Thomas and Friends Trouble on the Tracks

The story begins with an engine named James eagerly heading out to get more coal for the other engines, but things don't go quite as planned; James has an accident on a sharp corner because he's being too hasty. Kids get to help rescue James and restore him to his shiny, bright-red self by completing eight activities that will test their problem-solving skills, spatial abilities, and deductive reasoning. They must find James, properly assemble crane gears to get him lifted back onto the track, collect coal, find the proper parts, and install them on James by listening to whistles, looking at train parts, and then putting everything in its place. Once James has a full tank of water and a full bin of coal, kids get to drive the repaired engine. This is the best part of this friendly CD-ROM, as it demonstrates to little locomotive fans how steam engines work, from shoveling coal to goosing the throttle.

Each activity has three levels, and Trouble on the Track also has clickable surprises interspersed throughout each activity, something that earlier Thomas offerings lacked. Kids can visit Sir Topham Hatt's office to see and print their certificates (they get one for every level of each activity they complete) or various pictures that they can color, turn into puzzles, or simply hang on their walls. Everyone from the Horrid Lorry to the Troublesome Trucks is here, and Thomas the Tank Engine fans will enjoy this program as it gently chugs along. (Ages 3 and older) --Anne Erickson

Amazon.com Product Description
This CD-ROM allows children to enter the play world of Thomas and his friends, and help them get ready for the big festival on the Island of Sodor. They can get Thomas ready for the journey at the engine shed, clear the tracks, make music on the bandstand, and help bring passengers to the festival. Seven engaging activities, rich 3-D animated graphics, and printable certificates of completion are designed to keep little Thomas fans interested. Opportunities abound to practice color matching, shape sorting, counting, and more. And fans won't want to miss new video sequences featuring Thomas and his friends.

I first installed on a 500 mz machine, 256 meg ram, 16 meg video card, etc., etc. It prompted me to install DirectX 7.0, which surprised me because I thought I had it, but I went ahead and installed anyway.

The software continually stutters and skips and then stalls. It seems to be when my son is moving the mouse around the screen while the program is "thinking".

I then installed on my 650 mhz machine, 256 meg, 64 meg Radeon graphics card . . . but I have Windows 2000 on this machine and apparently DirectX 7.0 doesn't run on W2000. I went ahead and installed anyway and the program runs OK, although the graphics aren't nearly as good.

In addition, although the games are new and interesting, they aren't nearly as intuitive as the Great Festival Adventure. Sometimes they don't even make sense.

I'm not sure which one came out first, but this game was quite a disappointment after spending several months with the Great Festival Adventure!


Pleasantly Surprised!   May 5, 2001
Keri D Ballard (Wichita Falls, Texas United States)
16 out of 16 found this review helpful

When I found this software I was excited because my son LOVES Thomas, but then I read all of the bad reviews and was scared to order it for him. I took a chance and ordered it anyway and LUCKILY we have had no problems with it so far. My son will sit and play it for hours without needing much assistance. I have noticed when you go to Sir Topham Hatts Office and print things out you have to kind of let it do it's thing and not get ahead of it. It will minimize the Thomas screen and return to the desktop while printing but you just have to click on the icon at the bottom of the page to return to the game. The graphics have been very smooth, not choppy at all. When I installed it there was an option for "minimum", "normal", or "maximum" installation. It told me we had enough memory to do the maximum so that's what I chose. I don't know what others used so I don't know if that could be the reason why it runs ok for us. We have a 128MB, 100MHZ computer with a video card that supports up to 2X AGP. I hope other Thomas fans find this helpful to them!


NO GOOD   February 1, 2001
13 out of 13 found this review helpful

We have all the minimum requirements for this game, and it runs so bad. After about 3 minutes of play, it starts skipping and running so bad that we cannot play it. Returned it for a different one and it still does the same thing...even tried it a a brand new computer and it still ran bad! My 3 year old gets very frustrated!