Walking into Don Graber’s toy factory totally astounded me. Toys were made down to the last intricate detail. The tracks on the backhoe were made out of many matching pieces of wood and were put together with wooden dowel pins. The smallest difference in the pieces would cause them not to work properly.

The ladders on the fire truck extend and match each other perfectly. Hydraulic cylinders, which appeared as real, lift the ladder boom. These were made by drilling out a larger rod and inserting a smaller one just to match the hole size, making the appearance of the piston sliding in and out of the cylinder.

“Each piece must be individually cut and formed,” said Graber. “This is not like a model airplane with precut parts.” 
Graber, who has been a carpenter for years, lives in Geneva, Ind., and is not exactly sure of how long he has been making these wooden toys, “About 10 years, I think.”

He buys the toy blueprints and some of the specialty parts from a magazine called Toys and Joys, which are continually updated with new types of toy blueprints.

The toy pieces range from about 1/16 inch thick for the thinner pieces. “I cut them out on a table saw as close as I can then finish getting the bigger pieces to the right thickness by running them through the planer where I used to work,” he said. “This makes the wood uniform and nice.” 

Graber uses his belt sander for the smaller pieces. All of his toys are made from poplar wood because it is so easy to work with and make into a finished product. 

“I plan to just keep working on these small projects as I can,” said Graber. “My shop is heated in the wintertime, so I can come out here and work.”

With new plans coming out every year, Graber feels that he will always have something to build. He also comes up with ideas of his own. 

“My wife was setting up a display at church, and the meat canner came in so she asked me if I could build a semitruck for her, so I came up with that.”

He said, “The Geneva City Chamber, in their annual meeting, have requested different things for displays.” Geneva was an oil town, so one year, the Chamber wondered if he could come up with an oil well; he made one with a derrick and then made an oil pump. 

Robert Denson built another remote-controlled model—a Caterpillar 140H motor grader—completely from scratch from wood. 

It is fully functional, fun to control and makes a great conversation piece. Robert started building this model by obtaining a set of drawings from a CAT brochure. He enlarged the prints to match the size of the tires he had on hand. 

There were approximately 300 photos of the actual machine accumulated over the building process. Occasionally, Robert would have to revisit the CAT dealership and take more photos in order to fine-tune the building process. 

The specifications are as follows:

• Wood is the chosen material.
• Build time: approximately 1 year.
• Length: 43 inches.
• Width: (outside of tire-to-tire) 13 inches.
• Height: (ground to top of cab) 15 inches.
• Wheels: machine aluminum with raised lug bolts. 
• Tires: Tamiya Mammoth tires, filled with plastic BB shots.
• Weight: approximately 40 pounds.
• Controller: Airtronics 10 grams. 

Robert’s motor grader is powered by four electric motors (geartrain) These motors are rated to produce 36 inch-ounce each of torque at 12 volts. 

The Sabertooth electronic speed controller (ESC) is the device that distributes the power from the battery to each motor equally. This type ESC is normally used by radio-controlled robot builders but works equally well for radio-controlled construction models. 

The steering, moldboard lifts, side-shift and wheel-tilt are all controlled by actual hydraulics. 

With a perfectly organized summer day, Conrad celebrated its 60th anniversary on June 25. Owners Günther Conrad and Christine Conrad and production manager Paul Bitschin arranged a program with interesting insights into the company’s history and the production of its models.
Headquartered in Kalchreuth, northeast of Nuremberg, Germany, Conrad manufactures a wide range of highly detailed and functional die-cast models. The typical massive and heavy models are only one characteristic of Conrad. Roughly 980 models are produced per day. The Franconian company is well-known for its high-quality models and many original manufacturers have been customers of Conrad for many years, such as Liebherr, MAN, Potain or Grove. 

The history of Conrad
The early roots of Conrad started in 1956. When companies such as Schüco or GAMA were already well-known for their toys, Ludwig Conrad founded his company northeast of Nuremberg, Germany. Conrad’s early products were simply accessories and other additions for the Nuremberg toy companies.

