Noch

Oswald Noch founded a plumbing workshop in Glauchau, Saxony, in 1911. His son Erich established the Engineering Office NOCH as a subsidiary of the workshop in 1930. The company began selling Märklin model railways in 1935 and model buildings made by its resident carpenter, Hecker, in 1936. When Erich was conscripted in 1940, the business suspended operations in Glauchau; after the war, he restarted it and built complete model railway layouts. A 1949 catalogue offered NOCH products including tunnels and background models, and the company’s first model railway rolling stock appeared later that year.

NOCH presented its range at the Nuremberg Toy Fair in 1956. In 1961 it moved to Wangen im Allgäu, where it began making railway tunnels with vacuum thermoforming technology. The company introduced electrostatically covered grass mats in 1963/64 and injection-moulded trees in 1966/67. Later developments included the TERRA-FORM landscape system in 1984 and hard-foam walls and tunnel portals from 1982. NOCH began producing laser-cut accessories in 2007 and launched its own laser-cut building range in 2010. The family business remains based in Wangen.