Train Sets for Kids

You will find train sets for kids offered by all the top suppliers of train sets for kids and plenty of information to help you decide which one is right for your requirements.

Train Sets For Kids

I was brought up in the UK in the 1950's as a boomer, I guess, and there were lots of train sets for kids about in those days. In deed, I'd speculate that about half of my friends had train sets as kids. However, the tradition of buying train sets for kids began in the UK in about 1920, although the real beginnings were with Mecchano in 1907, which itself was a development from an earlier Hornby company dating from 1901.

Hornby patented his first train sets for kids in 1920 and they were very popular even though they were clockwork toys. By 1925 Hornby had his first electric train sets for kids on the market but they were quite unsafe being driven by 100-250 v. In 1929, he brought out train sets for kids that would run on a 6v transformer meaning they were virtually completely harmless.

That was most likely the era when fathers caught the model railway bug as well because they 'had' to make sure the electricity was not dangerous. Certainly in the fifties, fathers were using the train sets for kids for themselves. My father was too. I do not remember the models, but our train set for kids was a very solid, rather heavy 'Flying Scotsman', I think, made by Hornby. The carriages were equally well-build and my four brothers, my father and I loved to set it up and run it.

We did not have the space to leave it set up, but putting all the track together and weaving in and out of the furniture was as much fun as playing with it. We needed two big cornflakes boxes to house all the parts, tracks, signals, workers, passengers (and a dog) and a transformer and three trains. It did not really seem as if Hornby made train sets for kids, more for adults.

You don't see kids playing with train sets so often now. I suppose children have computer games and parents don't have time for train sets for kids any more.

American Flyer Train Sets

American Flyer train sets were manufactured in Wide Scale, which is comparable to Lionel's Standard Gauge trains, O Gauge before World War II and in S gauge which is the most widespread size of gauge or scale for American Flyer train sets.

Although American Flyer train sets are best remembered as S gauge train sets of the 1950s made as a division of the A. C. Gilbert Company, American Flyer was initially an independent company the origins of which go back to almost half a century earlier. Chicago, Illinois-based toymaker William Frederick Hafner developed a clockwork motor for toy cars in 1901 while working for a company called Toy Auto Company. According to William Hafner's son, John, he had developed a clockwork train running on O gauge track by 1905.

Marx Trains

The trains of the 1930s were a blend of steam locomotives and streamliners. Marx produced its own versions of the popular trains of the day. These were stamped steel and tin lithographed toys all the way. One of the first was the Mercury, based on a New York Central streamliner. Soon after came the Commodore Vanderbilt streamlined locomotive, a design that remained in the catalogue for decades. The M10000 and M10005 streamliners of the Union Pacific were reproduced in several color schemes. So, too, were the stream-styles Canadian Pacific Royal Hudsons.

The cars they pulled were bright, attractive toys. There were boxcars, stock cars, gondolas and cabeese. Marx produced operating searchlight and crane cars. For the line side were operating crossing lights and signals, plus tin litho stations and switch towers.

Marx trains offered the customer an assortment of products at very affordable prices. Marx trains were the budget model railways of the day and one could afford an entire Marx trains toy railway for the cost of just one Lionel train set.

Christmas Train Sets

At Christmas, train sets were one of the most welcome presents of the decades between 1930 and 1960. In those days children dreamed of receiving new Christmas train sets or addition to their existing train sets.

The idea of Christmas train sets seemed to die out in the late Sixties and Seventies with the advent of Scalectrix. Other toys and then computers kept Christmas train sets off the top five gift list, but is it making a come-back now?

Polar Express Train Sets

Polar Express train sets are an off-shoot from the book "The Polar Express", which is a 1985 children's book written and illustrated by Chris Van Allsburg. It was adapted as an Oscar-nominated motion-capture film in 2004.

The book starts off on the night of Christmas Eve with a young boy lying in bed waiting to hear the sound of Santa's sleigh bells. Suddenly, he hears loud rumbling outside on the street as a magical train called The Polar Express pulls up in front of his house. The boy ventures outside and is invited by the train's conductor to journey to the North Pole. The train is filled with children, all dressed in their pajamas, who drink hot chocolate as rich as melted chocolate bars and the train rumbles on.

Nowadays, many younger children like to receive a Polar Express train set for Christmas.