NORWAY – Every six weeks, Tom Knight dusts the spokes, gears, seats, grilles and tires of 236 tiny tractors with a soft paintbrush.

It takes three and a half hours, a small bit of maintenance he never looks forward to, but it’s worth it.

“I feel good when I come in here. It’s calming,” said Knight, looking about his den-turned-tractor-room. He bought his first toy tractor, an orange Allis-Chalmers WC, from the Franklin Mint five years ago, after retiring as comptroller at an Auburn paper company. “This is the first hobby I ever had.”

Knight has never lived on a farm, never farmed and never driven a tractor, but he would like to. Growing up in New Hampshire, he remembers going to fairs as a boy and being drawn to the heavy machinery.

Each miniature is slightly different from the next: wide or narrow front, four wheels or three, gas or liquid propane tanks, rubber treads or steel.

He’s limited his replica collection mostly to models that would have come out between 1925 and 1973.

“I’m not keen on some of the more modern tractors. The other thing: My wife won’t let me out of this room,” he said.

These days, space is at a premium. Tractors are parked on dozens of shelves, on the carpeted floor and over and under a coffee table.

Knight subscribes to six tractor and farm equipment magazines – one is for toys, the others are for the real thing – which he reads for the articles and the ads. Most of his purchases are mail-order.

To understand some of the lingo and text when there are no pictures, he’s bought about 50 tractor books for reference.

He keeps a typed inventory: 48 red tractors, 49 green. Fifty from John Deere. Fifty from International Harvester. Most of the collection is in 1:16 scale.

The zenith for a toy tractor collector: a trip to Dyersville, Iowa.

Knight says he’d like to go there someday. It’s headquarters to three of the major toy tractor companies, Ertl, Scale Models and Spec Cast, and home of the National Farm Toy Museum.

“I never met a tractor I didn’t like,” he said.

QUERRY CALLING COLLECTORS

Know a collector we ought to feature? Contact Kathryn Skelton at 689-2844 or [email protected].