Customer Reviews

Thomas And Friends Wooden Railway - Up And Away Expansion Pack

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This set would be nice if it came with more risers. Immediately, I had to run out to purchase more risers to create the elevated levels. It is fine on a train table if you have enough curves and risers to keep it going. We also have the Nilo table that allows you to cantilever the track off the edge of the table, but being that my son is only 2 1/2, that's a concept better saved for next year. You probably need at least 4 additional risers b/c you need to have a riser at each track link for support. I ended up running out the same day for risers, which I could only find Brio, which are slightly shorter than the Thomas risers and creates some instability. You're only limited by your creativity and when you come up with a new idea, unfortunately, it also means purchasing more track parts.

My grandson loves his Thomas track and he really likes "hills", so I thought this would be a good addition. Unfortunately there are a couple of big problems with this set.
1. The slopes up to the next level are not gradual enough, so trains going up the hill will lift cars in the middle off the track; which then tip over and derail.

2. If you stack the risers, the clearance isn't quite enough for an engine coming up the lower hill to not hit its funnel, or roof of its cab, on the ceiling of the "tunnel", where it then gets stuck.

So the risers should be a bit taller and the slopes a bit more gradual before this would be a really nice addition to your Thomas track.

We started with a basic generic wooden train set and have been adding accessories over time. This is one of the better ones we have bought. I was going to just get the stacking risers but this a a better value for your money. When building your layout though, I would start with this piece and build off from it to better incorporate it.

We found that this set when put together as a double decker like it is meant to be, is just too long for our train table. Luckily the stacking risers can be taken apart to make two seperate hills but that is not what we were hoping for.

However, good quality as usual.

We buy Ikea track usually - it's cheaper and works with the Thomas trains perfectly.

The Thomas tracks fit snugly with Ikea's - a little difficult for the 2y/o but not too hard for parents to connect. The height-difference is a bit of a gap with the Ikea bridges (but not enough to disrupt train-play). The Ikea supports need to be flipped upside-down to work with the height of the Thomas track - simple enough but makes them slightly more shifty (but not a real issue). Overall, I like that we can buy the inexpensive track and still use it with great success when combining with the more complicated Thomas expansions.

I was a little disappointed with this set. The elevation change is nice but as someone else pointed out there are more track pieces that rise than there are risers. Also, a couple of the pieces had wood that looked poor quality. The wood looked either slightly charred or just defective. It doesn't affect operation just aesthetics, I'll get a picture at some point to demonstrate this.

Our Grandson loves Thomas and especially being able to build a bridge with Up & Away. The wooden track fit well with the rest of his Thomas collection. Seems to work best with elevated track foundation so am glad that we purchased them together.

My son and I have gotten a lot of really good use out of this expansion pack. I bought it to be used with the Sodor Bridge (we LOVE this bridge!), and this pack was a good choice. We don't use a train table, so we're not limited by a table's surface area. We just use the floor! We're able to cover a lot of length and get some nice elevation with the tracks in this pack, so it's a good value, but I do agree with the reviewer that said that this pack needs more risers (ideally, it would come with a couple more pairs of risers). Still, it's a good value, and provides a lot of fun!

My kids (4 years and 2 years old) love playing this toy. We bought the Thomas traing engine with the basic wood railway and now we are lovers of this toy. Really easy to use, durable and funny to play. This expansion pack adds great high ways and tunnels to the railway.

This was a Christmas gift for our son, who loves Thomas and likes to play with wooden railway at home or wherever we go and they have it. We did no own any of the complete sets, just bought some buildings and expansion pack... This is great, since the kids can let the engines go downhill by themselfs, and my son get excited watching them go fast down. I thing it would be good, it there are some extra pieces of stuckers and curved ( short ) tracks, since, as somebody mentioned before, this 2 level tracks do not fit to the train table if you let them go all the way down to the ground. The only way is to keep them elevated and turn them as easly as possible. For this reason our track is not fully connected yet, because we have to buy some more tracks to finish it. Well, my kids do not mind that much letting Thomas to run out of the tracks occasioanally.