Liliput

Walter Bücherl founded Liliput in Vienna in 1947 with six employees. The first model railway products, made from wood and tinplate, followed in 1948; plastic models were added in 1950. The company introduced metal wheelsets with pointed bearings in 1955, and its P8 locomotive appeared in 1958. In 1962, five operating sites were consolidated in a factory on Kalvarienberggasse in Vienna. Liliput added H0e narrow-gauge models in 1967 and presented long, scale-length H0 express coaches in 1970.

The original Liliput company went bankrupt in 1990. Herpa acquired its tools and brand name, and a new Liliput Miniaturmodelle company was formed at the Baden bei Wien works. The Vienna works closed in 1991; the Baden works closed the following year, when Bachmann Europe acquired Liliput and moved its tooling and production to Hong Kong. The brand continued under Bachmann: its first Bachmann-made locomotives reached the market in 1994, and it began producing N-gauge models in 2010.