Looking for track plan ideas for your child’s wooden railway set? Here are 9 quick and easy designs they’ll enjoy building and playing with.
Some children like to build railways, others like dive into the action and play trains. And, if your child is the latter, they won’t want to wait around while you figure out and construct a track plan.
Now – thanks to programmer John Graham-Cumming – your child needn’t wait.
In this blog post, from 2010, John explains how he wrote a program to map out possible track plans for an Ikea 20-piece train set. It’s a fascinating post and appeals to my inner geek and I’ll certainly be trying his program in future but in the meantime here are layouts it produced.
(For a bigger version of the plans, click on the picture)
These should work with pretty much any wooden track (Brio or Bigjigs for example) as long as you have 12 curves, two straight pieces, and a two-part bridge required but even if you don’t have all of them these will give some great ideas to work from.
The full post and more details is here.
For more tips and guides to wooden trains see my other posts on trains sets for kids.
Andy is a lifelong modeler, writer, and founder of modelrailwayengineer.com. He has been building model railways, dioramas, and miniatures for over 20 years. His passion for model making and railways began when he was a child, building his first layout at the age of seven.
Andy’s particular passion is making scenery and structures in 4mm scale, which he sells commercially. He is particularly interested in modelling the railways of South West England during the late Victorian/early Edwardian era, although he also enjoys making sci-fi and fantasy figures and dioramas. His website has won several awards, and he is a member of MERG (Model Railway Electronics Group) and the 009 Society.
When not making models, Andy lives in Surrey with his wife and teenage son. Other interests include history, science fiction, photography, and programming. Read more about Andy.