Wooden toy trains are toy trains that run on a wooden track system with grooves to guide the wheels of the rolling stock. While the trains, tracks and scenery accessories are made mainly of wood, the engines and cars connect to each other using metal hooks or small magnets, and some use plastic wheels mounted on metal axles. Some trains are made to resemble anthropomorphical, fictional, and prototypical railroad equipment.

History

Early companies in the United States Marshal H. Larrabee II founded the Skaneateles Handicrafters in 1936. This toy company made wooden toy trains and wooden tracks.Technology Club Newsletter from June 2001 The gauge was very similar to that used by most companies today. However, the connections for the track pieces were of a different design than the jigsaw style "peg and hole" system used today.US patent 2254153 from 1940 concerning Marshal H. Larrabee's Wooden Toy Train system The trains were made of maple and were often left unpainted and unstained.As is stated in this advertisement in the LIFE issue from 28. Nov. 1955. They are compatible with many brands of modern wooden train track. Playskool took over the sales for Skaneateles Handicrafters in 1956. This company retained the design and track-connecting system into the 1960s.Set by Skaneateles Handicrafters for Playskool in the collection of the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, Australia. Marshal H. Larrabee sold his company to the German-based Habermaaß GmbH in 1980. The company was renamed T.C. Timber and its products were manufactured in Skaneateles. The production line was closed in 2002.Technology Club Newsletter from September 2002

The Jack-Built Toy Manufacturing Company founded by Ben Orel marketed its own range of wooden toy trains under the brand name "Jack Built Snap Trains" around 1956 to 1962. These were manufactured in Japan and used a snap system to join pieces of rolling stock and tracks. Rolling stock from Jack Built Snap Trains and Skaneateles Handicrafters could ride on either manufacturer's tracks. However, individual pieces of rolling stock and track from the two brands could not be combined. This is because the coupling systems for the tracks and trains were different.

California-based Ben Orel filed U.S. patent #2847798US patent 2847798A from 1960 concerning Ben Orel's Wooden Toy Train "snap" coupling system in 1956 and was granted the patent for his "snap coupling" system two years later. He describes how the track could be rotated to create a "rail" and a "road" side in U.S. patent #3013726US patent 3013726 submitted in 1960 and granted in 1961. This is similar to the idea that Learning Curve later used for their "Thomas & Friends" range. He also submitted a patent for magnetic couplings in 1958.US patent 2939245 granted 1960 concerning Ben Orel's Wooden Toy Train magnetic coupling system This patent was granted in 1960. It may have been the earliest attempt to use magnets with a wooden toy train system. Production stopped in the mid-1960s and the company disappeared from the toy market.

Early companies in Europe In 1957, BRIO, based in Osby in southern Sweden, introduced its wooden toy train system with wooden tracks in Europe. It may have been the first company to use the "peg and hole" system to connect the track pieces in mass production. The metal hook system for the rolling stock has since been replaced by magnetic connectors.US patent 3850310 filed 1973 concerning BRIO's "Coupling devices for toy vehicles"Brio figure eight train set with magnets before 1975, Nuremberg Toy Museum, Number 1975.996 BRIO was also one of the first companies to use beechwood for such products.

Another Swedish company that started producing a similar toy at about this time was Micki Leksaker in Gemla. It apparently produced its first wooden train sets for a Swedish department store in 1956, thus predating Brio by a year or two. In 1988Our-Story Page on the Micki Leksaker Homepage. (accessed 21.04.2023) Micki started manufacturing products for IKEA and was the sole supplier of their wooden toy train lineProduction in Sweden Page on the Micki Leksaker Homepage. (accessed 21.04.2023) for about ten years.

There was a long tradition of wooden toy-making along the mountain forests surrounding Bohemia. Seiffen made wooden figures and Christmas decorations and Blumenau (today a part of Olbernhau) created building blocks and construction sets. Mass production techniques for polishing and coloring wooden toys were established and perfected in the Bohemian areas.Description of the production process at the "Construction Toy Collector" site of Joachim Kleindienst. English summary: Johann Schowanek of Georgental (Jiretin, part of Albrechtsdorf) in Bohemia, now within the Czech Republic, invented or perfected the process of polishing and coloring his wooden items in rotating drums starting with the production of wooden beads in 1908. He presented some of his toy products for the first time at the Leipzig Trade Fair in 1927. The toy companies of the Seiffen and Blumenau regions among others showed great interest and soon started similar developments of their own. Some of the early sets exhibited train designs that were later used for wooden track trains. In 1949, Hermann Eichhorn, of the Eichhorn family that made the PEWESTI wooden toys in Steinach, Thuringia,Origin of Hermann Eichhorn with a list of literature on the "Construction Toy Collector" site of Joachim Kleindienst founded his company for wooden toys in the Bavarian town of Egglham. In 1961, he started producing his version of a wooden track railway system. Eichhorn claims that his company is the first to have systematically used the "vario system" for the connectors. Eichhorn applied for a U.S. patentUS Patent 5,427,561 from Jun.27,1995 for a "battery powered toy train" in 1994. In 1997 the company had to be sold to the Simba-Dickie-Group, which moved production to Unhošť, near Prague in the Czech RepublicShort note on the destruction of the old factory and the move of production to the Czech Republic in "Branchenbrief International - Spielzeugbranche aktuell" #5 of March 12, 1999. with a factory in Netvořice until 2022. By 1998 the company was fully integrated into the Simba-Dickie-Group.Company history page on the Website of Simba-Dickie. In February 1999 two fires totally destroyed the old factory buildings in Egglham and consumed most of the company's archives and work models.Article in the PNP (Passauer Neue Presse) on Tuesday February 16th 1999, "Lokalteil Pfarrkirchen, Großbrand bei der Firma Eichhorn" by Ronald Sterr ("Regional News of Pfarrkirchen, Large Fire at the Eichhorn Company").

