I received my 33657 Lumber Truck from Germany a couple weeks ago and it is quite lovely:
The red plastic covering, which models the flatbed tarps used to protect shipments from the weather, is a really nice touch. The red plastic cover is a snug, but not tight fit so it stays on when you put it on. It won’t fall off accidentally.
The flatbed is very similar to the 33696 Lumber Loading Wagon, though the wheel bases are unpainted and the wheels themselves are the more traditional black used by BRIO on vehicles. And like all the modern-day BRIO trucks, the cab of the semi pivots forward to reveal the engine block.
On curious detail, though is the hole in the wheel base of the semi (for the pivoting of the “fifth wheel” coupling) is bored all the way to the axle:
The flatbed’s pivot joint doesn’t actually go all the way down so it doesn’t drag on the axle as the truck moves, but I thought it was weird that it was (unnecessarily) drilled that deep.
Anyway, overall? This is a pretty nice vehicle. Another top-notch accessory from BRIO. If you’ve been on the fence about this one, trust me: you want it.
BRIO’s catalogs for 2020 have been released. As in previous years, there’s a catalog for the European market and one for the USA. As in the last few years, most (but not all) of the new items coming to the USA were released last year in Europe.
The USA catalog is included in the Ravensburger one.
The European catalog is its own release.
BRIO is expanding the SmartTech line, starting in Europe, with the Smart Tech Sound lineup. The engine and the new tunnel design is shown here on the cover. It looks like children will be able to program lights, actions, and custom sounds via a record-and-play feature. There’s also an app that will allow for additional customization.
Coming to both the US and Europe is the #33557 Streamline Train which has some lovely styling:
And the 2020 Special Edition train:
Europe will see the #33657 Lumber Truck:
And in the fall, what appears to be an update to the Tower Crane:
The #33835 Light Up Construction Crane has very realistic styling with some impressive attention to detail, though of course it depends very heavily on plastic.
The lineup suggests that 2020 is an evolutionary lineup rather than a revolutionary one, but it’s a definite improvement over the lackluster 2019.
I spent a little bit of time analyzing the RFID technology behind Smart Track and Smart Tech this week. Smart Tech is BRIO’s current generation of RFID-enabled engines, released in late 2017 in Europe before making its way to the U.S. the following year. Smart Track was first released in 2005, and to my knowledge was not available in the U.S.
Note: Smart Tech Sound, released in late 2020, is a different product line that is more sophisticated than the first generation of Smart Tech.
The first question people ask is:
Are Smart Track and Smart Tech products compatible?
No.
A quick disclaimer: I am not an expert in RFID or digital signal processing. I know enough to talk at a high level, but that is about it.
The reason they are not compatible is that the two technologies use different RFID tags. The older Smart Track appears to use UHF (ultra-high frequency) tags and operates at around 909.033 MHz. The newer Smart Tech operates in the HF (high frequency) band at around 13.56 MHz.
Both are ARPT (Active Reader Passive Tag) systems. The tag reader is in the engine and it transmits an interrogator signal which also provides the power for the tag stored in the track (Smart Track) or tunnel (Smart Tech). The reader in the engine then receives the transmission from the tag and processes the signal.
Smart Track
The following waterfall and FFT plot shows the signal sent by the Smart Track engine while in operation.
Smart Track uses a UHF tag at roughly 909.03 MHz
From the late 1990’s through the early-to-mid 2000’s, UHF tags were fairly popular because they were, and still are, low-power and cheap. The problem with UHF, however, is that there is no single, global standard for radio waves in this band and thus regulations differ from country to country. In North America, the UHF band for RFID runs from from 902-928 MHz, but in Europe that band is between 865 and 868 MHz. As these two bands do not overlap, that means UHF tags made for one market can’t—or shouldn’t—be used in another.
