I bought this for my Grandson's 3rd birthday and he plays with it constantly. Before receiving it I kept second guessing whether I should have bought the Thomas track, but after receving it, I have no regrets at all. The track itself is every bit as good as the Thomas track and the train station and trains are at least decent. My recommendation is to buy this set and eventually add some of the Thomas trains, stations, and bridges. As is mentioned in other reviews, if you plan on building 2nd level tracks, make sure you buy the Suretrack clips to keep the joined pieces of track together, otherwise you will find yourself and child becoming extreamly frustrated with the track falling apart every time it moves. I took things one step further and nailed/stapled a Suretrack piece to each wood block riser. Now I can literally drag the 2nd story track assembly around and it stays perfectly in place. Also, I don't know what the other reviewer's complaint was about the track geometry being off. I'm an engineer and would have noticed something like this, but didn't. This is truely a great train set!

Have never been disappointed in Melissa & Doug toys that I have bought for Grandchildren.

I got this for my son's birthday. We were gonna get him a Thomas set since he loves Thomas so much but when I saw how much more you get for you're money from this set i got it instead. He LOVES it. You would never know it isn't Thomas tracks. It works with all his trains and provides hours of fun. I would recommend this product to anyone who's looking for a good quality train set.

I'd have to say one of the best truths is that it really does come with practically 135 pieces of useful track and not a lot of filler such as trees and signs. I was also given a cheaper brand of track from a hand-me-down and it doesn't even compare. We bought this train set for our 3 year old's b.day and it was (and continues to be) a hit. I'm not sure who has more fun me (mommy) or my son. I'm quite sure that my 3 yr old and his little brother will be having fun with this for years to come. Highly recommend! I would also like to say, to those of you who are on the fence about whether to buy the more popular name brand tracks, save your money; use the savings to buy the name brand train that will be compatible with your M&Doug set.

We bought this train set at first because we didn't want Thomas the Train, but we wanted something durable. We have a few Melissa & Doug toys, and they are really well-built. Our son LOVES this set. It comes with a few different train configurations to get started, but even at two years old, he is starting to develop his own configuration. We build our tracks on our really old, low quality carpet, so we don't have to worry as much about the train tracks coming apart, but you can invest in some SureTrack if that might be a problem. One thing that is hard for us is that the elevated portion of the track falls easily (because of the lack of stability on our carpet and the lack of self awareness of a two-year-old). We haven't used the bridges that often unless they are shored up against some furniture. All in all, the train set is exactly what we wanted, mostly track, some trains, and very few filler pieces (trees, signs, people, etc.)