My 7 year old figured out that he could turn my train layout into a marble racetrack today. He would put two marbles at the top of the grade, one on each mainline, and race them down to the bottom of the grade. When I took the pictures, he was putting several on one track to create a train of marbles.

Looks like fun as long as the Eastbound Empire Builder isn't due!
Now I want to buy some big marbles!
Ralph

Were there any demarblements?
Charlie

Yes, in fact, in the second picture, you can see that the red one has jumped track and come to rest up against a tree. There for a bit, we lost ALL our marbles! Evidently, in the middle of one of my tunnels, I had not quite pushed down one of the track nails all the way. Soooo, as the marbles hit the head, they would jump track and disappeared in between the two backdrops. Took us a bit to figure out where they had gone and luckily, my sons hands were small enough to reach in through the tunnel and in between the backdrops to retrieve them. We then fixed the nail and have not lost any more marbles!

My brother used to send marbles down hot wheels race tracks. Interesting that the marbles discovered a potential problem with your trackwork. That nail could have further worked loose and picked at a coupler pin.

I think your on to something there Kevin. Do you think I should apply for a patent for my new track inspector device?

Toooo Funny!!! If you're going for a patent - I'll take 2 "G" scale marbles

You guys made me laugh this morning. Thanks!

I'm lucky. I haven't lost all my marbles, they just got rolled to one side.

Lynn

I didn't even know kids still like marbles..I thought that had slid into the history books.

That's priceless. Leave it to kids to come up with something like that.
Bob

That's really neat!! Those two guys are future engineers, (in both senses of the word.)

Thanks for the comments guys. Several days now and they have still not tired of the game. Kind of makes me wish I had more of a mountainous railroad now!

Great!

A couple days ago, after my 1yr old went around saying "Gordie", I set up a circle of track and let him run Gordon. He did pretty well...
I'll have to put up a link once mein frau puts it on her blog.