BRITISH TOY TRAINS
Three reviews for the price of one! Michael Foster’s name has long been known to train collectors and he’s been putting his efforts into a multi-volume account of the much lesser manufacturers of British model trains. Michael’s books are lavishly illustrated. Most MR readers will never have seen first-hand many of the models illustrated, and many will be surprised at how crude some of them are. Other modellers will thrill to see the spotlight shining on such a large and neglected segment of the hobby. Bassett Lowke and Hornby tend to be the pre-war names most people recognise, but there were many others, such as Marx, Chad Valley (latterly a Woolworths-owned brand), Brimtoy and Betal (apparently a pun on Beat All!). The modelling may have been crude but the market wanted to be up to the minute. So, for anyone looking for a full account of Gresley’s ‘A4s’ or Stanier’s ‘Coronations’, there are pages of coverage. There’s even a Marx ‘Coronation’ in military livery. Other forms of traction were in their infancy, but the Union Pacific was pioneering diesel inter-city train sets in the 1930s, and British firms like Marx in Dudley, or Wells, were making them. Much of the steam was going out of this market as British Railways came on the scene, but Chad Valley managed a full selection of BR tinplate items.
ON THE TIN
It wasn’t just just rolling stock. These manufacturers often went to town with a full selection of tin-printed accessories, such as signal boxes. What makes these books special is the wealth of real gems that Michael has unearthed. Did you know that Palitoy offered a plastic ‘S’ scale range, decades before Mainline ‘OO’ models appeared on the scene? That’s right, it produced two locomotives, an LNER ‘A3’ and a GWR ‘61XX’. The timeframe in which the volumes are being released means that ‘update’ information gets published in the next volume because these are stories hitherto uncovered and there’s much to discover. Book 4 is scheduled for May 2018 and will cover Brimtoy 1945‑1990, Mettoy and more. (Robert Forsythe)