Heros (He+ros), the company of Hermann Rossberg of Lam in the Bavarian Forest near to the border of Bohemia, influenced train design in the Blumenau tradition.Advertising Sheet from ca. 1935 from the company Baukastenfabrik E. Reuter, Blumenau in Saxony. Note the train on the top right. He too started a line of wooden trains in 1968 to the same gauge, using bright colors in his train designs. In the 1970s the company experimented with plastic tracks based on the peg and hole design of the wooden tracks, but soon returned to normal wooden tracks.Set "Kleinstadt 4800", Nuremberg Toy Museum, Number 1977.43 In 2010 the company had to be sold to the Simba-Dickie-Group. The train lines where dropped and the focus shifted to wooden toy blocks and the constructor toy range while Eichhorn became the only supplier of toy trains on a wooden track system within the Simba-Dickie-Group.

The 1990s, new companies and new ideas

John W. Lee founded the American company "Learning Curve Toys" in November 1992 with a wooden railway system called "Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends Wooden Railway" based on the characters from the British children's television series Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends. This made the wooden toy trains even more popular than before. Learning Curve introduced some new designs for the track surface, such as the "Clickety Clack" rails patented 1995US Patent 5,454,513 from Oct.3,1995 and the newer tracks in 2002US Patent 6,648,237 B2 from Nov.18, 2003 with a relief to supply better traction grip for battery powered four wheel drive trains patented in 1998.US Patent 6089952 filed on Jan.28,1998 The Thomas brand of wooden trains continued to 2025 and where released by Mattel's Fisher-Price subdivision. The line was also rebranded as "Thomas & Friends Wood" from 2017 to 2021, but reverted to the original "Wooden Railway" branding in 2022 following poor reception and sales.

With the popularity of the toy system rising due to the success of Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends, new markets outside of the traditional groups and countries were opened. While companies such as Mapple Landmark adjusted its existing line of "Name Trains" to the gauge of the vario system in 1993, others such as Whittle Shortline, established in 1997, started producing rolling stock based on the more realistic designs of existing American examples.This led to longer rolling stock with an own new bogie design, as shown in a patent granted to Michael W. Whitworth of Whittle Shortline in 2002. While Brio and Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends clearly favoured the steam engine era, Whittle Shortline expanded into heavy duty diesel engines of designs hardly known in Europe. In the product line "Trains of the World" shown in the Brio catalog of 1998, Brio presents several historic steam engines, such as the Mallard or the Flying Scotsman along with several modern high speed trains such as the Shinkansen, TGV or ICE. The only diesel unit is from the Santa Fe line.

Other companies such as Nilo and KidKraft concentrated on related items like train tables, among other products. Suretrack sells its track securing clips, and Choo Choo Track & Toy Co., founded in 1999, has concentrated on producing and designing tracks and accessories.

Subway & Commuter Rail Systems A recent sub-genre has emerged based on real-life prototypes of subway and commuter rail rolling stock. One example is the "New York City Subway Wooden Railway" by the company named "Munipals" which sells units in each of the NYC subway lines colors & markings. They have recently expanded to commuter rail line rolling stock for New Jersey, Metro North, LIRR, and Philadelphia. The Washington DC Metro store sells rolling stock in each of the DC Metro line markings; as does the web store of the Boston T. The London Underground museum store sells rolling stock in the colors of each of the London Underground Lines. Whittle Shortline sells commuter rail line rolling stock for the Caltrain, Amtrak Charger, New Mexico Rail Runner, Tri-Rail, Metro North, and Metra systems, (while formerly offering products from New Jersey Transit, SEPTA, Manhattan Transit Authority, and Chicago Transit Authority); Bauer & Sohn has rolling stock for Berlin, Munich, and Nuremberg; Lalok, rolling stock for Vienna subway and tram. Make Me Iconic produces W class Melbourne Trams and the Sydney Ferry Sirius. Popondetta INC. started the brand Moku Train in 2018 with sets based on Japanese trains including Tokyo commuter and subway themes.

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