Bargain Lima Kiddies Starter Set

There's an interesting starter set for kiddies available on Amazon for the bargain price of £23 (at least when I bought one). 

It's quite nice you get;

• 3 car (battery powered driving car) high speed type loco
  
• Oval of plastic track
  
• A bunch of trackside accessories (catanery & signs)
  
• A cardboard tunnel and station kit
  

These are all accurate 00 scale models and I guess the train would run under its own power on a normal HO/OO track if you wanted to.  I think it would make an ideal starter for a kid who is out-growing Thomas but is still interested in trains

Here's some pics;

Seems to me everyone suddenly discovered that they - composing their range of products - somehow neglected kids, so there are many such products hitting the market right now. Here are similar Hornby's "Playtrains"....

Indeed, I posted about the new playtrains range some months back when I first saw the youtube video about them.  As it happens Lima is actually owned these days by Hornby, so really they are just taking the same tactic as they did with the Hornby Paddington set recently.  The big difference is the price, this is the lowest I've seen and is effectively cheaper than a lot of the single boxed Hornby carriages out there lol!

[Super]

Cute little thing. Speaking of little are the wheels?

I'll give them extra props here, the Hornby Playtrains are fictional models [nothing wrong with that mind], but Lima have actually used a real-world model, specifically the Italian 'Italo' express, an Alsthom 'AGV 575' type of TGV derived express train that runs privatized express service on the Italian high-speed network in competition with the state-owned Trenitalia, so yeah, nice one Lima 

Moreover, Playtrains are not just models, they are characters. They have faces, names (Flash, Bolt, Thunder), and as I heard, Hornby had some plans with stories about them. On the other hand, this Lima-train is nice, based on real trains, and a pretty accurate model for the toy in such price range. So although they are obviously targeted at the same audience (kids), they both have their comparative advantages. That's great!

Cute little thing. Speaking of little are the wheels?

Well they are if you mean are they HO/OO scale?  The trains are exactly HO/OO scale, wouldn't look out of place and would be compatible with a normal analogue HO/OO set of track.  The only difference being battery powered (2 x AA's) they don't have any remote control or ability to control with a standard analogue track controller.  But looking at the model I reckon it would be pretty simple to replace the driving bogie with a standard Hornby or Lima HO/OO driving bogie and effectively turn it into a normal HO/OO train.  All you'd need is a donor HO/OO train or alternatively some spare parts (easily available).

 

I'll give them extra props here, the Hornby Playtrains are fictional models [nothing wrong with that mind], but Lima have actually used a real-world model, specifically the Italian 'Italo' express, an Alsthom 'AGV 575' type of TGV derived express train that runs privatized express service on the Italian high-speed network in competition with the state-owned Trenitalia, so yeah, nice one Lima 

Looking at the train I reckon these train bodies are moulded from the Hornby Eurostar machine tools as they look pretty identical apart from the decoration.  As such it makes the probability of electrifying these using a set of Eurostar bogies dead likely