Daughter Outgrows Thomas - Leads to Father/Daughter Project

Allan, what a great dad.  You turned your daughters waning interest in Thomas and opened her eyes to a whole new world.  Wishing you many happy years with your cute little daughter working on the railroad.  Makes me a little sad, my little girl is 22 and is now teaching 5th grade. It seems like yesterday she was in 5th grade.  Glad to see you are making the most of these years.

Chris Sheldon

That's great! Glad to see her getting to enjoy the hobby with you!

Allan, Sarah's Express looks great!  That is a great project that suited her.  My daughters, who are now grown and married, quickly grew tired of my N scale layout at the time.  Instead of focusing on trains, the older one wanted to build a dollhouse.  We built a 1:12 scale dollhouse which she took with her to her house where she now lives with her husband.  Our younger daughter also built a dollhouse which for now resides in our garage.  She and her husband just moved out of their tiny upstairs apartment into their first house.  Once she gets situated, she will be moving her dollhouse too.

I hope Sarah keeps interested in getting you to show her the basics so she can make projects as she grows older and more capable!

Very nice. Great paint job.

Great project.  Sarah's train looks amazing!

These are the times you will both remember for the rest of time.

Thanks for sharing,

Don

Nice ROY G. B(I)V train!!  What a great idea/project!!

And you can be sure this train will be in HER family for a very, very l-o-n-g time!

KD

Glad she spoke up and you listened, because that is one cool project!

That's the way to keep her interested.  Very nice project.  Since it moved along quicker than you thought now she'll be able to run it during the summer.

I'm just a tad over 6 ... and have yet to outgrow Thomas...  Does it hurt when it happens?

What a great project for both of you. I'm sure she will treasure that train for years.

My son (OK I'm to blame too),  and I had a huge Thomas collection. The battery powered ones with the blue track. Unfortunately I didn't have room for a layout until recently so we never made the jump to O gauge.

One of the best posts I've read in a long time. Bravo Sir, Bravo.

Paul

You sir are so very lucky. I built my layout with my Grandson in mind, and put manual switches on so he could throw them and be part of the operation. Since he couldn't do that and stay face planted in his phone, he lost interest.

Fortunately, my Great Granddaughter loves the trains, especially the whistles, so there is always that hope.

Well done.

A very interesting take on the Girl's Train, which seems to garner so much criticism for not being realistic enough for girls.  May not be pastels, but it looks like Sarah likes color.  Good for her!

Great stuff! I need to figure out how to incorporate those LOL dolls with trains to get my little girl interested.

Wonderful project Allan!

Thanks All - in the video, that was actually her running it and blowing the whistle.  I plan on designing the decals the next few weeks and if she approves, printing them and putting them on.  One will be the engine number 4212 which is the month/day/year of her birth.  I'll post more pictures when they are done.  

Allan & Sarah:

You win the LTT (Lifetime Treasure Train) Award for jointly creating a much more memorable train set for your daughter than Lionel's GIRL TRAIN.  Quite a collaboration!

Mike M.  (ritrainguy)

Nice job, Allan. Make sure to get a decal that says "Sarah Express".

Here is the decal set I will be making (so long as Sarah Approves ).  

The top are for the Tender and the others are for each passenger car.  I'm using DK Cool Crayon font.

You planted a seed into your daughters head.
She will never forget this.
Take some of the photos and frame them and hang them in your train room.
Also tell her she still have Thomas and can run that too.

That’s great! Beautiful story. 

Alex 

Excellent!! 👍 🚂

Great job, Dad! Beautiful little girl, too!

My little girl just hit 7 months.   Seeing things like this makes the future even brighter.   Thank you 

Wonderful story and project!

Peter

Great job! My son is 9 and still plays with his Lionel Thomas set. Although lately he’s channeled his inner Gomez Adams and runs his Pennsylvania Flyer and Thomas on a figure 8 - and you know the rest. I have to say he does respect dads (mine) trains on the home layout and loves to run them via his iPad. 

I gotta agree---great post and great story!!  Kudos to you for letting her create something she likes!

-Greg

That is a great idea!

Very nice and love the colors!  I got the same spray paint handle for my daughter - works really well for the little ones.

Hi All - Thanks so much for all the kind words!  

