In the past, I’ve addressed what Brio looks like from the height of a Brio person. Now, I’e gone even closer, with a vintage macro lens I just got:
How many of you can identify what piece that came from?
If I was under an inch tall, I would not want to see this coming at me:
And of course, the Brio stamp on wood with enough details to actually see the wood grain:
A more artsy bridge picture:
Any pieces you’d like to see at life-sized details?
I still have some work to do on the focusing, but overall I’m pleased with how the images turned out, since I used a standard lens.
There is something brought out at this angle that I think is lost by examining Brio from above. The tracks and trains are colorful abstractions of gritty industrial machines that are extremely important to our economy. Brio brings these concepts into the living room.
I’m a railfan as well, and I enjoy watching and photographing real trains trackside, especially on curves.
Artistic model railway photography has been a discipline for decades, but I know of almost no endeavours to do the same thing with wooden trains. I am hoping to change that.
Ever since I was a little kid, I wanted my own Brio train table, like the ones in the stores at the mall. It had to be authentic, real Brio. My mom, not wanting to shell out big bucks, told me no, pointing out that my floor layouts were pretty much always too big for the tables anyway.
I watched some on eBay, but shipping was always too much. Finally though, I found a local one on NextDoor (social network for neighbors) for $40. I could fit it in my wife’s SUV.
I was surprised at how big it was! I imagined that it would be smaller, as I assumed my childhood imagination pictured it bigger than it was. But it was definitely as big as my coffee table.
I built my first layout on it with my original 1950s/1960s Brio Train Set, the one with wire couplings instead of magnets. I went with the classic figure 8. I always believed that Brio rarely manufactured anything without a reason and that there were no coincidences. So I wasn’t surprised that the edge of the figure 8 curved track was barely “lapping” against the water. Such realism!
In some ways, I think owning a train table now is a paradox. I own far more Brio tracks now than I did as a child, and my layouts have spanned hundreds of square feet. Of course, I haven’t built anything that big since I got married, since my wife now demands her share of the living room too. Maybe my next attempt will be an ultra compact layout built completely on the table with as much action as possible. And I could always build a layout on the table and one on the floor, which can interchange with each other via my Brio Helicopter or Brio Roller Coaster! And someday, my kids will play with it. Can’t wait!
Modern Brio, while containing much more plastic than its predecessors, and made in Hong Kong instead of Sweden, might have an advantage over its vintage counterpart: it looks more realistic. Of course, if you prefer Thomas with trains that have creepy smiling faces, you won’t care, but if you like seeing how your trains stack again the real world, more power to you.
Take for instance the modern container crane. It’s used to transfer containers between railcars and trucks of massive container ships.
Brio has been on this trend from at least the seventies until today.
On the left, we see Brio’s first container crane, Brio #31405/36. It has no plastic at all, as even the wheels are wooden. It is well-built, but with bright reds, yellows, and greens, it clearly looks like a toddler’s toy.
The middle crane is from the eighties. It has almost the same dimensions as the early crane, but the wood isn’t painted. Also, the knob is much larger and is similar to the drawbridges of the time. Interestingly, it has the exact same catalog number. Except for the red wheels, it looks far more what you’d be likely to find in a rail-yard.
On the right is a similar iteration of the modern Brio Gantry Crane, #33732, which can be had on Amazon for $20. It appears that Brio has slightly changed the coloration of the roof of the control tower, from red to gray, but the shape is the same. The crane is larger than its predecessors, but still only straddles two tracks. It also has realistic warning labels (kids these days must grow up used to them!) and two separate “cars” that it can ride along Brio track with, instead of basic wheels that tend to get bogged down in carpet. It also contains much more plastic than the other two, and two cables instead of one and a plastic piece that helps keep the magnetic cargo straight.
Overall, the cranes are some of my favorite pieces. The modern crane is probably my favorite piece manufactured within the last ten years. It’s no longer an “abstraction” of an industrialized concept; it’s nearly a scale miniature.
One of the joys of being a Brio collector is discovering the small, year-to-year differences between the same pieces. Manufacturing techniques differed slightly over time and with the materials Brio had on hand. Rarely were these changes ever transmitted by catalog. The only way to really know something’s changed is by comparing two pieces side-by-side.
Take for instance the rimless 1980’s container cars. Just yesterday, I noticed that some of them have the pegs painted the same color as the car bodies, while some of them have the pegs as plain wood. I would guess that the plain wood pegs came later, since the later 1990’s rimmed cars all have wood pegs. It’s little things like this that make collecting Brio fun!
I finally found (and won) what I had long been searching for! An original Brio set from the 50’s or 60’s with wire link couplers on the train instead of magnets! I got it for all of $25 from the United Kingdom, with $30 shipping.
The box it came in was absolutely adorable, and has a picture of a train crossing several tracks and entering a station. The train was in better condition than I had hoped for, considering that whoever played with it originally is probably a grandparent by now. I actually like the wire couplers better than magnets as they need to stick together really well, although I’d imagine little fingers could get pricked by them. The train has wooden wheels too – there is not a single piece of plastic in the entire set.
