— Meccano/Hornby fab —

This British Manufacturer coms from Liverpool.

The company was founded in 1902 by Frank Hornby together with his former employer and investor David Hugh Elliot, they first started under the name "Mechanics Made Easy".

While creating toys for his children, Frank came up with the idea of perforating tin plates so you could conext them with nuts and bolds and make all kinds of constructions.

In 1908, the company name changed to legendary Meccano brand.

by 1915, at a trade fair in the United Kingdom, he introduced a tin plate train for the first time in the then current track 0.

However, he had to wait until the end of the First World War before he could bring it on market under the name  Meccano / Hornby.

As all the major manufacturers of their time, there was often cooperation.

For example, German manufacturer Märklin was given the opportunity by Meccano to bring out a licenced set under its own name, in return Meccano received clockwork engines from Märklin.

And presumably there were also other contacts manufacturers as Bing.

Meccano also produced steam engines that could be used as a motor for Meccano constructions.

The steam cengines were therefore mounted on perforated bottom plate, so that you could firmly attach  your construction to it.

Meccano / Hornby is probably one of the manufacturers who continued the production of trains in scale 0, the longest until 1962.

Dinky Toys also was a product of the  Meccano brand.

In 1971, the factory in Liverpool was permanently shut down after heavy financial problems.

Yet, two of the three world famous  brand names have survived.

Hornby trains were taken over by Dublo, and later by Airfix and kept producing under the Hornby brand name.

Now they are one of the biggest 00 scale manufacturers, with headquarters in the UK but the production line in China.

The brand Meccano has been bought by a French firm and has moved to France.

Fortunately, the company has grow with its time, now they produces meccano-like robots that you can still put together with screws and nuts and then program by computer.

Dinky Toys has been bought by Matchbox, which again was bought by Hot Wheels, but the brand Dinky Toys stoped to existed.