with the kids.
Thanks York! I’ve updated the topic.
Roads are a good choice! Make sure to put plenty of cars/trucks/tractors on them so the little ones can push them around.
For now, keep the benchwork low enough that they can reach stuff (you might consider a stool for the 3-year-old for the next year or so). Or add some wooden trains to the front so the youngest can push them around.
Consider also some guards around the edges–maybe 1 x 3s sticking up, or at least some strips of fiberboard–to catch the inevitable high-speed derails from ending up on the floor. But let them run the trains kinda fast! (I don;t know what transformer came with your dad’s trains, but there are ways to hook some of them up to keep the speed under control).
I got my first Marx train when I was 1 1/2. I ran it like crazy, used it to defeat enemy armies, and staged head-ons with my buddy’s Marx clockwork engine. Yes, there is a piece of the engine’s pilot missing, and, yes, a piece of the caboose roof broke off, but I ran it just yesterday and it is going like a champ. (Your Lionels are metal and unlikely to break, but I wouldn’t encourage the head-ons.) Let them be kids with the trains, and teach them how to be careful as they grow.
And you might want to consider adding more trains–one for each, at least. Someday, each of them might want to pass a train down to his or her children. As you have found out, these things are kinda catching!
Thanks for the help. Good tip on the edge guards! I probably wouldnt have thought of that until the first floor crash.
I do plan to keep the bench a little lower, probably more like kitchen table height where i can sit, then cosco makes a decent foldable 2 step platform type step stool that should work great for them.
My grandpa didnt leave any track or transformer so ill be acquiring one at the local shop probably. Or I’ll hunt on the usual online selling platforms.
I can see how its catchy, ive gone from no trains, to 2 gifted locos and 3 passenger cars, to buying a lionchief set, and planning to meet a guy next week for another…getting the table together, now thinking about shelves on the walls for more rolling stock storage…does this train disease ive caught have a name?
Welcome aboard! I think the latin term is “ferroeqininitis”, or disease of the iron horse. The only treatment is to consult a qualified ferroeqiinologist for ways to enable the “disease” to grow! 
Seriously though, you may want to keep the main lines 6 inches from the edge of the table so in case those small hands cause a derailment it will lessen the chance that the entire train will be dragged down to the floor below. Foam landforms on the outside of curves will also help runaways stay on the table.
Look into Plasticville buildings. They’re made to pop apart and give a layout a lot of charm, especially if you have hot wheels or other diecast vehicles for them to play with. Lego is also a good way to get kids interested in populating a layout. Oh, and look for little plastic figures in the gumball type vending machines and in toy isles.
Keep it fun and let their creativity explode!
The nice thing about O guage is that running it on the floor doesn’t really hurt it that much.
Welcome. My first train came to me as a used, pre-war 0-6-0 with 2 operating cars and caboose on a 4x7 table. I see you referred to scenery on the wall behind the table. If you are going to have the table against the wall, try to put a narrow end there as you will need to be able to reach as trains tend to wander on occasion. I have switched to HO, and my last layout was on a 4x6 table. I was able to squeeze it into the middle of the room so I could walk around it, but I wanted someplace for my trains to go. I put a scenic divider down the middle of the table, so that when it was being operated the train would go out of sight. For a safety fence around the table to catch those flying trains I used a 6" high plexiglass fence, makes it so the shorter children can see better. (My local hardware store cut it for me)
I hae two great grandchildren waiting for me to get a shelf up around the train room ao we can get some trains rolling.
Good luck and have fun,
Richard
Great tip on the wall scenery. I was contemplating some locking casters so I can slide it away from the wall as needed. I’m putting the plywood top on right now and given the lower table height it does make it a little easier for me to reach all the way across. Still leaning pretty far and might be tough to do without a hand down. So I’ll probably wait on too much decorating for now until we get up and running for a little while and figure out how things work for us. I’ll look into plexiglass too.
Thanks for all the help guys!
You could try a more curved design. Think of a dumbbell with round ends. Then instead of having a straight bar going from center to center of each circle, have it straight on the back and curved on the front
That way you could reach the back easier.
Welcome, don’t be discouraged if they don’t seem interested at the beginning. Especially due to their age. I wished I had scenery, a tunnel and some people, buildings to set the imagination on fire. Yes they will probably break them but that’s to be expected when they’re young. Getting the wheels all lined up will frustrate them, and my worry was always if they laid the metal trains across the track and shorted out the power supply.
Welcome! I’m excited to see posts like these, because we welcome newcomers of any age to the hobby, but especially children. I love the suggestion of buying Plasticville kits. They are inexpensive and easy for anyone to build. This article might be of interest to you: 5 ways to engage kids with toy trains - Trains
I encourage you to visit a hobby shop near you (I hope you have one near you!), because many of them sell inexpensive used items. If the kids can visit a shop and pick out an item, they will have more incentive to participate.
Rene
Welcome to the Forum MWTrains.
I got my grandchildren involved in model railroading from when they were three years of age.
I allowed them a certain area to play; pushing model automobiles around. Oh they broke things and dropped things on the floor. My rule was not to ‘tell them off’.
Soon I allowed them to control a train. They were in their element. They came back for more. Now they are much older and do their own thing; returning now and again.
It is my granddaughters’ who are more interested in trains now. My older one has her own 0 gauge garden railway. My younger granddaughter is a 1-1 train nut, loving the real things. (You will see pictures of them on different threads.)
The thing I find is to keep it all ‘fun’. It is a hobby. Treat it as such and it will repay a ‘thousandfold’.
David
David
Thanks for all the info everyone! We’re about a week in and its going awesome. My older two are embracing it heavily and i have it set up where i feel pretty comfortable letting them play alone. It’s with more modern stuff so I’m less concerned about shorts or larger transformer issues. They are also good about asking and have learned how to safely shut it down when they’re done. Though I’ve determined when my daughters play I have actually built a horse table, where a train is allowed to run. We have a good amount of Breyer and Schleich animal and farm sets so those are filling a bunch of the empty space and sparking the creativity (not correct scale, i know, but im being entirely flexible with that right now as we use what we have around).
Will keep adding slowly as we go. I am planning to add to the table already so we can run two trains and have a little more play space too. Thanks again for all the help!
Had a fun moment watching my son run his great grandpa’s train for a little bit the other day. Was really cool to see it brought back to life.