The Hornby Book of Trains – The Centenary Edition’ by Pat Hammond

The Hornby Book of Trains – The Centenary Edition’ by Pat Hammond

Frank Hornby, the founder of Meccano Ltd, situated inBinns Road, Liverpool, launched Hornby Trains as a brandin 1920. Since then the product and the company hasgone through many changes. The original scale of 7mm to the foot commonly known at ‘0’ gauge was joinedand eventually superseded by the smaller and almost half sized ’00’ scale systembranded creatively as Hornby Dublo in 1938.

After the Second World War manufacturing of the Hornby Dublo systemrecommenced and soon became the dominant scale but new materials and cheaperprices quickly brought major competition to Hornby in the form of RovexIndustries, which eventually became Tri-ang Railways. Over time Tri-ang obtainedthe Meccano company and rebranded their railway system Tri-ang Hornby.

Eventually, after one more takeover the name Tri-ang was removed and the systemsimply became Hornby Railways. By the turn of the last century Hornby Railways had become just Hornby and withit a new evolution with manufacturing moving from the Margate factory where ithad been since 1954 to the Far East where modern manufacturing techniques liftedthe Hornby products from being pseudo toys to exquisite models demanded by today’s selective modeller.

This Hornby Book of Trains – The First Hundred Years, has been researched and written by renowned author, editor and model railway historian, Pat Hammond who using his amazing archive traces the one hundred year history of Hornby with facts, features and an abundance of images, supported by historical information explaining the twists and turns of this much loved and respected model railway brand. With over 448 fact packed pages, plus in excess of 800 images this bookis an amazing historical adventure taking the reader on a 100 year model railway journey that is Hornby.

(Book dimensions: 245 x 170mm).