We didn't do much this weekend, but I did finish the touch up paint on the Engine and Tender after Sarah was in bed, and printed out the decals.  I'll spray them to seal them tonight and then Sarah and I will apply them this week.  Our goal is to finish before National Train Day on Saturday.  Our Club (Austin Tinplate Trackers) will be setting up a small layout at our local Amtrak Station and Sarah wants to take her train to show it off.  Here are the decals we went with.  It is pretty much the same as above, but I colored clouds and extended the rainbows to the clouds.  The small 4212 numbers are for the front of the engine and two of the bigger ones are for the Cab.  The third one is for the back of the Tender.

I'll post a video of the train once it is done.  

Excellent for Sarah’s Express!!

Hi All,

Here is an update on The Sarah Express.  We finished the decals and I fixed all the wiring.  With yesterday being National Train Day, our club was set up at our Local Amtrak Station, and Sarah couldn't wait to show off her train!  It ran great and everyone at the club loved it.  Here are some pics and a video of the final result:

Looks great Allan and Sarah!!  That is one special train!

What a great way to create more father & Daughter bonding. Your creating memories for the both of you.     

What a wonderful project. I might try to convince my own daughter whenever I have her to get into something like this.

Thanks all.  I think the best part was that I got to let her determine what she wanted and I just got to make suggestions.  It made her so excited to show everyone her train.  

C&O Allie posted:

So my daughter just turned 6 and we had a conversation a few weeks ago:

Her:  Daddy, do you know why I don't run my Thomas Train anymore?

Me:  No, why?

Her:  I don't like Thomas anymore...

After thinking about it for a few minutes (and since I completed a few custom box cars - Cubs Championship Car and Wisconsin Badger Car), I asked her if she would like to do a project over the summer to get some passenger cars an paint them together.  I already had an older Polar Express Engine plus I had an extra shell I had intended to use for my Hanukkah Train, but I ended up not using it in lieu of another engine.  I offered those to her as well.  So she quickly said yes, she would love to do that, and she wanted to make a Rainbow Train we would call The Sarah Express.

So things moved faster than doing it over the summer... 

I found some older Milwaukee Road Passenger Cars and got 6 of them.  After prepping them, and the engine, I helped her spray them with primer and then the colors.  On the engine, we added Navy Blue to the boiler, tender, and passenger car roofs.  Then each passenger car was painted a color of the rainbow.  We put everything back together today.  There are a few things to touch up, lighting to fix, and they need decals, but she loves the new train.  Here are some pictures of our endeavor and a video of it running:

Allan, your post showing you and your 6 year old daughter painting Sarah's Rainbow Train is a great example of a parent and child being fully engaged in a model railroad activity.

Such moments make this hobby great.

Arnold D. Cribari posted:

C&O Allie posted:

So my daughter just turned 6 and we had a conversation a few weeks ago:

Her:  Daddy, do you know why I don't run my Thomas Train anymore?

Me:  No, why?

Her:  I don't like Thomas anymore...

After thinking about it for a few minutes (and since I completed a few custom box cars - Cubs Championship Car and Wisconsin Badger Car), I asked her if she would like to do a project over the summer to get some passenger cars an paint them together.  I already had an older Polar Express Engine plus I had an extra shell I had intended to use for my Hanukkah Train, but I ended up not using it in lieu of another engine.  I offered those to her as well.  So she quickly said yes, she would love to do that, and she wanted to make a Rainbow Train we would call The Sarah Express.

So things moved faster than doing it over the summer... 

I found some older Milwaukee Road Passenger Cars and got 6 of them.  After prepping them, and the engine, I helped her spray them with primer and then the colors.  On the engine, we added Navy Blue to the boiler, tender, and passenger car roofs.  Then each passenger car was painted a color of the rainbow.  We put everything back together today.  There are a few things to touch up, lighting to fix, and they need decals, but she loves the new train.  Here are some pictures of our endeavor and a video of it running:

Allan, your post showing you and your 6 year old daughter painting Sarah's Rainbow Train is a great example of a parent and child being fully engaged in a model railroad activity.

Such moments make this hobby great.

One more thing: I watched your video and the results of you and your daughter's efforts are outstanding.

Thanks Arnold!  Here is a second video of her train running at a small layout our club set up for National Train Day.