Fortunately while our son's nursery was closed (it's now open again) the weather was remarkably good and so I decided we needed something we would both find fun and interesting to play with out in the garden. A chance browse through Amazon and I found the ideal solution given that we both like trains and he loves his Duplo ... a Märklin LGB set containing a circle of 45mm gauge track, a G Scale locomotive, and two wagons the tops of which are essentially Lego base plates. First I was made to mow the lawn and then we read the instructions and assembled the track.
With the track setup we then just sat and played. As you can tell we've had it out a few times and in different places in the garden trying to find the flattest bit of lawn (harder than it sounds given our garden). While I wouldn't leave him alone with it, he is only three and a half after all, I'm more than happy to let him play and be in control so he finds it great fun... at least until it's time to pack it away and then that's my job!
To give you an idea of what it looks like in motion we even have a short video. It would have been longer but he decided to stop the train while I was videoing. I told you I trusted him to be in control!
Now I'm not going to claim that this was a cheap purchase but when you start looking at the details the set seems remarkable good value. Working just from the RRP listed on Märklin's website the set I bought costs €249.99 which at current exchange rate would be £224.42. As I said I bought the set via Amazon and while it's currently listed at £242.25 it's worth watching the page for a day or so as the price seems to fluctuate wildly (possibly due to the exchange rate) and I grabbed mine when it dropped all the way to £206.58 including P&P. It's worth noting that the power pack has a European plug so you'll need to add the cost of a travel adaptor if you don't already have one. Either way I thought that was a bit of a bargain, being around £17 less than the RRP and including the postage.
If you start looking at the cost of what is in the starter set though, you'll probably be even more surprised at just how cheap the starter sets (even at full RRP) actually are. The set I bought is made up from their track and power only starter set, two of the block wagons, and a locomotive. The track set RRP is €179.99 and the wagons are €39.99 each which already brings the total to €259.97. Weirdly this is €9.98 more than the cost of the whole set and we haven't included the locomotive yet! The locomotive in my set is no longer available so I don't know what its RRP was, but looking through their catalogue their cheapest locomotive, which appears to use almost identical tooling, sells for €229.99 so I would imagine a similar price. All told that would bring the RRP for the items in the set to €489.96 which would be £439.85 which is £233.27 more than I paid! In fact the full cost is more than twice what I paid for it.
Now of course, these sets are priced to entice you in to the hobby (with little if any profit margin) in the hope that you'll buy more track, wagons, and locomotives but they certainly seem a very cost effective way into the hobby, and if you decide it's not for you you might even be able to make a profit selling the items separately. I won't be selling mine, but I'm not yet sure what the long term plan for playing around in the larger scales is going to be. Once I figure that out I'm sure there will be a post or two.
