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Please note: all products Squirrel Tracks Wooden Trains sells are for children (and grownups) ages 3 and up.
Everything we sell is compatible and interchangeable with the
BRIO® and Thomas & Friends™ brands of wooden trains and accessories.
| Our “Information and Ideas” Pages: The Basics, Layout Ideas, Layout Examples, Free Train Table Plans, Books about Trains, Famous Squirrels |
Wooden trains roll along in grooves on wooden track. The cross-section below shows the grooves on both sides of a piece of track. Track pieces often have grooves on both sides to make them reversible so that a piece of track that curves right can be flipped over to make it curve left. (Image courtesy of Todd Hoogerland) Track pieces can be assembled in any combination - one piece connected to the next, connected to the next, etc. - to make simple or complex paths (“layouts”) for the trains to go on. As Todd Hoogerland says on his delightful Hoogerland National Railways web site, “The connectors between track sections are like jigsaw puzzle pieces. A key on one end fits into a slot on the other end.” By this method, any number of pieces of track of varying lengths can be fit together to make layouts.  (Image courtesy of Todd Hoogerland) |
 | Todd makes great locomotives and train cars like this one as a hobby. We’ve already asked him if he’d like to manufacture them for us, but he says he’ll stick to doing it for fun for now! If you are interested in making your own locomotives and traincars, be sure to look at his site. Even if you don’t want to build your own, it’s fun to look at all the cute trains he’s made in his photo gallery! |
| Wooden train cars are quite simple. A locomotive or train car is usually a little block of carved, painted wood with four or more wheels to roll on and a magnet (“coupler”) at one or both ends for hooking up to other train cars. Magnets, as you may remember from school, have polarity which means the like to line up in certain ways. Depending on the orientation of one train car to another train car, their couplers will either connect or repel each other. If your trains won’t couple, just pick up one of the train cars off the track, turn it around and try again. The magnets are just strong enough to hold a long train together, but weak enough that it’s easy for the littlest kids to uncouple them. |  |
 | Wooden trains that ride on wooden tracks have been around for almost 70 years. Many manufacturers now make such trains and almost all of them make their trains to conform to the Vario-System so that consumers can mix and match and enjoy complete compatibility and interchangeability. The most famous manufacturer of wooden trains is BRIO® of Sweden, the largest wooden toy company in the world. The term, “BRIO-compatible” has become the catchphrase for “conforms to the Vario-System.” Our trains are BRIO-compatible and are made by Maxim Enterprises of the U.S. and Eichhorn of Germany. We feel that Maxim and Eichhorn offer the best wooden train value in the world today. Click here for more on what we like about them. |
 | The man generally credited with creating the wooden trains and wooden tracks we know and love today was Marshal H. Larrabee. He started Skaneateles Handicrafters in Skaneateles, New York in 1936 after his doctors told him to take it easy! |
| According to the Technology Alliance of Central New York’s Technology Club Newsletter for June 2001, “Larrabee was a young, newlywed banker when he was stricken with tuberculosis. He and his wife, Elizabeth, moved to Skaneateles in 1934 to aid his recovery. He took up woodworking when his doctors urged him to find an interest. It was Elizabeth who suggested he make a wooden train small enough for youngster's hands. His toys soon were the hit of the neighborhood. Encouraged, he started showing his wares to department stores. He was derailed repeatedly, until the toy buyer at Marshal Fields, the mammoth Chicago department store, said she would take all the trains he could make.” (Larrabee was treasurer of the Technology Alliance for many years.) When Larrabee later sold his company to Habermaass GmbH of Germany, it became “T.C. Timber.” Interestingly, though their company started the whole wooden train concept, they are one of the few manufacturers that does not completely conform to the Vario-System. Larrabee’s original wooden trains were a big hit that hatched an enduring phenomenon. The simple fun of learning and discovering with wooden trains has delighted generations across the globe! |
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