Any recommended alternatives to Hornby trainsets?

Nearly that time of year again when the the round man in the red suit visits. This year I’d like to get our 5 year old boy a train set. He currently has the more advanced motorised brio trains but would like to move him onto something more advanced. Any recommendations other than Hornby which are eye wateringly expensive if you want anything more that a simple oval.

Ta

Sheet of 8×4 chipboard and a pile of Peco flexitrack? You can then add a second hand DC controller and rolling stock of your choice.

I’m not sure there really is anything cheap like that.

Though I’d think 5 might be a bit young for Hornby anyway, it is all pretty fiddly and some of it a bit delicate. My oldest is almost 8 and still quite happy playing with the non-motorised wooden train set when younger brother gets it out. My Hornby is still up the loft waiting for them to get a bit older (seeing the prices I’m so glad I found that at mums house when clearing out).

At 5 he’ll struggle to ‘play’ with it unsupervised, tbh.

We did find that having it nailed down to a board made everything more reliable and you can add buildings, scenery, roads and cars then too.

For size – get something he can reach the middle of (or cut a hole in the middle and raise off the ground) without climbing on the board itself. Edging the board with some 3×1 wood strips helps stop them just climbing across the track and prevents any runaway loco’s flying off onto the floor and makes the whole thing stiffer when moving it.

Bachmann & Dapol also do 4mm scale stuff, but again, expensive. drop down to N-scale & the price doesn’t drop but you do get 4 times as much in the same space.

http://www.modelrailwaysdirect.co.uk

World’s cheapest/simplest electric trainset apparently;

drop down to N-scale & the price doesn’t drop but you do get 4 times as much in the same space.

Twice as much shirley…?

Space an issue? Try T-Gauge!

Hornby do ‘cheap’ sets. A little 0-4-0 engine and a few trucks with a circle of track. Can pick those up new for £50ish. Look at Hattons as they generally work out pretty cheap.

My little lads are 5 and nearly 2 and they absolutely love our train set. I had them as a kid and when the eldest was born started building another. Still WIP on a 4’x4′ board on castors under the spare bed but its got a loop, 2 siding goods yard, 2 stations, branch line and 2 lane engine shed in that space. The young ‘un just makes trains go bonkers fast but the eldest does ‘properly’ play with it. Stopping trains in stations, changing direction, shoving stuff on sidings etc.

Theres a website called freetrackplans or something which has a load of really good space saving plans mostly using Peco Setrack/Hornby type stuff. Amazing what you can cram into a small space that you can have a proper play with as well as look pretty realistic.

Guy I worked with had a Gauge One railway in his garden and made his own live steam loco’s.

His son (called Thomas, natch) had a radio control electric one.

RMWeb.co.uk is the model railway equivalent of Singletrack (complete with more pedantic and urine soaked members) if you want advice!

Just to add, its cheap enough to add points etc to a simple loop. Hornby do/did expansion packs for the basic oval which you could keep adding to.

I run N gauge stuff and there’s a 5 year old from next door who routinely destroys it when he pops round- I don’t mind but if you were giving it to a five year old it wouldn’t last two minutes.

My family compromised with Tomy stuff when I was little. It’s not mad cheap, but you can build up something good and tough for not a lot.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Tomy-Tomica-Super-KOMACHI-Shinkansen-Train-Set-With-Extending-Magnet-New/141134426310?_trksid=p2054897.c100204.m3164&_trkparms=aid%3D222007%26algo%3DSIC.MBE%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D20140407115239%26meid%3D9d142f329d074875bbee4378604566a2%26pid%3D100204%26prg%3D20140407115239%26rk%3D3%26rkt%3D30%26sd%3D141139802397

If you’re set on a Hornby style set up then Ebay and Gumtree are good places, particularly Gumtree if you want to pay less money for it.

Points are quite expensive, even secondhand, so think carefully about how many you need. Second hand straight track is cheap as chips, though (I think I’ve got some if you e-mail me, and a few other bits). As above, flexi-track is very cheap- metre lengths are £3 or so and don’t have the problems of dodgy electrical connections every 6 inches.

