thank you all for the nice remarks. I have a couple of older bachmann units and freight cars that are Parker's. He can run them hoever he wants. I had to get him a railer ramp to put the cars on the tracks becuase it is too small for his hands. I also let him have some of my old micro machines to play with as well. His favorite thing is of course to run the trains at full speed into the cars
I set aside the cheap stuff just for him. If he can't have fun with it he wont want to continue with it.
Tyson, yes this is the layout I will be putting in the table. under the town there is a rather large hole to access the track from underneath and all of the tunnels have re-railers in them. I spent several months working the track to make sure that I have trouble-free running and actually had to re-lay track in two sections several times. At this point, the boy can run thos little bachmann engines at full speed all the way around in either direction with out a derailment, as long as he doesn't put anything on the track.
The layout is just under 6" from base to the top of the highest point including train. (i.e. the measurement from the bottom of the support board to the top of a train on the highest track on the layout is just under 6") I still haven't started the acual table portion yet but I have begun scenicing the layout now.