Thomas & Friends is a British children's television series which has been delighting small children for over 25 years.  Due to its worldwide popularity, Thomas & Friends merchandise can be found in almost every form imaginable: books, magazines, bedding, toys and the like.

Thomas & Friends has recently released a DVD entitled "Day of the Diesels" in which a new character, Belle, is introduced.  Now, with the Thomas & Friends Thomas and Belle to the Rescue Wooden Railway Set from Learning Curve, young fans will be able to reenact their favorite scenes from this movie.  Keep reading to learn more!

The Thomas & Friends Thomas and Belle to the Rescue Wooden Railway Set is designed for children ages 3 years old and up.  There's a fire on Sodor and these brave engines race to the farm shed to help put it out.  Belle shoots water from the water cannons on her boiler.  Thomas makes sure there's plenty of water by filling up the water tanker at the water tower.

This wooden railway set comes complete with a Thomas engine, water tanker, Belle engine, movable water tower and movable farm shed (on fire), three-piece bridge and 16 pieces of wooden track which interlock together to form a figure 8 or any other layout imaginable.  These 24 pieces are well-crafted and very durable.  My daughter is not the easiest on her toys, but I can safely say that these have withstood any abuse she's doled out so far.

There are two features of the Learning Curve Thomas and Belle to the Rescue Wooden Railway Set that I liked equally well.  First, the train track is composed entirely of wooden, easy-to-assemble track pieces.  These pieces fit together in the same manner as a jigsaw puzzle and are perfect for little hands to manipulate.  What I really thought was neat was how this track is completely reversible.

One side of the track's pieces looks like a typical train track and has the two grooves in it so that the Thomas train cars can ride on it, but the other side looks just like a piece of highway and doesn't contain the two grooves.  This side of the track, I've discovered, is absolutely perfect for toy matchbox cars.  Now that's an innovative design!

Second, I really liked both the water tower and the farm shed.  Learning Curve designed these pieces well, for each of them is extremely interactive.  The water tower appears to contain water due to the blue plastic lining inside.  When the spout is flipped up, the water level is high, showing a full tank.  When you flip the spout down though, the water level inside drops, so it looks like Thomas is really getting water from the tank to put out the fire.

The farm shed works in roughly the same way.  By pushing the red button on the side, you can easily make the flames pop up, so that Thomas and Belle need to come to the rescue, or extinguish the fire by pushing the button again.  These are both wonderfully imaginative pieces which really make the Thomas & Friends railway set so enjoyable for the little ones.

Riley absolutely adored the Thomas & Friends Thomas and Belle to the Rescue Wooden Railway Set.  I wasn't sure how she'd react since trains are typically considered a boy's toy, but I would highly recommend this for both boys and girls!  Riley doesn't watch Thomas & Friends on TV and she's never seen a DVD either, but that didn't matter to her at all.  She still had great fun with this set and loved every minute of playing with it.

Riley really enjoyed trying to build new configurations with her track's pieces, and the magnetized parts of the train cars and water tanker couldn't have been any more fun for her.  What's great is that all of the Thomas & Friends Wooden Railway pieces are completely interchangeable, so if you have another Thomas & Friends Wooden Railway set, you can build one massive train town from all of the pieces.

I was also pleasantly surprised to learn that these pieces are completely interchangeable with the Chuggington wooden railway track as well!  We already owned a Learning Curve Chuggington set and was grateful that these pieces integrated together flawlessly.  Now, we have one super duper train toy in our living room that brings Riley plenty of enjoyment every day!