by Barbara Durlacher
Who remembers playing with Dinky Toys, Meccano or the wonderful Hornby Trains? I guess that thousands now in their 60s and 70s recall with nostalgia these remarkable inventions that came to epitomise the peak of British toy production between the end of the First World War and the 1950s. During this period, the prized gift of a Hornby train or a set of Meccano set you apart from your peers and was treasured for years.
FRANK HORNBY'S DRAWING FOR HIS FIRST PATENT APPLICATIO
Mention the names Meccano, Mechanics Made Easy or Meccano Magazine; Dinky Toys, Hornby Dublo Model Railways, or the beautiful scale models of the Hornby Train sets, and there are few people who will not remember the hours of enjoyment and instruction they received from these toys. In the years between the end of the WWI and the introduction of mass tourism, train travel for all sparked a desire in children and their parents to own one. Slogans such as “Let the Train Take the Strain” and the introduction of “AwayDay” low-priced tickets made travel to faraway places easy and affordable. They also spurred on the popularity of the Hornby products, so that with little effort and imagination your Meccano set or a few absorbed hours with your own Hornby Model Train could give you the sense of being the driver of a great inter-continental express or the operator of a dockyard crane loading ships sailing to distant shores.
RAILWAY POSTER - WHO COULD RESIST THIS IF YOU LOVE TO TRAVEL?
Imagine a child’s delight when his Christmas stocking contained the Hornby model train he had been hoping for all year. Spreading his prize onto the carpet, he, and his eager father or even a sibling or two, would play for hours with their very own train, and pretend that they, like the people in the brightly coloured travel posters at every station, were journeying to the South of France, or the snow-clad Alps for a ski-holiday.
When the death of his Liverpool produce merchant father for whom he worked as a bookkeeper closed the family business, Frank Hornby looked around for another way to make a living. Working in his backyard shed with strips of punched metal, a few screws and accessories he designed easy-to-make dockyard cranes, early motor cars and trams that were easily constructed by inventive small boys. After much thought he patented his first invention and in 1901, with a tiny loan from his current employer and a couple of helpers, he began production of a limited number of items. He had no idea that over the course of the next forty years his inventions would grow into one of the largest toy manufacturing concerns in Britain, and that Meccano and the scale model Hornby trains which followed would not only inspire a generation of youngsters to become interested in mechanics, but would make him a millionaire and a Member of Parliament.
With no formal mechanical or engineering training, but a practical and commonsense approach to creating accurate scale models of the mechanical objects around him, Frank Hornby achieved what can be regarded as another of those waves of inventive imagination which occurred in Britain between the wars when innovative engineering was at its height.
Who could fail to appreciate the delicacy and beauty of those train sets, or ignore the allure of a Dinky lorry whose proportions were exactly scaled to the grasp and reach of tiny fingers? Who could not appreciate the spur to a young imagination the regular Meccano competitions presented, with their promise of fame for the young designer or the prospect of their invention being incorporated into the Meccano range? Clever marketing linked to these competitions and well-run ‘Meccano Boy’s Clubs’ kept Frank abreast of advances in design and thinking, while the cross-fertilisation from his young customer’s ideas brought new energy to his product line.
His keen business instincts and determined export policy kept his invention at the forefront of British toy-making and strict quality control ensured that the Hornby name was not only a status symbol for his young customers, but that his toys became desirable and prestigious possessions in households all over the world. Frank’s later years were spent between his large business and active involvement in politics where his efforts to bring more equality for the working classes in his constituency of Everton in Liverpool went sadly unappreciated, until after a few years, the strain of commuting between Westminster and Liverpool and the diabetes that had affected him for years, caused his death at the age of 73 in 1936.
Read: “Toy Story” by Anthony McReady, pub. Ebury Press 2002
“Frank Hornby: The Boy Who Made a Million Dollars with a Toy” by M P Gould, pub. Meccano Company, Inc., New York.
© Barbara Durlacher 2010
This entry was posted by bdurlacher on Monday, February 1st, 2010 at 12:00 am and is filed under From Me to You.
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Oh Lawdy! how we miss ‘em. My first Meccano was handed down to me by a Scout colleague – who was going to do the real thing as an Air Force Apprentice. Being far too left (read awkward) handed, I in turn handed it over to a Cub, a lad with a mechanical bent.
Sad to say, I was never the owner of a Hornby Train. I was, however, given a small wind up ‘gramophone’ and three second-hand (er, pre-loved) records. Another present was a fountain pen, a bottle of Swan ink (black) and a thick exercise book. Yes! I ended up in the media.
Now, kids are building computers, wh