Find a decent tank engine (tender ones are more fragile) from Hornby’s railroad range (I like the SDJR Jinty -http://www.duncanstoychest.co.uk/hornby-r2882-00-gauge-s-and-djr-0-6-0-3f-locomotive-railroad-locomotive) and search “rake” on ebay and you’ll find sets of secondhand wagons and carriages going cheaply. I reckon you could get a new tank engine (second hand from ebay can give you a dodgy runner which will frustrate him) and a set of wagons for £50, then a load of flexi track and three points for about another £40, leaving you a tenner for a Hornby R965 controller and you’ll be away!

E-mail me if you want me to dig out this track and stuff.

I know njee is on RMweb but if you’re totally new to it newrailwaymodellers.co.uk is less hardcore and very patient with what to them seem like very simple questions.

njee- You will get four times as much n gauge into a OO space- half the length and half the width too, see?

Be honest, he’s five, this is 100% for you. You probably won’t even let him open the box in case he breaks it.

Lego trainsets are where the real fun is at 🙂

I know njee is on RMweb but if you’re totally new to it newrailwaymodellers.co.uk is less hardcore and very patient with what to them seem like very simple questions.

Dammit, outed! I agree with the above, RMWeb is actually quite ‘hard core’, full of the sort of rivet counters the hobby is associated with! Nothing like the ‘community’ feel of this place IMO, some obscenely snobbish folk.

wwaswas – Member

that’s class 🙂

As always thanks for all the info guys. Think I need to give this some serious thought.

Munrobiker thanks for the kind offer. I’ll let you know if I go down the Hornby route. And yes this might be for me…. but the boy does get to take the wrapping paper off.

I built ours as a dad-and-son thing to do but I’ve really got back into it. Planning a NSE branch terminus layout now (thats just for me 🙂 ).

I went to the timber merchant at the weekend and stocked up, nearly finished the man cave, then the layout gets built! 12’x3′ n-gauge present day WCML, as you’re all interested 😀

My brother knows a guy who’s doing a layout of the York railway museum. That’s genius. The problem is usually artificiality, period correctness, and not enough space for trains so he’s recreating an artificial scene with millions of trains squeezed in, which is basically like a giant trainset.

But you can’t get kits of all the exhibit trains so he’s doing tons of scratchbuilding and modifying, and I think just isn’t attempting a bunch of the exhibits. He can say they’re at locomotion, or they’ve done a flying scotsman and taken it to bits and now can’t put it back together, or something.

I’d love to take the piss but I know perfectly well there’s a trainset in my future 😆

planning a 6×4 layout in N, somewhere on the Midland region, 1960s BR late crest steam & green diesel era. Have a few Farish locos (Black Five, Ivatt 2-6-0, class 26 diesel )& some rolling stock already, but by god they’re not cheap

Hold their value incredibly well though, so I tend to buy stuff on a whim safe in the knowledge that I’ll break even if I have to sell it down the line (no pun intended).

Have you looked at the Tomica/Thomas railways? My kids had them from about age 5, and they are mostly buildable by small hands. The engines carry their own battery and pretty much everything else is plastic so there is no wiring, and you set points and the like manually.

We have a ton of the stuff and you can make some fantastic layouts, though now my youngest is 12 he only builds in Minecraft. 🙁

Trackmaster Thomas is what he needs.

I’ve got three at the minute, but two are tiny.

N gauge Crianlarich present day which is 3×1.5ft.
HO gauge American winter shunting layout built out of bits from my American wife’s grandfather.
The current project is a 10×3 foot present day interchangeable with liner n gauge layout of an imaginary village with a distillery and quarry north of aviemore which is in our loft.

Nerd? Moi?

To be fair that makes me sound way more serious than I am, it’s a bit of fun for me in the winter. I’m not very good!

Too late for an edit, but Trackmaster=Tomica=PlaRail. The same plastic rail system that’s been going since the early 60s.

Looking to sell any of your stuff Mr crisis???

No plans to sell, but I’ll have a word with him and see how he feels about it, he’s a bit old for it now but might not be ready to let it go.

No problems 🙂 I have a Thomas obsessed 5 year old!!

Just add to the brio with some ELC stuff – cheaper and compatible

http://www.elc.co.uk/planes-trains/5564,default,sc.html?sz=35

2nd hand place round the corner from here has piles of hornby stuff pretty cheap, £5 for non collectable engines, bundles of track for a few quid. I think if you avoid ebay there’s a bargains to be had.

I have WAAAAAY too much of that tonica stuff bought on a whim, boy is only 3. 🙄 but, one day I want to build a massive set up with it before I flog half off. I have about 6 big plastic boxes full. Idiot.