Single collections make September a bonanza month for model train enthusiasts

SEPTEMBER was a bonanza month for model train collectors, with no fewer than five auctions being held up and down the country. Two of them were run by Hansons on September 11 and Dreweatts on September 21, (see separate reports in this column), while the other three were held by Vectis of Thornaby on September 24, David Duggleby of Scarborough on September 23, and Gildings of Market Harborough on September 14.

The best-selling models in the Vectis sale, each at £800, were a Carette of Germany Gauge 1 clockwork 4-4-0 numbered 2350 and an O-gauge LNER A4 No. 4494 Osprey made by Ace Trains of London, followed by two further Ace Trains' models in the same gauge, SR West Country Pacific No. 34011 Tavistock (£700), and a Class 9F 2-10-0 in GWR livery carrying the fictitious identity No. 92258 G J Churchward (£600). This was in fact the name given to GWR-designed, BR-built Castle class 4-6-0 No. 7017. Prices exclude buyer's premium of 25% (inc VAT).

Hornby success

Over at Scarborough, the sale by David Duggleby auctions comprising a single collection of 130 mostly OO-gauge locomotives and thousands of items of rolling stock, was headed by a Hornby Dublo 0-6-2T No. 2594 in Southern livery, which went for £650, shadowed by another Hornby model, of GWR No. 5002 Ludlow Castle (£500). Prices exclude buyer's premium of 20% (+ VAT).

The models had been collected over more than three decades by retired council officer Adrian Batty of Brough, East Yorkshire, who died last year, and many were still in their original packaging. It was the first time the auction house had devoted an entire sale to a single owner model railway collection.

An Ace Trains' O-gauge A4 No. 12 Commonwealth of Australia was the top seller at £500 in Gildings' auction. The model, in LNER blue livery, captured a brief moment in the 27-year career of the Pacific, as it carried the No. 12 for only 16 months, from January 1947 until May 1948, when BR renumbered it 60012.

LNER is favourite

The 229-lot auction comprised a single collection of O and OO-gauge models of locomotives, rolling stock and accessories that had been put together from an early age by an LNER enthusiast from Northumberland. He started the collection after his father, a master mariner who died at sea in World War Two, gave him his first model train.

Andrew Smith, Gildings' model railway specialist, said: “The collection's owner was fascinated by new and second-hand models as well as their working history, with the LNER being his favourite, especially if it was a model of a locomotive he had seen running.” An example of this, said Andrew, was an Ace Trains' O-gauge model of A3 No. 60051 Blink Bonny, which he had seen in the early 1960s and which sold for £380. Prices exclude buyer's premium of 20% (+ VAT).