BRIO World - Trains of the World Santa Fe Zug

2 1/2 YO grandson loved loading and unloading the cargo from the train using and old Hape magnetic crane. The Brio cranes seem too complex for that age. Good to have a train to push on his own instead of battery powered.

Kids liked it. Usual modern brio standard

I am a big fan of trains, from N Gauge to Japan’s Plarail and what caught my eye recently was BRIO World’s trains.BRIO World creates wooden railway sets and trains with wheels to ride on those wooden sets. The company, which was founded in Sweden way back in 1884 and is a company with a tradition of selling wooden toy trains to generations in Europe and now globally (the company is now owned by German toy and puzzle company, Ravensburger AG).They have released trains such as the London Underground Train, Travel Train, TGB-High Speed Train, Battery-operated Steaming Trian, Turbo Train and much more! And for over a 140 years, this tradition is ongoing, attracting people of all ages who are train lovers or group up with trains for wooden railway tracks.The train that I am reviewing is the BRIO World – 36089 Trains of The World Santa Fe – Wooden Toy Train.So, what is the Santa Fe? This is the train often seen on railways on the Santa Fe Railroad.As for this toy, it’s the #98, based on the Santa Fe FP45 98 (courtesy of BNSF Railway, which has been around for over 175 years) back in 1967, a cargo train which many people saw through the ’90s and was taken out of service in late 1997 due to low oil pressure and low compression and donated to the Orange Empire’s Railway Museum in Perris, CA.It made a brief return a few years later but a lot of people love looking at this classic train, especially for its red and silver “warbonnet” livery and now it has been released as a BRIO train. Two of the train cars carry cargo which are removable.But overall, this is a wonderful train to have in your train collection and whether young or older (young at heart), it’s a BRIO train worth owning!

I got this BRIO World – 36089 Trains of The World Santa Fe Train for my three year old because my older kids have the same Santa Fe train in HO scale. The little one is thrilled with this train, and carries it around everywhere. My older kids say the detail is better than other wooden kid trains, and the two cars have a nice play feature of storage inside that is unique from the actual train, which pulls passenger cars. The front and back wheels are connected and move in just one direction at a time, which makes it hard to push on very windy track, although normal gentle curves are fine. Both my older kids also mentioned that they wish there were a magnet coupler on the front of the engine. But, overall, we are having fun playing with it, and it goes well with the other wooden trains our family has.

There's one benefit to ordering this train set that others haven't mentioned yet. I'll get to what that is in just a moment. Until then, I'll state what we've noted about it so far. It's very beautiful, and has good attention to detail for being a kid's toy. It's made well, we applaud the expert craftsmanship of it. Everything performs as they say it will in the product description. The price may seem steep to some, but understand that this isn't the typical type of thing you would find in dollar stores. It's a very nice, well-made and beautiful train set.Speaking of the benefit that no one mentioned yet, it's that it will help the kids unplug for a while. They're always plugged in. To the TV, to the games, phones, etc. This is a classic toy that helps the kids unplug and use their imagination. Have fun the way our grandparents did. And that is a great reason to make this a gift for someone special to you.