what's the differance between these thomas sets? Paging katie...

[elaineandmichaelsmommy]

Sil left a bunch of trackmaster tracks at fil's house after her visit but she took all the engines home with her. Lousy and convoluted logic to say the least but i'd like my dc to be able to play with the tracks since we live in the same town as fil and sil does not and visits once a year.

I've been looking on craigslist and there's a great deal of ambiguity as to the labeling of any thomas set that's not wooden. Of course I'd like to get the engines to go with the track at fil's on cl instead of new since we don't play with them every day. So here's the question-

what's the differance between the plastic battery powered engines that run on the trackmaster sets (grey plastic track) and the remote controlled sets and the "take along thomas" sets? Any differance because the names seem interchangable to the cl people around here and I just need them to run on the track set at fil's.

So I just need to know what I'm looking for on cl and what wording to look for . Thanks a lot.

[jerigirl]

I am not sure if this link helps you. We are just getting into Thomas at our house. All I know is that the Take Along sets are not compatible with the wooden stuff.
http://www.amazon.com/wooden-take-along-Thomas-cars/forum/FxE6Y0NI6THROQ/Tx29X80LMK4WWZO/1?_encoding=UTF8&asin=B000068FCA

[pharmjenn]

I am new to Thomas as well, but have done some research because I ended up with Trackmaster. From my experience, the Take Along is smaller than the other 2. We have a couple wooden railway trains that fit on the trackmaster tracks.

None of the tracks are interchange. So if there is trackmaster available to you and you want more, or the building accesories, you want to stick with that.

The take along trains seem smaller to me, and are metal. The wooden trains are the traditional and seem the best quality.

All the remote control trains I have seen are trackmaster. But there may be others I have not seen in the other types.

For you, I would avoid anything that says Take Along, or is metal, as I think only TakeAlong are diecast, the others are wooden or plastic. Not positive though.

good luck. I would just purchase a couple trains to start to see if your kids like it.

[clc053103]

Let's see if I can help- the three main types of thomas tracks (others do exist, less common or no longer made).

Trackmaster: brown plastic tracks, older tracks in this series were blue but there are adapters to connect. Trackmaster trains include the battery operated as well as remote control versions. They are a little more difficult to find- Toys R Us no longer carries them, but Target has a good selection and you can find a few at Walmart and KMart too. Tyco I think makes another line of plastic trains now, that can be found at some Toys R Us. They eat a lot of batteries but I have found that DS prefers to operate them manually so I don't even bother putting the batteries in them. He also likes to take these trains out to dinner, etc to drive without the tracks.

Wooden: the standard wood tracks, wood trains, compatable with a lot of non thomas lines like Brio.

Takealong: grey plastic tracks, diecast metal engines. Plastic sets usually have handles (the "takealong" aspect).

DS has all three of these and plays with all 3. I think the takealong gets the least love b/c they are out the least, wood is on a traintable and the trackmaster set comes out a LOT. In fact, they may be his favorite.