THE REICHSMARSHALL'S MODEL TRAIN SET (2)

As Reichsmarshall Goering indulges himself with an extensive train set in the attic space of the Castle House Hotel, Herefordshire (see HERE), something should be said about interwar model railroading:

Before World War 1, model trains were principally manufactured in Germany, by the famous firms of Bing and Marklin [note 1], mainly in a large scale known as Gauge ‘O’ [note 2]. Such trains soon became popular among the wealthy elite in Britain as well as Germany. In 1909, reflecting that success, W.J. Bassett-Lowke and Henry Greenly started the English language ‘Model Railways and Locomotives Magazine’.

After the Great War, with German toy trains no longer being imported into Britain due to the bitterness towards the vanquished, the British toy entrepreneur and inventor of Meccano, Frank Hornby, saw an opportunity to expand his manufacturing business into the production of toy trains. In 1920, he launched “Hornby Trains”.

Frank Hornby’s first British-made Hornby ‘0’ gauge clockwork locomotives were produced in tinplate and assembled, using nuts and bolts, at the Meccano Ltd. factory situated in Binns Road, Liverpool. The first locomotive design of this construction was a generic style 0-4-0 locomotive using a clockwork mechanism and connected to a simple 4-wheel tender. The No.1 0-4-0 Hornby ‘0’ Gauge locomotive design featured cylinders and connecting rods, plus brass handrail knobs, the bodies of the trains having an enamelled finish.

Inspired by the private railway companies of the day, the first four tinplate ‘0’ gauge Hornby locomotives produced were liveried in Midland Railway (MR) Maroon, London North Western Railway (LNWR) Black, Caledonian Railway (CR) Blue and Great Northern (GN) Green. These locomotives continued to be produced until 1923. Other railway equipment, wagons, signals, buildings, etc, all tinplate, were also produced. In 1925, a much more successful electric model was introduced, operating on the high voltage of 110 volts AC power. Safety concerns saw low voltage 4V and then 6V motors introduced, followed by a reliable 20V AC system, which was developed in the early 1930s. However, clockwork remained the mainstay of the Hornby 0 gauge trains until 1937.

Frank Hornby’s ‘0’ Gauge train system had soon grown considerably, both in the large number of items available and in popularity, but new houses were by that time being built smaller than before and consequently the space available for an ‘0’ Gauge train layout, was becoming more limited. Such restriction on space had a depressing influence on the sales not only of Hornby’s ‘0’ Gauge trains, but on other manufacturers. In continental Europe, in order to deal with this issue, a smaller gauge was being developed. This new scale was aptly classified as ‘H0’ as it was half the size of the ‘0’ Gauge models [note 3].

In 1937, faced with this potential competition, Hornby decided to introduce their own smaller system. Due to scale versus mechanical size restrictions, however, Hornby could not quite reproduce the continental ‘H0’ system. Instead, Hornby opted for a slightly larger scale, which was given the name ‘Dublo’ by the company’s Commercial Director (now known as ‘OO’) [note 4]. The Hornby Dublo scale used more or less the same wheel back to back measurements as the ‘H0’ system but, generally speaking, all other dimensions were increased by 0.5mm.

By 1938, the first adverts had started to appear promoting the new Hornby Dublo system. Two locomotives were initially produced. One was a generic 0-6-2T freight model available with GWR, LNER, LMS or SR markings. The second featured the LNER Class A4, ‘Sir Nigel Gresley’. These two locomotives were available with either a clockwork mechanism or a 12vDC motor and both featured in individual train sets where they shared a common pack, including the Gresley teak effect coaches. The locomotives were diecast metal, and the carriages and wagons were generally made of tinplate. This was a very well planned range of electric and clockwork models, successfully consolidating 12 V DC as the standard for “OO” scale. This led to the adoption of “OO” as a broadly accepted modelling standard in the UK, whereas much of the rest of the world adopted “HO” scale.

The Hornby Dublo range expanded quickly, but was curtailed from 1940 due to “World War II”. Production was completely suspended in 1942, only resuming after the war and not then reaching full capacity until 1948. Clockwork models were not produced in “00” scale after the war [note 5].

[Note 1] Bing continued in production until liquidation in 1932 and complete cessation in 1933. The owners of Bing, who were Jewish, fled Germany for England upon the rise of Adolf Hitler. Reichmarshall Goering’s German train layouts in Carinhall featured trains manufactured by Marklin.

[Note 2] O Scale in the UK is commonly 1:43.5 or 7 mm to the foot, in continental Europe it is commonly 1:45, though 1:43.5 is also used particularly in France, and in the USA 1:48

[Note 3]  HO Scale is 1/87

[Note 4]  OO Scale is 1/76.2. Wargamers will know only too well that Airfix, many years later, further complicated everything by producing figures in neither HO nor OO scale, but their own unique “HO/OO scale”.

[Note 5] With many thanks to Alan for this summary of British interwar model railways. Given this research, there seems little doubt that the Reichsmarshall’s extensive Herefordshire train set must have been manufactured by Hornby. Alan notes that the Reichsmarshall “in real life” (or whichever ‘timeline’) is “said to have been a subscriber to Model Railway News”.