I’ve added BRIO’s short-live Babar theme to the product database. There are five known Babar-themed products: three starter sets, a battery engine, and a train set.

I’ve made a number of updates this week. Perhaps the largest is moving all of my 3-D track models for SketchUp to 3D Warehouse. This will let you download them directly into SketchUp from within SketchUp, so that’s one less step. It’s also the right way to be doing this.

I posted a number of additions and corrections to the product database. The big news on that front is that addition of the Disney theme that was sold in Europe from 2009 or 2010 though 2011. The catalog tagging isn’t done for that yet, but at least the products are listed.

Last, I fixed some broken links in the Foldouts section of the Catalog Archive.

I have updated the BRIO Product Database with wooden railway products up through 2015. Previously, the database only went up through 2008.

Since the 1980’s BRIO has had product line transitions roughly every 5 years, but 2010 represented a major overhaul for the product line. The new direction was to create more detailed, more realistic looking toys with greater play value.

I’ve added the Polar Express theme to the product database. Previously, only the original Polar Express box set, 33426, was listed, and it was part of the Wooden Railway category.

I’ve also added a few products to the Jim Knopf theme.

I’ve completed the site migration to the new content management system. There are a few lingering issues like missing images, but I’ll get those cleaned up over the next couple of days.

If you see anything big that’s broken, let me know via the contact form so I can fix it.

Are you a BRIO collector in the U.K.? If so, I’d like to talk to you about a late-90’s BRIO item that I think may have been a UK-exclusive. Please contact me using the Contact page.

Thanks!

I have set up a page for the Wooden Railway Guide on Facebook. My intent is to supplement this site, not replace it, and provide an even more interactive space than I can easily set up here. I’ll also use it to make announcements about site changes and new blog posts.

I know. It’s been a while since I’ve made updates to the layout guide.

Much of the progress on the guide was halted when the catalog section expanded, and that was followed quickly by the product database which was an enormous undertaking. I’ve actually been working on the layout guide over the past three weeks but it’s been slow going. The next segment will cover freight yards and I’ve spent a lot of time putting together various track configurations for it, some of which I liked and kept, and some of which I didn’t and had to redo (sometimes more than once). It is coming, but it may be another week or so.

After that will be a shorter, much easier section on coach yards which will finish off the section on yards. Then I’ll probably talk about expansion options for arranging multiple tables into L and T configurations.

Welcome to the BRIO Wooden Railway Blog! This will be a place for informal writings and commentary on all things related to the BRIO Wooden Railway. Think of it as a home for articles that are shorter or less developed than what I post over on it’s bigger brother, the Wooden Railway Guide. Over time, pieces of what is here may even get assembled into a full article that gets posted there.

Most importantly, this blog supports reader comments so that I can hear back from you. This will allow for a lot more back-and-forth than is possible today. (Note, though, that reader comments are moderated, so they won’t show up immediately.)