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Custom Layouts

Wooden train sets really get fun when you go beyond the layouts included in the box with each set. Seeing your child build layouts however they want with no fear of breaking parts or injury to your child is one of the coolest things about wooden trains.

There are a couple things to consider when making your own custom layouts and those considerations involve what kind of tracks you have available to work with. Starting out I had a few different Wooden train sets to work with and could make many different layouts just from combining those sets. Another route to go would be just buying track pieces individually or in bulk.

Important Things I’ve Learned when Making Custom Layouts

You always want to start building from one direction and work in that direction through completion of the layout. Often times I would have the makings of what I thought was an awesome track layout, only to get close to connecting two ends and realize that somewhere I had messed up and was faced with two male or two female pieces of track that couldn’t connect. I was usually able to fix the problem by reconfiguring sections of the track to run in different directions, but it was certainly frustrating at times. This problem can be overcome by purchasing adapter pieces which are either male-male or female-female. They aren’t expensive and can save you a lot of time remaking what you thought was a killer layout.

Use Splitters Wisely

Using splitters on your layouts is almost a necessity if you want to create any sort of complex layout for your wooden trains. You really want to make sure you have an even number of splitters in your collection though. Otherwise you will end up with an extra splitter you can’t use, or a track that splits off to nowhere. There are many types of splitters available for individual purchase and can add a lot to your layout making fun.

Watch Out for Dead Ends

Another problem I’ve run into once or twice is that I create a layout which I think is great, only to realize that I’ve inadvertently built in bottlenecks where the trains can enter a section of track but not exit or depending on which direction the train is running, it can’t get into a section of the layout at all. This problem is another one that requires reworking your layout to smooth out the bottlenecks but can also be fixed easily by having many track splitters to pull from so you can have trains navigating whatever direction they please through any part of your custom layout.