Collectors’ Corner

Why does a small gear make a large one turn more slowly? This Dutch Meccano manual sets out the answer with actual parts a child could bolt together. The opening spread of “Drijfwerk-Uitrusting A” explains gears, pinions and worm drives. One example pairs a 19-tooth pinion with a 57-tooth wheel: three turns of the small gear produce one turn of the large one. The text then reverses the arrangement to…

Carrera Universal arrived in 1963 with cars at 1:32 scale. Four years later, Carrera added the larger 124 system, with cars at 1:24. Those numbers describe quite a noticeable change in size. For the same full-size subject, a 1:24 model is one-third longer than its 1:32 counterpart. A car measuring 4.8 metres in real life would be 15 centimetres long at 1:32, or 20 centimetres at 1:24. The slot-racing business…

A collision was not always a failed lap. In Carrera’s 1998/99 catalogue, the Crash Derby set deliberately sends two little cars towards a narrow section of track where they can collide. The accompanying illustration shows a red car and a green one meeting nose-to-nose. The caption explains that their bonnets and body panels come away in a crash. Those loose pieces were part of the game. Crash Derby sits in…

Before wiring an entire layout, Busch offered a way to try the circuits on a board. Its 1986/87 catalogue presents the Modellbahn-Technik 2080 experiment set, with around 150 experiments and circuits for railway electronics. The photograph shows separate plug-in modules joined by coloured wires. Circuit symbols and component names are printed on the modules, so the diagram and the physical parts can be followed together. Busch says the components can…

The first Stokys construction system did not use the hole spacing that became familiar to its customers. The Stockmann brothers’ original 1941 design placed the holes 10 mm apart. A leading toy retailer advised them to adopt the half-inch spacing already used by Meccano and Märklin. Stokys followed that advice. Half an inch is 12.7 mm, so this was a change to the geometry of the parts, not merely a…

Meccano is the best-known name in metal construction sets, but several other makers produced their own versions. One less familiar example is BRAL of Italy, which made aircraft construction sets during the 1950s. The nuts and bolts are of the same type as those used in British Meccano sets, which is useful when a small part is missing. This aircraft combines a lightweight aluminium body with plastic wheels. It would…