Two-day sale of Underground train designer’s lifetime model collection

THE lifetime collection of a London Underground train designer and model train enthusiast will go under the hammer in a Gildings of Market Harborough 710-lot auction, spread over the two days of February 22 and 23.

The first day will feature continental items, and the second day Japanese railways and continental station signs and other railwayana.

Gildings’ model railway specialist Andrew Smith said: “This is a colossal and perfectly preserved collection of HO and N-gauge locomotives, passenger coaches and accessories amassed by the owner on many trips he took across Europe and in Japan, both for his hobby and in his job with London Underground.”

Andrew, who estimated the sale would realise up to £80,000, said the models ranged from the 1970s to late in the last decade. “It offers collectors the opportunity to acquire unused mint condition and globally-sourced boxed items of a prolific and knowledgeable collector, while the addition of European railway signs give it an added dimension,” he said. One of the signs is an enamel from the Paris Métro station Champs Élysées-Clemenceau and there are also SNCF tenderplates.

Among the models is an N-gauge nine-car Series E5 Shinkansen Japanese ‘bullet train’ made by the modelling company Kato. The auctions start each day at 10am and are live online.