We bought this for our 2 1/2 year old who is crazy about Thomas. The Thomas wooden track sets are really expensive, but this is compatible with the Thomas wooden engines (as well as coming with everything you need to start out), so we bought the track and have bought the wooden Thomas trains individually over time. You can also use these track sets to expand on your existing wooden Thomas tracks or vice versa (at least thats what the salesman told me when we bought it), but we haven't needed to expand as yet. Our toddler loves this train set and it offers a lot of play value for the money.