The purpose of this blog

Photo courtesy of Patryce Harris Photography © 2012

When I got started with train sets, I scoured the web and was surprised to not find many sites dedicate to, or featuring pictures of freestyle train layouts.  Maybe most people just buy the store bought sets and sticking to the diagrams in the box, or buy a train table with an included set with one stationary layout and never veer.

For those of us who are either easily bored, highly engaged and/or like to mix and match old and new pieces, off-brand and Learning Curve official Thomas tracks, there isn't much guidance or many ideas of how to put things together in an interesting way. People don't seem to TALK about trains much.  I think there are eggheads who build them alone and don't socialize (perhaps) or people who just don't think to share information?  I don't know.  But when I do searches on Google for a particular topic, I find tons of sites hawking their wares, but very few blogs and forums dedicated to wooden trains.  I've come across maybe 5, and it is frustrating.  So in the spirit of "Be The Change", I'm throwing my hat in the ring, and I'll try and use as many keyboards as possible to make searches easy to find my page.

The best site I found was called "Wooden Track Mind" and is a lovely blog, but it only has pictures and it hasn't been updated in awhile.

I want to share whatever I find out with other moms and dads who take the path less taken, thus the birth of this blog.  When I started out, only about 3 or 4 months ago, I didn't know the difference between Battat, Thomas, Chuggington, Brio, Vario, Imaginarium or Kidcraft.  I didn't understand why "made in China" can sometimes be a problem, or the difference between a splitter, an adapter, or between a roundhouse and a shed.

I hope by blathering on about our daily/weekly findings, it shortens your learning curve (pun totally intended - you'll get it later.)