Ethan's Suspended Train Set

Ethan recently turned four, and we wanted to do something special, since this is the first birthday he may remember when gets older.  His favorite thing right now is Thomas the Train, so we decided to get him a train set.  Of course, we understand that kids' favorite things change as often as their shoe size, but the cool thing about a train set is that it's something that can evolve as he grows up.


We immediately realized there were two problems we'd run up against with the train idea.  First, our house is only 1,200 square feet, and we barely have room for the toys he already has.  Second, Ethan's favorite activity is destroying the things we buy for him, which is fine and dandy if we're talking about his little $15 trains, but the Lionel O gauge sets can get pretty pricy.  So we decided to kill two birds with one stone, and build the layout seven feet above the floor, where he'll be able to enjoy, but not touch, and it won't take up any room on the floor.     


This being the 21st century, the first thing I did was jump online and Google "suspended train set," which yielded about 2.3 million results.  The first result to come up, was a blog, much like this one, where a guy with a few boys had inherited an HO gauge set, and built a shelf around his boys' room, including a tunnel that went through the wall and in the closet (http://www.murraymadhouse.net/projects/trains/).  I did a lot of additional research, but ultimately decided to model the train around this one, as it seemed to be the most practical, easiest to build, and least prefabricated.  I decided against the tunnel through the closet, partly due to it being a little more work than I wanted to take on, and also because I decided to go with a larger gauge (O), which would leave less margin for error on the turning radius, and I didn't want to screw it up.  Besides, there was plenty already that I could screw up, so I decided to just do a simple track around the perimeter of the room.   


The first step was to create a border around the room with molding, which would later support the shelves.  Note: Now that I have done this project from start to finish, I would have put up the wallpaper border first were I to do it again, but either way will work just fine.

After the molding was up, we found a scenic wallpaper border and put it on above the molding.  Believe it or not, finding the wallpaper border wasn't easy.  I finally found the perfect backdrop at http://www.borderstore.com/.  What I liked most about this border was that 1) it didn't look like a 3rd grader finger painted the scene (nothing against 3rd graders), and 2) it came in 12' sections, which meant that I wouldn't need to repeat the pattern every 2-3 feet.  it was very easy to install, and looks great behind the train set.  We chose the mountain scene because it went well with the color scheme of the room, but there are many other backdrops available, and from what I understand, there are stores out there that specialize in train backdrops that have much more variety. 

After the border was up, it was time to cut, stain and install the shelving.  This is not hard to do, it just requires precision and patience.  For the longer pieces it helps to have a second person.  For the ends of shelving not resting directly on the molding, I used mounting brackets to fasten them to the adjacent shelf.  I cut corner pieces and mounted with brackets so that there was room to make the turns with the O gauge track.  I made sure to cut to the right size before staining and lacquering.  After the shelves were up, I drilled holes and screwed them to the molding to make them as secure as possible.  I considered putting some kind of barrier around the edge of the shelf to prevent the train from falling in the event of a derailment or earthquake, but so far we haven't had an issue with that.  Note: We now tend to park the train in the tunnel or on a bridge when not in use, so that if an earthquake were to shake things up, the train wouldn't fall off the shelf. 

After all of the shelving was up, it was time for the fun part.  On a Saturday morning about a week before his birthday, I took Ethan to a model train store here in Orange County (http://milepost38modeltrains.com/).  When we walked through the door and he saw the shelves stacked with trains and accessories, he stopped in his tracks and had to just breathe for a minute to take it all in.  He was in heaven.  He immediately ran to the Thomas section and started filling his shopping cart (arms) with the $15 engines.  I told him we were there to get something bigger, and led him to the Lionel section where there were all different types of sets.  For a minute I tried to convince him to get something other than the Thomas set since I thought he might grow out of Thomas in a couple of years, but he wouldn't even consider anything but the blue Thomas engine with his two coaches, Annie and Clarabel.  The starter set only came with a few feet of track, so make sure you have already determined how much extra you will need if you take on a project like this.  I had done the math, and bought a little more than I would need.  The store was very good about letting me return the excess.

From there, it was just about deciding where to put buildings and trees and other accessories.  Most of the accessories I bought on eBay, including a bridge kit.  I modified the kit a little and was actually able to build two bridges instead of just the one.

Building the train for Ethan was a lot of fun, and it's rewarding to see the finished product.  He loves running the train around the track, stopping at stations, houses and the water tower.  We put the transformer on the floor so he can control everything himself, and I bought a separate transformer to power the lights in all of the accessories.  If you have a child who's into trains and you want to do something like this, plan on it taking at least a couple of weekends to build (not to mention the accessory additions you will want to do later on).  You can look around and price everything, but even the savvy shopper will probably spend quite a bit on this kind of layout, depending on what kind of train and accessories you choose to buy.  But if this is still something he enjoys in 10 years, it will have been well worth the money and effort spent.  Just seeing him stop whatever he is doing to show visitors his train set is rewarding enough for me.