What’s odd about Smart Track is that this is exactly what it seems to be doing: my engine is transmitting in the North America band, despite the fact that it was purchased from a seller in Germany which uses the European band for RFID. That poses an interesting question: are all Smart Track products operating in this North America band? If so, then they may be running afoul of broadcast restrictions when used in Europe. And if not, then there would potentially be a compatibility issue between Smart Track products that were produced for different markets.
I don’t have good tools for analyzing the RFID transmissions in the UHF band, but my best guess is that the tags used by BRIO are very simple and merely indicate what chip is present. The actions, and the sounds produced by the Smart Track engine, are stored in the engine, itself.
Smart Tech
Smart Tech uses the HF band at 13.56 MHz, which is a global standard for RFID. Using special hardware designed to analyze HF and LF tags, I was able to capture the following RFID transmissions.
The first image shows the “Station” tunnel, which tells the Smart Tech engine to stop and play a short sound recording reminiscent of a train station. As you can see, there is not a significant amount of data being transmitted, which implies that all the sounds and actions are stored in the engine.
RFID transmission for the Smart Tech “station” tag
Compare this to the next image from the “Reverse Engine” tunnel.
RFID transmission for the Smart Tech “reverse” tag
There is not a big difference between the two profiles (ignore the difference in the pulse amplitudes). This appears to be a very simple encoding scheme where each pulse represents a bit of data, transmitting about 36 bits total. In the “Station” tag, the transmission starts with 110101111, while the “Reverse” tag begins with 110111110. The trailing 01010101 is probably used for clock synchronization and an “end of data” marker.
The tag itself has pins A0 through A11, which implies there’s a total of 12 bits that make up the device ID. Simple tags such as these are very common in toys.
What this means
The implication here, for both Smart Tech and Smart Track, is that the complete set of engine behavior and sounds have been predetermined. Since there is no procedure for loading new data into the engine, the full range of products has to be decided upon before the engine programming is completed.
In theory, one could generate the above signals and transmit them to the Smart Tech reader. This procedure could also be used to probe for the full range of behavior supported by the engine.
Every now and then eBay you come across one of these little tanker cars:
In fact, there is one for sale as I am writing this, and this photo comes from that auction.
What’s interesting about these cars is that they have all the signs of a genuine BRIO part: the tank load and its magnet, the wagon and its magnets, and the wheels are all correct. And, of course, the stamped hubs are a dead giveaway. The only catch is: BRIO never made parts with a GATX logo. So what’s going on here?
The answer is that this is an aftermarket customization, made by a marketing company that specializes in customizing toys. It’s not fundamentally different than buying pens that are engraved with your company’s logo, it’s just a bit more sophisticated and, of course, costly to custom-paint a toy. The idea of customizing a toy to a corporate logo has been common in the toy industry for quite a while (Matchbox cars were a popular item for this treatment).
In this case, GATX—formerly known as the General American Transportation Corporation—commissioned these toys and made them available for sale to employees in the mid-to-late 1990’s. I received my set from a seller who worked for GATX Rail at that time, and he was able to give me some of the history behind it. The rest was pieced together from another seller and a little bit of digging.
At least two sets were made. Mine, shown above, is a full starter set with 8xE tracks, a classic engine, a black freight engine, and three tanker cars with the GATX logo. The “GATX 100” car, in gold, was created for GATX’s 100th anniversary in 1998.
The second set is smaller, consisting of a single GATX car in green and blue, 4xE tracks, and a US-style railroad crossing sign taken from the Thomas the Tank Engine line. The following photos of this set are from an old eBay auction:
The quality of these parts is extraordinary. The paint job is even and clean, there is no sign that the wheels were damaged when the base was painted, or is there any stray paint on the wheels themselves. The logos are crisply lettered. And of course there is custom-fit cardboard packaging.
What’s even more extraordinary is that GATX used the wooden railway theme in their corporate literature. The following two scans are from their Tank and Freight Car Manual, official publications from GATX that detail the mechanical specifications of their railway cars.
The color cover is from 1996. The black and white cover is from 1994.