The tracks were good, but smelled a little of mold. It was interesting to see how Brio has changed in the last half century. Everything in it (excepting the train couplers) is fully compatible with Brio that you could buy today on Amazon. The curves and the straights are the same length as modern Brio, but the wooden pegs are screwed on separately instead of being cut with one piece of wood. The viaduct is similar to the modern ones except that the hole for the track in the center is cut wider and the peg receiver holes don’t go all the way through the bridge. The switches are almost identical to modern ones. I find the crossover track to be extremely interesting, as one side of it is about 5.5″ long (similar to a modern straight) and the other crosspiece fits the A3 track length, which is slightly longer than the mini straight and was never sold in the United States alone. Seemingly everything back then was labeled #31405, and I am not really sure why. I probably wouldn’t let a kid play with this set due to its age and the mold, but for $25, it is an extremely interesting addition to my collection! Heck, I would have paid that much just for the empty box!
I think that most of us remember some lover, or car, or job that we were so close to having but couldn’t. Well, there’s now a Brio train like that for me:
I felt so close to getting it! The trainset, #3313/314/33, contained the ultra-rare red electric engine with paragraphs. It showed up on Ebay with a box too no less. It was a ferocious battle among the world’s five Brio collectors, and after it crossed the $50 price line (including shipping) I bowed out. I forced myself to walk away in the last few seconds of the auction, telling myself that love will come again, someday, and I’ll have the little red engine as my own.
I was scrolling Ebay this week and found this:
You can find the original listing here.
It’s unusual to find Brio from the seventies (this may actually be sixties even!) with the box. I felt it was a little overpriced for its fair condition (around $100 with shipping) and let the auction end in hopes that it may be relisted in the future a little bit lower.
Is Brio a good investment? I would say yes and no. If by a return, you want lots of fun playing hours with your children and getting a quality toy that can last for generations, then yes, Brio is a great investment. But if you think that it will go up in value, I think that you will be disappointed. There are two reasons for this:
This is true with toys in general. At train shows, I’ve met guys who have put in 50k in Lionel trains since the sixties and find that they can get less than 10k for them now. The world has changed, and the toys wanted now are not the same as the ones desired in the past. I recently bought a lot of Brio items from the 1980s still in the original boxes. The whole lot cost $40, the total MSRP of the pieces new was closer to $100. And these were in mint condition!
My oldest piece is a mid-sixties bridge that was new in box on Ebay for $40. It is exceptionally rare in this condition; I’ve only ever seen it on Ebay once. I don’t know what it cost originally, but I can’t imagine that it was less than $5 (in 1965). $40 would be the amount required just for its price to keep up with inflation for fifty years.
There’s an upside to all of this. Of course, it means that building and expanding your collection is all the more affordable!
2. Mass-produced modern Brio
In the 2010s, production of Brio switched from Sweden to China. Although there were some disappointing things with the changes (more plastic, plastic pegs instead of wooden pegs on many connectors), the price went down precipitously. On Amazon, a 4-pack of large straights can be gotten from between $7.50 and $10 depending on how much is in stock. On the lower end, that’s about $2.15 per linear foot of track, a value I couldn’t have conceived of as a child.
Since many Brio purchasers are buying the pieces for their children, and not collecting, this new Brio has the effect of driving down prices. Several years ago, the retired Brio Grand Roundhouse #33456 was going upwards of $400 if you could find one at all. Then Brio came out with a newer, mostly plastic one for around $60. I recently got a new in box Grand Roundhouse for $85 on Ebay. It still had the original price-tag on it of $100 in 1990s dollars. Someone kept it in their garage twenty years and still lost money on it. Used roundhouses go for around $50.
Collect away, but do it for the pleasure of the hobby!
Below is a side-by-side comparison of what Brio barges looked like in the 1980s (left) and what they look like today (right).
I can’t determine the serial number for the vintage barge, but everything else in the set I bought it with was early to mid 1980s. The modern barge is part of the #333534 Freight Ship and Crane set available at Amazon. Here’s an overhead view of the two:
Several things are immediately evident. The vintage barge is made completely out of wood, while only the section “under the waterline” (neither barge floats) is made of wood, the rest being plastic. The modern barge is also slightly longer. Both barges can carry two pieces of cargo, although the vintage barge is also just wide enough to carry a small car or two as well. The cargo for the vintage barge is a classic Brio cylinder and box with magnets on top. The cargo that comes with the modern barge are two plastic “engines” with magnets on top as well. There are plastic flaps protecting the cargo that automatically fall back when upward pressure is applied.
I find it fascinating to see how Brio has evolved through the decades. The modern barge is certainly more realistic, while the vintage one is more of an artistic abstraction of its real-world counterpart. But for quality of build, and for being built in Sweden, not China, the vintage barge wins out.
Dave's Brio Collection 