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. 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. The trains were made of maple and were often left unpainted and unstained. 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. 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.
The Jack-Built Toy Manufacturing Company 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 #2847798 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 #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. 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. 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 1988 Micki started manufacturing products for IKEA and was the sole supplier of their wooden toy train line 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. 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, 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. patent 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 Republic. By 1998 the company was fully integrated into the Simba-Dickie-Group. In February 1999 two fires totally destroyed the old factory buildings in Egglham and consumed most of the company's archives and work models.