This was a Birthday present for my 4 year old. Firstly it caused big fights between my 4 year old and 3 year old as they were both so desperate to play with it.

The track is really good with an inner and outer oval controlled by a set of points you operate manually. The inner oval has a suspension bridge, which although initially fiddly to build the first time, is easy once you get a bit of practice. It comes with a station and a few trees and a small tunnel. There is a section of track where they can stop the train at the section, which proved a big hit.

The steam Thomas was great fun and entertained the boys for ages. My only gripe is the pipet to re-fill Thomas with water split very quickly. Also you go through quite a lot of batteries. The only other issue is that the Thomas and first carriage are permanently joined as they are wired together. My 3 year old enjoyed carrying Thomas around and it didn’t take long for this connection to break. First the plastic broke and then the wires pulled out and I cannot fix it, so Thomas had to go in the bin. I haven’t been able to get another Steam Thomas, but we have bought some of the other trains that are available (no others have steam), but they seem to be more robust.

In summary the boys come back to this toy time and time again. If you can look after the Thomas, this is a great buy and will entertain for hours and you can buy extra trains and accessory track parts.
Rating: 4 / 5

upon reciept of toy which was for our sons 3rd birthday we noticed that he could gain easy access to the battery compartment e mailed tommy who said that our son was to young for the toy i asked them to esculate the problem as it was a toy for a toddler and our son had managed to get the battery out and could off sucked or thrown quite a large battery and that the fault was a fault in manufacture and we have had to celotape a new toy together in the proccess damageing the cheap paper tranfers that decorate it tommys ultimate responce was never had probs before and if you want to send it back at my expense they would look at it have you ever tried taking an albeit damaged toy particulary a thomas type toy of a 3 year old child this fault should be investigated before a child is hurt but we just think we will buy no more tommy products if they dont care about this how safe is their other stuff
Rating: 2 / 5

only one ordered two delivered and two sent to me ,returns system so hard to understand iwill not order anything else fromamazon
Rating: 5 / 5

The problem with the Gordon engine is that the great big battery is in the tender, with wires going to the front engine driving the wheels there. This causes two issue: one is that all the other engines come apart and little ones don’t understand that this one will break if you do that and the other problem is that the train doesn’t have enough power to drive up hills.

Gordon is meant to be the biggest and strongest engine but is totally outclassed by engines such as Tomy Thomas Track Master Diesel Train which have a big battery and a small engine and can pull 10 or more trucks.

The best big engine is Tomy Thomas Track Master Murdoch Train which does not have the same problem as Gordon.
Rating: 3 / 5