Hornby

Frank Hornby’s Meccano business introduced the Hornby name on a model railway system in 1920, when it launched clockwork 0-gauge trains. The first range included locomotives, rolling stock and accessories. One early locomotive was assembled with standard Meccano nuts and bolts, tying the railway products to the construction-set business; the method was soon replaced by more conventional tabbed construction. Meccano Ltd expanded the range through the 1920s with additional locomotives, wagons, coaches, signals, stations and scenery. Electric trains appeared in 1925, and later models increasingly took their body forms from real locomotives.

In 1938 Meccano Ltd introduced Hornby Dublo, a smaller-gauge railway system that became the company’s principal model railway line in the 1950s. The Second World War interrupted development, and the older 0-gauge range resumed after the war in simplified form. During the 1950s Meccano Ltd reduced that range to basic clockwork sets while concentrating attention on Dublo. The 0-gauge products gradually disappeared during the 1960s. Hornby became an independent company in 1981.