Märklin Myworld

Even Chris Gadsby is too old to give this product a going over! Cue three-year-old Alex…

If you’re buying it for a Christmas present, I’d definitely recommend putting all the stickers on first

◆ MODEL Märklin Myworld 29307 Airport Express Elevated Railway Starter Set; 72216 Airport with Light and Sound ◆ PRICE 29307 £89.95; 72216 £39.95 ◆ AVAILABILITY Gaugemaster Tel: 01903 884488 Web: www.gaugemaster.com

Just how are we going to attract the next generation of railway modellers? It’s a knotty problem, one that model railway manufacturers have been puzzling over for years. You need something with lots of play value that will grab and hold a child’s attention but that won’t break the bank for cashstrapped parents. Some manufacturers include a token offering among the ranks of highly detailed collectables aimed squarely at adults. German manufacturer Märklin has decided to go the whole hog and offer a complete range of trains, play sets and accessories for children. Märklin has put a lot of effort into Myworld. There are at least 14 different starter sets, featuring Swiss, German and French trains. Prices start at £59.95, with the Myworld German Freight Starter Set commanding the highest retail price (£109.95). For that, you get a German steam locomotive, two cattle wagons, enough track to make a figure of eight plus a loop, some miniature cattle and a small tractor and trailer. And that’s before we look at working signals, tunnels, stations, farms and loading cranes. Gaugemaster kindly supplied us with the Myworld Airport Express Elevated Railway Starter Set (rrp £89.95) to test, pictured above, and the complementary Myworld Airport (rrp £39.95), pictured below right. The Starter Set two-car unit is basic but comes with the light and sound features you might find in the latest DCC locomotive. The trains are battery-powered so, as there’s no reliance on metal rails for power, the plastic track sections just clip together. The controller is really simple: the joystick on top controls speed and direction and the ‘trigger’ switch is the brake. Buttons on top control sound and lights. There are no trains in the airport set, just sturdy plastic parts that clip together to form an intriguing maze of ramps and lifts. You even get a small die-cast plane. The combined retail price of £129.95 seems good value, especially when you consider that this is the sort of money you’d expect to pay for a ‘OO’ gauge 0-6-0T. But Model Rail’s reviewers, more used to going over the highest quality ready-to-run offerings with a fine toothcomb, are not the target market for Myworld. To give it a thorough and in-depth test we needed to bring in an expert. Say hello to three-year-old Alex Blake and his dad Simon. Myworld is aimed at ages three years and upwards, so Alex is at the bottom end of the age spectrum. But with Myworld set up in a corner of the front room, he looked most at home in his little airport empire and had no trouble mastering the joystick, bringing the train to an almost perfectly judged stop next to the airport’s station.

PLAY VALUE

“He plays with it a lot,” said Simon. This statement was confirmed by the fact that the airport’s car park and ramps were jammed with die-cast cars.