I bought Steamies and Diesels in a previous woot. It's pretty great - comes with a lot of track, including 4 forks, tight curves, and a few m-m and f-f adapters.

Only one problem: some engines are too wide or tall to fit through the station. None of the ones that come with the set, but the Early Engineers Thomas, for instance, is too chunky. Likewise the mountaintop bridge can be a choke point for some trains.

One other thing to be aware of: the male mountains have a pull-out shelf to rest the bridge on. Look for a detent in the connection side of the mountain, and pull out. Before we noticed that, we tried all kinds of crazy rubber band contraptions to hold the bridge in place.

Happy chugging!

The track that comes with these sets is crap. The larger set pieces are passable, but the track seems almost too wide or something for the trains to really fit. They handle corners poorly and frequently derail for no reason. If you wanted to spend time making the rails wider, they would probably work better.

laizurkainon wrote:The track that comes with these sets is crap. The larger set pieces are passable, but the track seems almost too wide or something for the trains to really fit. They handle corners poorly and frequently derail for no reason. If you wanted to spend time making the rails wider, they would probably work better.

My kids issue is the small radius corners make it hard to take more than 3 cars around the corner without a derailment. If you get a set with the larger radius tracks, you can get >10 cars around at a time. My kids like to make huge trains (>10 cars) and drive them. We don't use the smaller radius tracks except on spurs when we build a track.

Error in the Specs section for the Percy at the Diesel Works set: if the photo (and, for that matter, the set's name) are to be believed, the set comes with Percy, not Thomas.

We don't have any of these particular sets, but for anyone looking to start or vastly expand a Thomas collection, they look like a good deal.

Previous woots for these items:

All three sets
Just 'Diesels & Steamies'

The latter is the most solid of the three sets, definitely recommended.

The reviews on Amazon for Percy and the Dieselworks as well as the Misty Island Adventure set are pretty poor over all. The reviews for the Steamies and the Diesels set are much better.

laizurkainon wrote:The track that comes with these sets is crap.

I agree that the tight corners are tough - especially if you have a long train or an articulated (multi-truck) car (many examples in M+D and Brio, not as many in Thomas). But calling the whole set of track crap is ridiculous hyperbole.

The straight pieces are true, even, well-cut, detailed, single-piece construction, and painted with street on the back. The mountains (in the S+D set) are great - the tunnels are cut high and the whole thing isn't nearly as likely to fall over as a leg-based bridge kit.

We have track from Brio, Nuchi, the dollar store, generic Amazon, train shows, and Ikea (mostly due to random grandparent purchases). I'd take this track over any of them.

I totally agree with plavacek... even though our battery powered engines like to jump off the track on the tight corners, the S&D set is definitely not crap. You get a lot of track and a lot of unique pieces for the money and you should be able to reconfigure the layout with a little imagination.

To fix the derailment issues with our battery powered engines I bought the two pack set of these:
http://www.amazon.com/Suretrack-Locking-System-Wooden-Stickers/dp/B0039H7Y1Y/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1356638228&sr=8-2

Not only do they keep our layouts together but by positioning them at a few key points they help nudge the engines around the tight curves to keep them on the tracks. We had James running for about 20 minutes the other night with no derailments.

My biggest caveat with the S&D set is that the mountain pieces are quite tall and if you release a normal engine or car (not powered) down the track it will derail at the bottom (which might be part of the fun). So if you are not using battery powered engines you will need to help your trains down the hills as well.

plavacek wrote:I agree that the tight corners are tough - especially if you have a long train or an articulated (multi-truck) car (many examples in M+D and Brio, not as many in Thomas). But calling the whole set of track crap is ridiculous hyperbole.

I can't help it - I am disappointed - Thomas used to be a wooden train set - now they add more and more plastic contraptions to it - what a shame!