On the surface the game looks very Sim City-ish, but it has no where near the sophistication which is of course a good thing considering the target age range. The similarity ends with the visual presentation. People and animals come out and roam the city you've made, occasionally make pointless train journeys between stations you may have set up, wander aimlessly back and forth. Not hugely exciting, the main purpose of all this is a backdrop for your train track designs, hence the product title.

The graphics are a bit low-resolution, and as a result everything is a bit small unless you turn down your screen resolution (and you can't play at all without turning your screen resolution to 1280x1024 or lower, which is annoying to constantly have to switch back and forth). Children may have a bit of trouble aligning things like railroad tracks if you don't turn this down.

But despite the simplicity the fundamental game concept is a good one and enjoyable for children. Laying out railroad tracks, choosing cars for each train, sending multiple trains (up to 3) around the tracks, switching points or allowing them to crash into each other. You'll get your money's worth from this alone, but the game has a few other nice touches.

Your child can design "post cards" with Lego graphical elements, a fun little paint program. And they can send them to others on your LAN... ok, so you're probably not going to do that, so instead you can also send them to about a dozen ficticious characters (Santa, Nessy, Skeleton, Snowman, etc.) and receive amusing post card images and messages in return. The trains chug past the post office and pick up post from the mail bag and carry them through a tunnel off-screen, and later another train will arrive bringing the reply.

Thoughtful design touches like that really make the difference, and add sufficient variety to keep your child coming back, or keep their interest beyond a narrow age range (which is playable from around 2 1/2 years if your child has the motor coordination to place the tracks)