BachmannTrains - Thunder Valley Ready To Run Electric Train Set - N Scale Multi ,Medium

At $76, this is a great price. Seriously, try buying an engine, 3 cars, track and a controller for less. You can't. Some of the other starter sets are worth considering though.The track with this one is only enough to make a circle which is fine, but others come with enough to make an oval which was my first purchase after buying this along with 4 more cars.I did see the same exact set for ~$90 on another site which seems to have good prices on other n-scale items. The list price is $165 on Bachmann's site.Other sets may be worth considering. Some of them even come with the obligatory Sunnyvale Train Depot which I also bought to complement this.The track was dead simple to set up even with my failing eyesight and I recommend buying a re-railer for about $2 to put the cars on the track right. The couplers are not perfect - they don't always couple properly but once they are coupled they have been solid.I even mixed in an Atlas car with their own style of knuckle couplers and experienced zero problems. The Atlas couplers are probably better than the Bachmann couplers anyway. So far there has been no reason to change them out.I've had it for just over two weeks and the train has run flawlessly except for one time it inexplicably stopped even though the light was still shining (so it had power). I reversed it and it went around backwards without problem and then went forwards again without any problem after that.Model railroading can quickly get expensive. I've spent about $200 so far and all I did was add 6 pieces of straight track, 4 cars and 4 buildings, and 50 automobiles for some stupid reason. The station was $15.99 (came assembled) and the bar that I have yet to build is $20. The 50 autos were $9.99 and are too many to know what to do with.I've got plans for scenery, more track and other building and trains which will easily raise the cost to $1000.But for $76 you get a nice small train that goes in a circle and works very well. You can leave it at that if you want and not spend anything more.

I bought this for a 9-year-old. The train scale was chosen to accommodate a smaller environment. It ended up being about 2' around, which was good enough for us. I don't know that my son would have gotten the small connectors on the track right all by himself. There are two small clips on each piece that need to be carefully lined up. The connectors on the car are also a challenge sometimes, probably because of the scale. He gets them back together better than I do now. Gets lots of practice thanks to our cat.The only thing that caught me off guard was the cost of some of the expansion's pieces for this scale. one half of a switching y piece is about $28 needing two of them and some more track gets you close to another $75. It's a good set though and has been working well!

The media could not be loaded. My son and I wanted to get into hobby trains and decided to start at the ground floor with this basic set. As soon as I set the track up, the train ran beautifully right out of the box. It is basic and not as detailed as more expensive variants, but it is great for my 7 year old and I. We've already added accessories and began building model kits to sit along the track. This train is a great entry point for this hobby.

Excellent starter

I was an avid N Gauge model railroader from way back when I was a teen. I thought this train set would be a cool gift for my nephew so I ordered it. Yesterday was his 13th birthday and I gave him this set for his gift. We set it up on the kitchen table without issues but when we tried to connect the freight cars, the first box car connected fine. The second connected fine too but then nothing would couple to the second car even though there appeared to be nothing wrong with the couplers. We attempted to couple it several times then gave up and set it aside. The remaining cars coupled fine. So then we slowly ran the train but it derailed about 1/2 way around the small circle of track. The directions say to adjust the track with needle nose pliers to made sure the track sections match perfectly. Well, I didn't have needle nose pliers with me. This gift turned out to be a huge embarrassment for me. Back in the days of Atlas trains and even Bachmann trains, we never had these issues. Quality has certainly suffered since the fun days of model railroading. If you want a beginner set, this is not it.

This is a nice beginner's train set. The engine is nicely detailed and runs well after the break-in period (about 1 hour of use, with lots of starts and stops). The freight cars look good and the metal wheels roll smoothly. The EZ Track takes a little practice, but in general is easy to assemble.There are two minor drawbacks to this set. The first is that the dummy knuckle couplers are very hard to get connected. I recommend replacing them with EZ Mate Mark 2 couplers, which work much better. [To replaces the couplers, you will need a set of jeweller’s screwdrivers, 2 pairs of short couplers, and 2 pairs of medium or long couplers. The box car and tank car need short couplers, and the engine and caboose need medium couplers but long also work.] The second drawback is that the basic circle of track gets pretty boring pretty fast. I recommend supplementing it with 3 packages each of the 11.25-inch radius curved track and 9-inch straight track. That gives you enough track to build some more interesting layouts.