ON THE UP

Train spotters on the lookout for Hornby
By Julie Carter

It seems as if everyone from Bing Crosby to the Grateful Dead has written a song about a train; Johnny Cash was train-inspired no less than twenty times (anyone for I Heard That Lonesome Whistle?). Toy trains have captured the imagination of children since they were first made in the wooden pull-along variety in the 1840s, but today it’s the Hornby trains of Meccano founder Frank Hornby that are setting them tracks a’rattling.

The first model train sets from the early years of the 20th century were so large that they usually had to be set up outside. The trains were working models of steam engines with the ability to pull a trainload of miniaturised carriages, much to the delight of the children that were lucky enough to ride in them. Train sets moved inside when the O gauge – which in the UK has a scale of 7mm to the foot (it was different in the US and Germany, but let’s not get into that debate!) - was developed around the time of the First World War, and by the 1920s manufacturing costs had dropped enough for mass production to expand the market. And in stepped Frank Hornby.

Hornby 1 pullman - 1938 Pullman coach in excellent boxed condition.

Hornby, who was born in 1863, left school when he was 17 and worked as a meat importer’s clerk in Liverpool. In his spare time he dabbled with mechanical models, eventually coming up with a basic construction kit of perforated metal plates that kept his sons amused as they created different models. Hornby called his invention Meccano, asked for and received his boss’s backing, and patented the product in 1901. It took five years for the business to make a profit, but by 1918 Meccano was a global enterprise employing 1200 workers in its Merseyside factory. It was time for the toy entrepreneur to look to another market.

The first Hornby model train set was released just in time for the 1920 Christmas market. It comprised a clockwork-driven locomotive, a tender, coal wagon and an oval of O gauge tinplate track that could be plugged together. Within ten years, sales of the Hornby model trains would outsell the Meccano construction sets.

In 1922 Hornby introduced its Zulu series locomotives. With a stronger clockwork motor and stove enamelling as opposed to tin printing, the Zulu series was an almost instant success and is still one of the most sought after of the Hornby range with today’s collectors, especially the tank engine versions.

Just three years later Frank Hornby launched a scale model of a London Metropolitan Railway locomotive as the flagship of his company’s first electric train set. It soon became apparent that operating the train from the mains power was far from ideal – the power could range anywhere from 100 to 250 volts – and in 1929 an operating system was developed that saw the mains voltage transformed down to a far safer 6 volts. In the same year Hornby launched an improved version of their earlier No. 1 range of tank and tender engines with such success that the models were manufactured right up until the end of tinplate production in the early 1960s, making them one of the most common Hornby trains to be found today.

Hornby 2 lms444 - LMS 4-4-4 No 2 tank clockwork loco in very good condition, boxed, c.1926-28.

New advances in technology saw the development of smaller, more compact toy trains in the 1930s, and in 1938 Hornby introduced its Hornby-Dublo train sets. This new OO gauge was approximately half the size of the O gauge, and Hornby marketed it as the ‘Perfect Table Railway’; it ran on a three rail track on a 12 volt system, only changing to a two rail system in the late 1950s. Unfortunately for Frank Hornby, he wasn’t around to see the success of the Dublo. After entering Parliament as a Tory MP in 1931, he suffered from overwork and stress as he attempted to juggle politics with running a large business in a cut-throat market, and he died in 1936. The Hornby company continued in production until 1964, when Frank Hornby’s children sold out to arch rival Line Brothers.

In reporting on a Bonhams UK toy sale at the end of last year, the trade newspaper Antiques Trade Gazette said: ‘The relative drought of good train sets makes this a seller’s market, and demand for good die-casts from those seeking pristine examples of their youthful playthings all helped push up demand, with a selling rate above 90 per cent for the trains and die-casts.’ The report was illustrated with a boxed Dublo tanks goods set of a LNER loco, open wagon, goods van and brake van, all in excellent to good condition, which sold for $3700 against a top estimate of $900.

In fact, Hornby trains were performing well at auction throughout the whole of last year. In February a group of three clockwork locos brought $2000 against a top estimate of just $200, and in April an O gauge electric Nord 4-4-2 tender locomotive more than tripled its top estimate when it sold for $1700. In September a boxed Dublo tank loco chugged past its $200 estimate to sell for $1750, whilst in the same month a clockwork LNER Sir Nigel Gresley boxed loco with boxed tender was bid to $3000 (top estimate $500). In November a group of three Hornby Dublo locos, some wagons, tenders and signals, all unboxed, sold for $2000 against expectations of around $750. In the words of the Antiques Trade Gazette: ‘Popular Hornby has been on a roll for some time.’

This information first appeared in Issue 26 of Antiques and Collectables for Pleasure & Profit.

All images courtesy Antique Toy World, Camberwell, Melbourne. For more information on Hornby, contact the Hornby Railway Collectors Association: www.hrca.net, or email chairman@hrca.net.

The early Hornby trains were metal with tinplate bodywork. Most were enamel painted, although the cheaper ranges were tinprinted; plastic was used only for some electrical parts.