A Chilling Way to Transform an Old Train Table!

by Katelyn Fagan

7 Materials

If you also have a 9-year-old train lover who hasn’t outgrown trains, but did outgrow his Thomas trains a few years ago, leaving behind his train table , then here is a fun way to transform it into a special girly playset for a younger sibling.

a chilling way to transform an old train table

I got the idea for this at Christmas time, when I decided to flip over the board, paint it white (for snow), and use it for our Polar Express Wooden Train Set. As seen below:

It was this winter snow side that got me thinking about FROZEN! If your daughter still loves Elsa, Anna, Olaf, and Sven, then follow along on how to turn some various playsets into Frozen-inspired ones!

First, flip over the top of your train table board and paint the underside of it white.

Next, go to your local Goodwill (or dig through your toybox) and find a couple of those simple fold-out doll castles. For Elsa’s ice castle, I spray painted one silver and sprinkled on glitter while it was still wet.

For Arendelle Castle, I used the castle below because I wanted one that had some tower rooftops to paint green so that it even if it was not the same design, the colors would make it seem authentic.

This was the part that I allowed my daughter to help with.

First, I spray painted the entire castle a flat gray, and removed the doors and spray painted them gold. When I was done, I mixed some acrylic paints to get the shade of green I wanted in a small cup. Then I let my daughter paint the rooftops. She was really excited!

Next, I got out my Polar Express Train set and found some of the accessories to use.

Most of what makes the scene are the snow-covered evergreen trees. You can find these at hobby stores in the toy train section.

I also used some wood-block houses, and those are also found in craft stores, but also easy to make yourself.

We put Elsa’s castle up on our train mountain.

That may be difficult if you don't have a train mountain, but if I were making one from scratch, I would probably get a shoe box and scrunch up a brown paper sack on the outsides to look the the side of a mountain, and spray paint it. Then I would just set Elsa’s Castle on top!