Re: TRIX OO Scale products?


"Jim Guthrie" <jim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:3k03a21l1p9ab64u3tid01oeu4fc0pqrgu@xxxxxxxxxx
On Mon, 26 Jun 2006 21:25:16 +0100, "kim" <ntscuser@xxxxxxx> wrote:

Kim,

From what I have read, they did lead just after WW2 when toy
production re-started, and stuck to the pre-war standards rather than
review their products - i.e. better 4mm scale track gauge, or H0
scale.

They didn't have much choice. Britsh industry was completely burned out
after WW2, there wasn't any money for investment in new tooling. Rovex
had
the advantage of not starting before the economy started to pick up again
in
the 1950's.

If I get the time, I'll try and dig out my reference which was a long
article in Your Model Railways many years ago which recounted the
development of British railway modelling.

Immediately after WW2, the BRMSB (British Railway Modelling Standards
Bureau) was keen to evaluate and set up new standards for railway
modelling - in effect, drawing together and rationalising the various
threads of development which had been going on before WW2. I think
they had the example of the NMRA in North America and what it had set
about to do to bring some semblance of order to the North American
modelling market.

The long break in toy manufacturing caused by the war could have given
a clean slate to start over again with fresh ideas, but for whatever
reasons, Hornby decided to put their old production line back into
operation with exactly the same standards as they had used pre-war.
Since they were the leading British producer at the time, that
virtually decided the standard and the BRMSB didn't have the teeth to
push for anything much different.

They did bring out the BRMSB 00 standards which were not the same as
Hornby Dublo, but the HD standards were included in their set of
standards. Trix came back into the market with their very coarse
standards and Rovex(Triang) came into the market with their own coarse
standards. The only manufacturer who produced to BRMSB standards in
4mm scale was Graham Farish.

People were looking to widen the gauge of 00 at that time, and EM
(Eighteen Millimetre) gauge came into existence and was included in
the BRMSB standards as well.. Maybe if BRMSB had had their way, EM
would have become the accepted gauge for 4mm modelling in the UK -
being a fair compromise between gauge and width over wheels (see
Martin Wynne's post on the practicalities of gauge and wheel widths.)

Jim.

One has to ask whether, after six years of war and in a country that was -
in many respects - bankrupt, Meccano/Hornby (or anybody else for that
matter) could have afforded the cost of dumping all their pre-war machinery
and tools and re-equipping to different standards. I have always suspected
that the main aim of what can loosely be called "leisure industries" was to
actually get some production started and some cash - little though there
was - trickling back into the tills.
Just a thought!

David Costigan


.

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