Has anyone yet tried to model the imaginary railroad system for Sodor Island using HO scale trains. My son (3 yo) is fanatical about Thomas the tank engine, and as family activity I’m looking into making a layout for us both to operate using the basics of the island.
Rev. Awdry used to have a Thomas layout that he took to shows and ran at home. I think that the “Sodor” idea came a bit later in his life.
There are lots of Thomas pieces available in HO.
For an idea of how Sodor might look, check out the Isle of Man which is (supposedly) the next island over.
I’ve never seen a layout that tried to follow the stories.
I’d pick a few scenes to focus on as there is no “prototype” to refer to. The Island (and its inhabitants) have evolved a lot since the books and my kids have no problem filling in gaps or putting storylines to the scene. Give Percy a shed, Gordon a station, Thomas a branch line and let the rest happen by itself.
I belive the book with all the stories has a map.
that’s the best idea i’ve heard in a long time.
beats the heck out of point to point or loop running.
Yeah i’ve got that book, had it for a decent number of years, and inside the front cover is a map with the Isle Of Man to the north-west
Here you go[;)]
These pictures are huge, even imageshack woudn’t take them.
Cheers,
Mr Aussie[alien]
hi all
Better still try and find if you can a copy of the proper
ordinance survey map that used to be avalable for the Isle of Sodor
I think it might be on the web somewhere or at least a referance to it.
Personal Opinion Only
stick to the original story’s not the mordern I bought the rights so i will do what I please with it rubi***hey cannot even get daisy the right colour.
regards John
try this web site www.thomasandfriends.com it’s the offical web site
Has anyone tried to combine two sets. I have a roller coaster set and the gold mountain set. I need to fit them on a NILO table and want to use all of the large pieces. I don’t mind if I don’t use all of the tracks. Any suggestion is much appreciated.
I have a different option for you, having already tried to introduce my 3 year old daughter to model trains. I was not easy. She wanted to grab them and make tunnels with her legs and all the things that kids should do with trains. Unfortunately, my constantly telling her not to touch quickly killed her interest. I couldn’t find a way for her to play with my trains and not destroy them and my layout. For me the perfect solution was the Lego Duplo train sets. These have tracks that my daughter can lay buy herself, switch that she can easily operate and engines that run and, perhaps more importantly, can be dropped. The ability to play with Duplo people at the same time make it all a bit more really for kids who like to role play. And they do have Thomas the Tank Engine models. The ability to quickly build and modify the tracks even gave me some ideas for my own small layout. This is really a great toy.
thomas is going to be a big part of our railroad soon.santa told me so.if matthew doesnt pout or cry…
stay safe
Joe
Lego has trains that you can build. and ifm you drop them and they break they can be fixed! I have made one from scratch
wasent there an origonal layout that the made the tv series on?
The TV show was shot on a series of sets that didn’t connect.
And if I know TV, they shot all the scenes at one location before putting it away and shooting the next location.
Yeah, it is quite popular with kids over here as well, England, you need to keep an eye on the Hornby range, they do a large range of Thomas stock and accessories. The only problem you may have is that it is to the British 00 scale rather than HO, this makes it slighter larger but taking into consideration that Britain has a smaller loading gauge and smaller stock, the difference is not too much.
There are a few really great OO/HO scale Sodor based layouts on the exhibition circuit so should be a few on the internet as well, try Googling it for ideas/examples.
Best wishes and have a great Christmas.
I too had been thinking of trying to recreate Sodor for my Nephew. Though if the pictures at this site are anything to go by, Sodor is 150 miles wide. I only have a limited space, and I had thought about being all topographical like this picture http://www.pegnsean.net/~railwayseries/map-1959-sodor-clayh.jpg but then decided to try this approach http://www.pegnsean.net/~railwayseries/map-1992-sodor-big.jpg but this wouldn’t work either. As he is 3, and the only set I have in my house for him is a mixture of the Tomy and Tomika blue plastic track that runs the battery operated trains, I have decided on this map for my representation of Sodor http://www.pegnsean.net/~railwayseries/map-sodor-tvseries-hit.jpg and add hills, rivers etc to it. I have watched many of the dvds for inspiration but am at a loss as there is no scale for this set, so building tunnels, bridges buildings etc is near impossible. (I’m such a perfectionist)
My only gripe about this is that there is no true scale from which to scratch build anything from, so it is mainly from measuring the doors and windows of the coaches, and counting the bricks that I can see in some of the buildings. I don’t like the tunnels etc that come in the series so would like to make my own.
Using the last map, I intended to build Knapford, a couple of signal boxes, a couple of the stations so as to enhance what he has.
Would love to know how you get on with building your set.
Sorry, forgot to say, if you’re looking also for inspiration for some of the layouts that roughly follow the TV series you can look here http://www.legacystation.com/ThomastheTankLayouts.htm I know they are for the wooden set, but any track from HO to Tomy blue could be used.
I hope the info in this and the other message are of use.
I kmow that all trains rule but can you tell us what does this website have on it, Eletric thomas trains or wooden railway?
http://www.legacystation.com/ThomastheTankLayouts.htm
It has the wooden and electric sets.
The layouts are for the wooden sets, though I had my nephew at the weekend, had printed off a couple, and we built them up the best we could using the blue tomy track. Seemed to work, though we don’t have the tiny corner pieces that are available for the wooden track.
At Hamleys they have the tomy set built up as a layout for display only, which he enjoyed looking at. There was also the wooden set built up so the kids could play with it, and both me and my better half were not impressed by the quality in comparison to tomy.
On Monday we collected a huge box of tomy road and rail that I bought on ebay (wasn’t delivered on Saturday because it was too heavy), unfortunately my nephew went back up north on the Sunday so he never got the chance to play with it. Now I have most of the pieces that I was wanting the tunnel etc in order to try and build extra stuff from like buildings, tunnels etc to work from, and it’s payday tomorrow, I can now start to make a serious start on building a permanent Sodor layout for him and he still has enough track left over to make a good 3 or 4 of his own imagination.
If anyone is able to help re scale, I’d be much appreciated. I have been watching the dvds and trying to get decent screen captures to work out buildings using the counting bricks technique. I had figured on trying to build Knapford station, Tidmouth sheds a couple of signal boxes. A tunnel or two, couple of bridges, have the road for Bertie and instead of having the trains going from one end of the island to the other, having them go round in circles and meeting up at Tidmouth.
Hi do any of you really like thomas of just saying it for the little guys