Brand compatibility

A lot of different brand distribute compatable items ... not too much...

Nearly all brands of wooden rails are compatable : the small slack from one rail to another make no problem... since they are designed in Europe. Chinese circuits are often of a poor quality (imperfect sandpapering, wood too light , magnets too weak).

That affects also the bests: the "my first electric railway" from Brio with a wagon does not pass above bridge 33351 which is very common in sets, some more grams in the front would have avoided that. There has been no answer from Brio to this problem so far... On the other hand, engines with two batteries does not show this problems...

If you experience other incompatibilities, please notify us !

Begin at the beginning

The aim of this blog is to start a discussion on ta very interresting subject: the first train toy for children (18 months - 7 years).

This simple toy that can evolve along with the children is not very present in France, but very present in other countries.

A simple search on ebay with Brio keyword gives:

• ebay.fr : 150 (half are only real used items)
  
• ebay.co.uk : 1517
  
• ebay.de : 2174
  
• ebay.com: 10000
  

UK has a culture of Thomas & Friends, train and vehicules with human like faces, along with books, magazines, movies... In UK, Thomas is mande and distributed by Early Learning Curve (ELC), which is relatively cheap. ELC provides a lot of buildings and elements that make the scenes more realistics, and a lot of trains and cabooses. Thomas & Friends is very popular among children. Big retail shops have their own brands (M&S, Tesco...) that are compatible with the reference standard (see below on Brio).


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