Even more amazing? GATX produced a promotional rail car. A full-size rail car, painted to match the BRIO toy!
This photo comes from the RR Picture Archives (photo credit: Matt Adams, July of 2005). Fellow collector Dave Pecota pointed out that GATX is one of the largest lessors of rail cars in the world, and their paint shops can turn out custom cars quickly and easily. Given their 100 year anniversary, some celebratory merchandise and special rail cars would certainly be in order. And, this is not uncommon in the rail industry in general.
These aftermarket sets are truly special. Though not “true” BRIO, they are high-quality customization jobs, made by professionals who specialize in this work. If you can find a promo set like this, I say jump at the chance. You are buying the history of two companies, and getting a story to go with it.
Going back as far as the 1950’s, BRIO trains have had red wheels. It was not until the mid-1990’s with the advent of the Trains of the World series that BRIO started using other colors on their locomotives, and even then red wheels persisted through the mid-2000’s. One question I get from time to time is, why red wheels?
While only BRIO can answer this for sure, one possibility is that the red wheels come from history. Early steam engines in Germany used a bright red paint on their wheels to make it easier for safety inspectors to detect metal fatigue and cracks. This practice may date back as far as the 1920’s, and it was prevalent because rail systems were nationally and not privately owned. Not all countries in Europe did this, but the red wheels from Germany may simply have stuck out to the BRIO designers. The look on real steam engines certainly is striking.
I’ve posted two more vintage catalog sheets/inserts to the catalog archive. One is from the very late 1950’s and the other is probably from right around 1970. These sheets came from a fellow BRIO collector whose catalog collection is even larger than mine.
The 1970 catalog sheet is a gem because it still shows trains with the original hook-and-eye connectors in a color photo. Most catalog images for these are graphite drawings from the 1960’s inserts. You can also see the original, unfinished harbor set.
BRIO’s manufacturing quality has historically been pretty high (including after production moved to China), so it’s always noteworthy when products fall a bit short. Take, for example, these large double curve tracks from the late 1990’s:
As you can see the male connectors were drilled off center. This, of course, prevents a proper fit.
I have five pieces of EE track with this issue. They all came from the #33172 Raceway Set which includes a dozen pieces of EE, so they were probably part of the same production run.
Double track was never very popular. It was expensive for what you got and relatively inflexible in a layout unless you had a lot of it. The Raceway Set was one way for BRIO to clear out its excess stock of unsold track, which also made it a cost effective way of getting it if that’s what you wanted. Unless, of course, something like this popped up!
I pulled together some of my oldest pieces for this layout, which incorporates accessories from the 1960’s through the mid 1980’s. The Town set is the original version from around 1960, with double-sided printing on the buildings and a factory smokestack in red. The red lighthouses come from the second version of the Harbor Set which appeared in the mid 1970’s. Also present are two generations of the cars and trucks, the older set of which has wooden wheels (you can see the paint wear along their treads). The garage is harder to place as it was in production for well over a decade from the late 70’s through the 80’s. Similarly, the drawbridge could be from anytime between the early 60’s and the mid 70’s.
The boat is a bit of an unknown. It has similar styling to BRIO’s boats from the 1960’s and 70’s, but I’ve yet to find it in catalogs. Is it BRIO? It’s definitely beech wood, the paint finish matches BRIO parts, and it came in a lot with all genuine BRIO parts, but the possibility remains that it is from elsewhere.
The ferry shown is the 2nd generation from the late 80’s. I have the earlier model which has a solid red smokestack, but pulled out the wrong one by accident. I didn’t notice my error until after the photos were taken.
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.
On this layout I added a simple backdrop to help isolate the toys from the background. This is a simple art paper that was sold in a 120″x10″ roll which I spray-glued onto cardboard cut into 3’x10″ panels (plus one panel trimmed to 2′ since my tables are 8′ wide). The effect is nice, though I really need something taller.
Here’s the rough track plan. This makes use of three A3 pieces, though only one was necessary.
