Wooden toad

Early sets such as of Skaneateles, Eichhorn and Brio all seem to have used rather simple and abstract designs. The pieces were not painted, so that trains and tracks had the same surface. The normal early trains had engines and wagons each carved from a single piece of wood and connected by hooks and eyes. Painted sets may have become common in the early 1970s, as did the use of magnets as connectors. Engines carved from a single block were commonly painted black in Europe with bright red funnels and wheels. The early trains made with construction sets and large pull-along trains may have influenced other early train designs that were built of several wood pieces ("cut broomstick design"…

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 1995 and the newer tracks in 2002 with a relief to supply better traction grip for battery powered four wheel drive trains patented in 1998. The Thomas brand of wooden trains continues to this day and are released by Mattel's Fisher-Price subdivision. The…