Good Tracks, Bad Tracks

As I mentioned in my previous post, James can spot railroad track layouts that have problems pretty quick.  I suppose when you spend as much time with tracks as he does, flaws are pretty easy to spot.  Unfortunately for me, those flaws are harder to construct on demand without making things very obvious.

So here are the track layouts I posted originally:

1.

2.

The bad track was maybe given away by the fact that James wasn't playing with it.  Oh well.  But track number 1 was indeed the bad layout.  The reason is that once you get the train going clockwise around the track, it can no longer go counter-clockwise (or anti-clockwise, if you talk funny).

I tried to illustrate bad turns... but I'm afraid my explanation doesn't work very well beyond what I already said.  Technically, it doesn't work out because math happens or doesn't happen... or daddy just didn't make a good track.

Always make good tracks.  This is important.  Don't forget this lesson, or the 10 minutes you spent putting together what you thought would occupy the boy will result in complaints followed by more track building... which, I suppose, isn't all a bad 'cause that kid sure likes his trains.

Next time, I think it may be time for a book review or two, or perhaps some cooking.