Best age for a train set

[Anonymous]

I am contemplating getting my twins a train table (with a wooden train set) for their 4th birthday. I have to admit that it was my idea, but they seem to be excited about it now. When reading reviews for various train sets, I noticed that people frequently talk about toddlers playing with these train sets. Are my twins too old for a train set? I loved my train set and played with it well into my tweens, but it was an elaborate (for that time) electric train set (and I was a geek). If your kids had a wooden train set, when did they stop playing with it?

TYIA

[Anonymous]

My kids couldn't build their own tracks beyond something simple and branching at that age. My 8 year old spent several days this past spring building a complex marble run/train track combination thing. For us, the sets have continued to have use well into elementary.

[Anonymous]

My 8 year old will still pull out his Thomas wooden trains once in a build and build elaborate sets in the basement. They get combined with matchbox cars.

He also has the Lego passenger train, which is permanently set up in the living room and is used as a part of the lego city.
Trains last forever and are good gifts and fun toys. My brother still has his, and my dad still works on our one from when we were kids. We also have a battery operated thomas set that goes around the Christmas tree.

[Anonymous]

My kids aged out at age 6ish. They loved Thomas, the trains, the tracks up until then. They moved on to super heroes, etc from there. I distinctly remember giving away all the Thomas and trains stuff when the oldest was 7, when we moved and purging was a great thing. He, nor his younger brother missed any of the train stuff

[Anonymous]

DD was done with trains at age 6. But every kid is different. My dad still has a train room!

[Anonymous]

Mine was into it at 2, over it now at 5. He's moved onto Legos.

[Anonymous]

My autistic nephew is 14 and he still plays with his Thomas set.

[Anonymous]

I think you still have some time left, but if you'd gotten it last year they would probably have enjoyed it at 3. My toddlers liked to push the trains along but they couldn't built their own configurations.

[Anonymous]

Adding on - if they are 4 I would absolutely skip the "train table" and get lots of track they can set up on the floor. The table is very limiting in terms of the size and complexity of the track you can set up, and it's really best for a 1 or 2 year old who just wants to stand there and push trains.

[Anonymous]

My 4.5 yo goes in phases. Super into it for a bit then collects dust for a bit. Hes had trains and tracks since 2 though.

[Anonymous]

I’m 43 and I still like playing with train sets.

[Anonymous]

My four year old has had BRIO trains since she was a toddler, and she still loves hers and incorporates them into playing with her other toys. It's nothing huge or elaborate, but there's a train full of Peppa figurines running around the floor of our living room almost every night.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Mine was into it at 2, over it now at 5. He's moved onto Legos.

This, except that mine was over it by 4 and was highly offended when my mom bought him a ginormous train table with a million accessories for Christmas. I made him keep it in his room for a year and then we donated it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Adding on - if they are 4 I would absolutely skip the "train table" and get lots of track they can set up on the floor. The table is very limiting in terms of the size and complexity of the track you can set up, and it's really best for a 1 or 2 year old who just wants to stand there and push trains.

+1 my DS was obsessed with Thomas trains from about age 2-5 and continued playing with them for a couple years after that. The fun as he got older was about building big, elaborate tracks. We never got a table, just kept all the pieces in a rolling bin.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Adding on - if they are 4 I would absolutely skip the "train table" and get lots of track they can set up on the floor. The table is very limiting in terms of the size and complexity of the track you can set up, and it's really best for a 1 or 2 year old who just wants to stand there and push trains.

I have a 5 year old train kid. He is probably going to be the 43 year old person here who is also into trains. The train table was never used for anything other than storage.

He is on the floor building wooden trains inside the limits of his Lionel train set as I write this. Some are Brio, some are models of actual transit trains we've been on--another option to make them a little more early-elementary and less toddler-friendly. It's like a DCUM train parody.

He's also got Lego trains, but we built those together--he can easily manipulate and re-lay the Lego tracks, but the trains themselves are too complex. You might get and set up Lego trains and lots and lots of Legos as another alternative.