It all started in 1981 when Dick Cutler, my father, bought his first steam toy, the Doll & Cie pictured here. It was in poor condition. Dad had always enjoyed metal working as a hobby, and with the acquisition of this engine, everything came together as he began to focus his amazing machining skills and attention to detail on restoring steam toys. As you can see from the before-restoration picture, this engine was rusty and missing several parts. Dad made most, if not all of of the missing parts, including the smokestack. He also painted and re-plated many of the existing parts. He left as much of the original paint on the side of the base as he could.

In 1995 Dad started a quarterly newsletter “For Steam, Hot Air and Electric Motor Enthusiasts” which he called The Toy Engine Collector , or TEC. At its peak TEC had over 200 subscribers from around the world. The quality of his newsletter equaled the quality of his restorations. I will be making those newsletters available on a quarterly basis starting in January, 2024.

Over the years the Cutler Collection grew as Dad tried to collect at least one toy from every manufacturer, and every country. He always thought many of his engines should be in a museum, and perhaps some of them will be some day. But for now, I’ve decided to make the collection viewable online. For collectors and restorers, I will attempt to capture all of the details on every toy. This will take a minimum of 8 pictures for every engine and 2-3 pictures per accessory. The website will remain in “Coming Soon” mode until I’ve taken and edited most of the ~3500 pictures I expect to make available. Until then, you can still see what's in the collection, and thumbnail pictures of the toys I've photographed.

About the Tag number. The tags have a one, or two letter prefix which indicate the type of toy and a number, which is simply the order in which the toys were acquired. For example, SS001 is a Stationary Steam toy.

Each toy also has a type code, which for this engine is LH/H1DS which Is a collection of single-letter (or digit) codes indicating the power source, boiler / cylinder, number of cylinders, cylinder action, and valve action. So this is a Liquid fueled, Horizontal boiler engine with 1 Horizontal Double-action cylinder and a Slide valve.

Fortunately, you don’t need to remember any of these codes because I’ve created a searchable database so that it’s easy to find that 3-cylinder engine, or the one with the double boiler (which didn’t have a code).

Bob