In 1947 Gustav Köster, a manufacturer of office supplies in Meinerzhagen in Germany, devised a construction set with which to build an 0 gauge train set. It didn’t enjoy a long life, as it asked a lot of any enthusiast: each piece of track needed 42 screws and nuts to build – and that times 16 to get an oval, while building the locomotive required 102 parts, plus 274 screws and nuts. Given that ready-to-run 0 gauge trains became available again in Germany around this time, the Köster system was doomed from the start. As a construction set it was severely limited, in that all you could build with it was a train, unlike other systems like Meccano. Early in 1949 Köster went bankrupt and though restarting under another name, production of the sets came to an end. Remaining stock was sold by another company, Rheinmetall, until 1951. After that remaining parts were used up by yet another firm to produce a small construction set called Gloria. The Köster program contained three sets: No 80, No 81 and No 82. With set No 80 you could build five wagons and an unmotorized locomotive, set No 81 contained the parts to build an oval of track (four straights and twelve curves), while set No 82 contained a 20 V AC motor for the loco and a transformer.