Happy Birthday Frank (Hornby)

It was Frank Hornby’s 150^th anniversary this week. Google celebrated with a special “Google Doodle” on the UK website. It set me off wondering what Hornby meant to me.

There is no question that Frank Hornby was an inspired entrepreneur. He popularised mechanical engineering to a whole generation of kids by inventing Meccano. Yet by the time I was in my childhood, Meccano was being trumped by Lego – you could build fantastic things in Lego much quicker, and much more easily. And I think that the wonders of engineering had been all too readily accepted by then. The wonder material through the Victorian and Edwardian eras had been iron and steel, but by the 1950’s the new wonder material was undoubtedly concrete. Meccano looked like the Victorian great structures such as the Forth rail bridge, but Lego looked like the South Bank centre and the National Theatre in London.

Of course, whilst it is well known that Frank Hornby invented Meccano, it is the model rail system named after him that is more famous today. There is a link in his development of the Meccano idea to early trains, which led his company onto the Hornby Double O system. Looking back at the various books and web resources. you can see some great model trains which were developed through to the 1960’s – models I look at with a bit of longing in my mind.

My first loco - a Playcraft clockwork 0-4-0

My first train set wasn’t Hornby set. By the time I was old enough to get involved in trains, Tri-ang had come along and set up in competition to Hornby. Tri-ang was part of the great toy empire of the Lines Brothers, and they had access into every toy shop in the country. But the launch of Tri-ang set other people’s minds in motion, and Playcraft did a deal with the French firm of Jouef to introduce a range of British look alike train sets, sold mainly by Woolworths. These sets were much cheaper than either Tri-ang or Hornby, the cheapest was one penny less than a pound – equivalent to around £20 at today's values. You can’t find anything equivalent to that sort of value even today. 

Playcraft sets were great, but the range was never that developed. As I grew older, Playcraft became harder to find, but Tri-ang was everywhere. I soon became a convert to Tri-ang. There were problems though – the rails didn’t match as the rail connectors were on different sides (when you put a playcraft rail up to a Tri-ang rail, both connectors were on the same side, leaving the other side without any connectors). Although it wasn’t obvious to me as a child, the height of the rails were also different.

The underside plate to my loco with Playcraft's name and Jouef diamond logos

What saved the day from my point of view was that Tri-ang merged with a firm I had only vaguely heard of – Hornby. As part of the merger, special adaptor rails were introduced to let Hornby track interconnect with Tri-ang – and guess what; they fitted Playcraft track as well. 

So from a very personal point of view I’m grateful to Hornby, but in a very backhanded compliment sort of way – it was only the demise of his train system that helped me out!

Being more than a little older now, I can look back and start to appreciate, both the imagination which led him to launch model train sets in the UK, and also the attention to detail they still show to this day. Of course history moves on and much later, the Lines Brothers' toy empire fell, and Tri-ang Trains were sold off. They were re-branded as “Hornby” and the modern system which bears Frank’s name is arguably much more a product of Tri-ang than of the original Hornby model system. And in their new guise Hornby have been very creative, they have ramped up the accuracy, and have tried very hard to respond to what their buyers want. For the current generation of children, Hornby means model trains, and a great inspiration they are too!.