Let me guess. You started out with a Figure-8 Set, Thomas and a caboose and now, a few years later, your house is overcome with Thomas the Tank Engine Wooden Railway. Collectablity is one of the best things about this line of toys. Little Engineers love to collect the characters that they see on the DVDs and read about in the stories. They love to recreate favorite scenes and invent new ones on their own. They know that all the engines in the Thomas & Friends world have distinct personalities and they want to collect them all! As a mom of three Thomas fans, we have been collecting for over 7 years. That's a lot of Christmases and birthdays!

One of our favorite tools for organizing our vast collection can be found in any office or discount store - a storage cart with drawers on wheels. The shallow drawers made for organizing papers and office supplies are the perfect depth for holding Thomas the Tank Engine Wooden Railway engines and vehicles. This is a great way to organize and store them - the engines are easy to find at a glance so dumping is minimized, and as a bonus the engines seem to get less banged up. We have found units with all shallow drawers or some with shallow drawers on top and deeper on the bottom, which are great for storing tracks. Of course, being on wheels makes it easy to move the storage systems around so the engines can easily be where the action is. My kids even loved organizing and sorting their engines into their "home" drawers.

Of course, this is great for storage at home, but what about for little engineers on the go? The Storage Case Playmat is a great solution. The durable fabric carrying pouch completely unzips to create a soft playmat with sights of Sodor. Perfect for playing with the engines when you can't bring the tracks along! The Thomas Tin Train Case is also great for toting Thomas and his friends. The colorful tin case contains shelves perfectly sized to fit and organize Thomas or other wooden railway engines. A smaller Thomas Tin Keepsake Box is also available for when you need to bring just a few of your favorite trains to Grandma's house!

Other great storage system ideas include cubby systems with bins and the fabulous IKEA drawer solutions. Whatever your system, good organization of your Thomas Wooden Railway will mean less mess, less frustration and more fun!