Modern production Ace brand loco `Dominion of New Zealand` (A4 class) alongside an LMS Compound in front of a Hornby Engine Shed of 1933 vintage.

Ace loco as above at Springhill Station.

American Flyer cast iron bodied clockwork loco from about 1930. Magazine cover shows American express passenger train loco of the late 1890s/early 1900s. This is what, in a small boy`s imagination, his `bottom of range` toy train was.

Here is the train, running on tracks. The original mechanism has not lasted the nearly 80 years and has been replaced with another. Who owned these items originally? Would be quite old now!

Toy trains varied considerably in size. Here are two locomotive tenders. both run on the same 0 gauge track. Both are four wheeled, hence even the larger one is not the biggest made for this gauge. However the difference in size is a lot! Unique Art tender at left, Bing at right. Toy trains generally did not have pretence to being scale!

On the floor - where most toy trains were run. 75 year old Lionel Standard Gauge No.8 loco with prewar rolling stock.

The Lionel No.8 loco was the smallest of the Standard (wide) gauge locos.

Hornby Train display at Meccano Exhibition, Christchurch, New Zealand at Easter 2009. Meccano Ltd made Hornby Trains, from 1920 to the mid 1960s.

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