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”.
