H0 scale electric model trains are the wrong toys for a 3 year old, no matter how fascinated he is about trains.If you build a layout, you will end up spending much time on the layout and little time with the kid, and you will be spending a lot of time telling him to not touch and not break things.
Get him some battery powered engines for his Thomas wooden tracks, and some more powered accessories. And maybe get a few videos or DVDs showing model trains or real trains that you guys can watch together.
Then try to introduce electric model trains at about age 6 or 7 or so.Or maybe slightly later - say age 8 or 9 or so, depending on his interests at that time.
Another idea for researching industries served by rails, is using Google Earth satellite images. That’s a wonderful way of seeing how the railroads layout their trackwork. The satellite images is an amazing tool for us modelers.
My favorite thing to look at, is big rail yards, big huge yards!
Yes, Max is our first child, and given our ages, 41 and 39, probably our last. We were married for 17 years before having Max. We’ve blogged about him every day since he was born.
Motley, maybe you could share a couple of your Google Earth links so I can see a big yard.
Max has the five-DVD I Love Toy Trains set and the four-DVD set O-Gauge Layout Adventures. He has more than two dozen Thomas & Friends DVDs on his iPad. Believe it or not, he can operate his iPad very well.
We ordered him a new train table with a wooden railway on it today. We’ll probably give it to him for his birthday in August. Then we’ll have two train tables in our living room. Right now we have a train table with wooden railway, a bench for his fold-up train sets, and the Zip Zoom Logging Adventure set on the floor. His Race Down the Rails wooden railway is on the coffee table in the room next to our living room. His O-gauge Thomas normally is on our dining room table, but it’s not set up now because we had a family dinner on Monday.
I have lots of kids and in my opinion this is the best advice you’re going to get, and if you ignore it (as I have seen several dads do) you run the risk of killing off his interest in trains.
I might add one note: kids being kids, don’t be surprised if he wakes up one day and suddenly has no interest at all in trains! Kids change and it can be quick.
I have 3 boys (the youngest born 5 months before my 40th birthday), and only one of them is interested in trains. He doesn’t like anything to do with fantasy / medieval stuff; that’s all his brothers want to play with.
Here’s what I did. I have my own layout, which he is allowed to operate under my supervision. Even from the age of 4, he was capable of running trains at prototypical speeds and using them to serve industries, even telling me how to line switches. I developed a little card game, in which he would draw a card to determine which locomotive he needed to use, and a second to tell him where he needed to pick up cargo. Then he would pick a third card to determine the length of the trip (1-3 laps around), with the destination determined by the cargo. He could do this for a long time (more than an hour – an eternity for a small child) without getting bored.
I also built him his very own layout – basically 4 x 8 loop of Powerloc track (w/ the molded-on roadbed), a passing track, and two sidings. I bought him the Bachmann Thomas train stuff to use. It’s HO, and pretty rugged, so he won’t break it (too badly). For a while, this layout was a mess – trees knocked over, loose gravel and lumber loads strewn everywhere, matchbox cars in ponds, and structures knocked over like a tornado had been through. Now that he’s older, we’ve ditched the Thomas stuff for some better equipment, vacuumed the crud off the layout, and repaired the damage. He operates it all on his own (with a sound system and everything).
So, if the layout REALLY IS for your son, a similar approach might work for you; although I think the track plan you have is too complicated for a small child and too simplistic for an adult.
I once started building a layout for my son (40 Years ago). I found that I was really building it for myself. From experience I found that HO is too small for a three year old because he will want to touch the cars and engines. Derailment after derailment will be frustrating for him and yourself. My suggestion would be to build the HO railroad for yourself and he can grow into it later. Get you son a cheap large scale plastic model set that runs on batteries so he can start running his trains right out of the box.
Another thought if you decide to go with something less fragile and sophisticated for your son: Lego trains. At shows I have seen layouts by adult clubs; they do attract the attention of kids.
Actually, the LEGO trains might be just the ticket. My kids have one of those, too. They’ve got a lot of stuff, and it’s all in the same scale (obviously). Even at 3, my kids had no trouble assembling basic LEGO kits, and while they will come apart, permanent damage is very difficult to inflict.
The only issue you might have is that size wise, it’s pretty close to O scale. The trains will take much sharper corners than prototype, though.
I’ve been a forum ‘spectator’ for a while now… trying to actually learn something… but this is my first post. I’m in a bit of a similar spot myself… My son has been train-mad since about 1-1/2 yrs. Started with Thomas & crew, moved on to GeoTrax, and has included a hankering for a model train layout for a while now. He’s 5yrs now and, having just moved into a new house, I’m hoping at long last to deliver on a long-delayed promise. We didn’t have the space before, but I also figured he was a bit young yet. Been balancing that against missing the boat completely though… Its something I’d really like to do for him. I’ve been watching him with an HO starter set we won at a local club open house, and I think now’s the time. (When I make a bit of progress planning wise I hope to draw on the expertise in this forum as well.) I won’t kid myself though… Its for me too. I never had a train set as a kid & was never really interested, but thanks to my son it’s been developing into a bit of a (poorly informed) obsession. Anyway, for what its worth, I’d highly recommend looking into GeoTrax if you’re not ‘sure sure’ about making the leap to HO at this stage… My son’s gotten a LOT of mileage out of his over the years, and its been good ‘training’ too. All the best, and I’m sure whichever route you take you & your son will have a blast together…!
Your circumstances sound very similar to mine, except that my son has just turned 5. He is a train freak… who gets it from Dad. Anything and everything Thomas. We’ve got tons of wooden trains, we’ve got plenty plenty plenty of the Trackmaster Thomas sets, we’ve got a Lionel set… and even a G-Scale set for the Christmas Tree. I bought him the Bachmann HO Deluxe Thomas/Annie/Clarabel set last year for his birthday to see how that would go. He did very well with the small nature of HO, for a then 4 year old. So, having seen a Sodor Island HO 4x8 layout that Bachmann built for show purposes I decided that was the route I was going to take. I studied the layout they built here:
…and started on the journey of building our own Sodor Island.
Long story short is this… The layout is for him (and my daughter), but it is also to help satisfy my model railroading desire. This particular layout and theme was perfect for me because of there reasons:
It was Thomas themed.
It was a relatively small layout in terms of space.
Not too incredibly expensive.
It’s relatively easy to build, but great because you can adapt it to suit what you want to have.
And the really big thing for me is that there are 4 independent loops, which means 4 trains can run at once… meaning less fighting over who gets to drive a train. The Bachmann layout has 3 levels, or 5 loops, but I only went with two, and I changed it some to fit my desires… and budget.
