Melissa & Doug Classic Wooden Figure Eight Train Set Classic wooden train set features a wooden engine and coal car, plus 20 pieces of wooden track and a bridge. Great value. Compatible with other popular wooden railway systems (sold separately).
Customer Review: Poorly constructed with numerous design flaws
Bought this wooden set thinking I would be able to add Thomas Series of train engines, since the previous review said it was compatible. The set arrived with its own little red wooden train engine and coach, linked via magnets. The set is easy to assemble, but there are lots of loose gaps between the track pieces where they align with each other, causing the pieces to drift out of alignment. This causes the train to derail (come off the track) frequently. My little daughter was left wondering why the train never gets any further than one single piece of track segment.
Besides trying to realign them every time the train runs on the flat track, the train set also derails as you are climbing up the bridge (in fact, the front wheels of the engine go up in the air as you are pushing the engine up the incline when you are just beyond halfway through the upward incline – in other words the slope of the bridge wasn’t constructed properly). So the child is expected to hold on to the engine and the coach with both hands to prevent it from derailing while going up the bridge.
The next thing I tried was with the standard Thomas Engine sets to see if any of these problems would be solved. I bought a set each of Thomas and Percy engines and coaches and then tried running them on this track set. The same problems of frequent derailing persisted (over the bridge and over the track joints).
So my overall impression is that its a very poorly designed set, which teaches the child more about accidents and derailing of trains, rather than how trains should run smoothly!
So I wouldn’t recommend wasting money on this one and just spend a little extra for a good quality train set. You get what you pay for!
Customer Review: Good Value
Adorable train set for the price. The tracks and train included in this set work fine with my son’s Thomas wooden railway tracks and trains.
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