A Visit to Whittle Shortline

G had heard about this train place from a friend. The friend said there was a ton of trains kids could play with, as well as a factory you can tour and other things. Naturally, G wanted to take Vincent.

We set off for the Whittle Shortline Railroad Factory and Store in Valley Park. Unfortunately, when we got there we found that the factory had been moved elsewhere, but the store and trains were still there.

There were trains everywhere. They were all the magnetic trains though, and they only sold magnetic trains. Of course, if we had done any research whatsoever, we would have known this. Vincent has the Thomas Trackmaster motorized version. We didn't do that on purpose. He got his first one as a gift and we just started expanding on it, not realizing that it was a lot less common than the magnetic version.

Vincent still had a blast though. We stayed for a half hour or so and then did some Christmas shopping.

Here are a few pictures:

Outside the store The traintable, one of several, took up a good portion of the room.
There were plenty of trains for the children.
There were a lot of accessories too.
Um... I can't get Vincent to look at me.

Although we couldn't buy any new trains, the store also featured some awesome, American-made wooden puzzles. The puzzles have 2, 3, or 5 "layers." The first layer has to be down before the second layer can be added so what seems to be an easy puzzle is trickier that you would expect.

We ended up getting Vincent a 2-layer cat puzzle.

Here, you can see the first layer of the puzzle and then the finished puzzle. 10 pieces altogether.

The cashier said they can even (sometimes) send in requests to the puzzle maker for future puzzles. I think that rocks!