Someone is going to be a happy little dude on Christmas morning, methinks.
This is the result of several days of research and scouring Kijiji. Megan warned me once, when Jack was little, about the intricacies involved in train purchases. I didn't fully understand what she meant until I went down the rabbit hole myself. Dear god. My final assessment is that there are TOO MANY KINDS OF TRAINS. No one needs that many kinds/brands of trains.
The resale value is also insane. I'm not buying a Porsche people! It's a toy train table.
This set is the Imaginarium set from a few years ago. As far as I can tell you can't buy this exact one in stores anymore unless you can find it on clearance somewhere (I couldn't). The new one is cool but has a lot of dark colours (more black and red) and I didn't like it as much. I snagged this exact one on Kijij from a very nice couple with two older little boys. They were very meticulous and neat and so this thing is in mint condition and very clean, which is awesome. We're going to have to spend all of Christmas Eve figuring out how to put it back together like this, but that's okay. :)
Of course since the mom cleaned up their train table to sell it, they wanted to play with it again all of a sudden. When I showed up to take it away the one little guy started to cry a bit and hid behind his hockey bag; the other one kissed it and said "goodbye train table, I love you". As you can imagine, I felt horrible but the mom said "don't mind them, they haven't played with it in about a year, don't feel guilty it's making room for new toys". Okay lady, but really, your kids know how to make a gal feel wretched.
In the end I showed them a picture of Emmett and promised we would take very good care of the train table and then everything was (mostly) okay.
We will take good care of it though. This same item with the name "Thomas" printed on the side of it retails for more than $1,000.00. Yes, that's right, not one hundred... one thousand dollars once you buy the table and the separate track system. That's right, the train table at Chapters, the one that people leave their children at for hours on end, costs more than many of the appliances in your house.
In our house happiness costs a lot less than that and it comes used from Kijiji.