Universal coupling car - can couple to almost all 0 gauge toy trains, enables mixing brands, and allows prewar Lionel to couple with post war knuckle type,etc.

Coupling car enabling items with otherwise incompatible couplings to couple together. Here is a prewar Lionel and a Unique Art boxcar.

Bottom of the Hornby range was the MO series. First of the type dates from 1930 and is shown at left. Has fixed key but no cylinders & siderods. Middle loco is the type as made from the mid 1930s until 1950s (excludng war years).The label attached to this loco is the Meccano factory `tested` label, which has been there since new 57 years ago! At right is the final type, with new tinprinting in British Rail colours. Now renamed as Type 20 Series. Production ceased in the mid 1960s.

Hornby Engine Shed, made in 1933. (Versions made later did not have the vertical boarding tinprinted on the insides of the doors). However the locos are `foreign` to the Shed, being Lionel Commodore Vanderbilt streamliners made in the second half of the 1930s.

At a local train show - To illustrate the variety operated this picture has a recently made `Ace` brand scale model of an A4 locomotive, alongside a 78 years old clockwork powered `Joyline` cast iron bodied loco. The little Joyline still runs well, covering about 115 feet distance on a winding. The green tank loco is an `Ace`, with body design based on a Hornby of the 1920s.

At the same train show some youngsters are watching some toy trains. A prewar `Marx` locomotive with its train is clearing a Marx tunnel.

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