Model railways were a fascinating hobby worldwide and also for Ludwig Conrad. He finally decided to turn this hobby into his job. This enthusiasm for a popular toy resulted in the development of a model railway control system. In the early 1970s, the Conrad system emerged with realistic modules for controlling model trains. 

During the following years, die-cast railway accessories still dominated the growing product range. In 1963, this product range grew again with the addition of electrical signals. For producing the signals, Conrad used a material which is now common: the signal heads were made of zinc. This was the breakthrough of this material, since the toy industry used mostly plastic or thin metal plates until then.

As a child, Jay Wieland of LeSueur, Minn., spent a majority of his time at his father’s Mobil shop. Even then, the bright red Mobil logo caught his attention.

“It just stood out of a crowd,” he said.  Ironically, his passion for collecting Mobil trucks and banks started as a holiday gift. “Turns out, the reason I started collecting was because my brother-in-law needed a gift to give me for a Christmas present,” he laughed.

That gift, given in 1988, spurred a collecting frenzy. “I started keeping an eye on everything that came with the Mobil Oil/Gas logo,” he said. Today, he has all 67 models made by First Gear.  His total collection numbers in the hundreds and includes pieces made by Ertl, Liberty Classics, Matchbox, TGM and more.  

When it comes to Mobil Oil trucks and toys, he owns a nearly complete collection of all the pieces ever manufactured. Jay is most proud of the rare, hard-to-locate pieces that are a part of his collection, including three prototypes that were never mass-produced.

Closely scouting collector’s magazines and guides, Jay watched for new Mobil toys that were going to be released. One in particular caught his attention. 

“I had seen advertisements for prototypes made for Parkway Mobil, a chain of Mobil gas stations along the New Jersey Turnpike,” he said. “Several gentlemen owned the group of stations and decided to commission a model truck for each station.”  

The series was slated to include between seven and nine different pieces. When the first pieces were released, they were difficult to purchase. “Only 750 were made, and they sold out within hours,” he said.  

When he noticed the entire series was never produced, he began chasing them down. “It took years of chasing to find out who had the license to produce the prototype,” he said. “I stayed up late nights looking through toy magazines. It took two years to find the prototypes.” One of the prototypes is a 1957 R-200 International tanker and the other two are Ford tankers.
Eventually, Jay was put in touch with a guy who owned the three prototypes. “The guy gave them to me and he said ‘the only reason you are getting these is because I know you won’t sell them,’” Jay said. “We still stay in touch, and we make sure that each other’s collection is complete.”

Employee Editions
Searching for rare pieces became a passion for Jay. He quickly learned that refineries, gas stations and other Mobil Oil businesses commissioned toys specifically for their employees. 

One such piece in his collection is a 1905 blue runabout truck produced for Magnolia Petroleum Company. The piece, manufactured in 1993, commemorated the company’s 90-year anniversary. 

Another piece made for company employees is a white tanker truck made for Vacuum Oil Company, a company based in Paulsboro, N.J. Rather than the now-famous flying red horse synonymous with Mobil, this toy bears the red gargoyle logo that Mobil used prior to the horse. 

A third employee piece that is part of Jay’s collection is a tanker made for a refinery in Torrence, Calif. Rather than bearing the traditional Mobil colors of red and blue, this tanker is painted all red with gold lettering.

A gin-pole truck made for an employee’s collectors club for Beaumont, Texas, Refinery is a favorite of Jay’s. “The R-200 gin-pole truck for Beaumont Refinery is a favorite,” he said. The Beaumont Refinery produces one model truck each year. Only 1,700 are produced, that is one for every employee.

 “I found out they had these trucks, and I finally got in touch with a woman from the club and asked her if I could buy the truck,” he explained. “She told me that they could not sell the trucks, but they could trade them.”