Lego train?

Any experience with Lego trains? DS has been asking for one consistently this xmas season and I'm really on the fence - so, so expensive, he never played with any of his Thomas stuff, where to even set it up. It's hard for me to believe this is going to be worth the $. OTOH, he loves all things remote controlled and if this got him away from pretend guns, etc. I'd be ok with that. And I had my own (non lego) model railroad that I loved working on for several years, I think I was a bit older but maybe not much (but also we lived back east in the land of basements and rec rooms and space wasn't an issue. )

DS1 asked for one a few years ago. He was probably 8. He built it and played with it that Christmas season. It eventually was taken apart and the pieces added to our general lego buckets. If your DS wants remote control trains, I would look at the Playmobil train sets. They're expensive but if they are anything like the rest of the Playmobil toys they should hold up well to play.