For a number of years in the 1960s one of my main childhood interests was Meccano, starting with me being given a number 5 set for my (?) seventh birthday. For anyone who doesn’t know, Meccano was a construction kit with models being built up from perforated metal strips, plates, rods, wheels, gears etc. As well as boxed sets, Meccano dealers sold all the parts separately (several hundred IIRC), some costing just pence.
Over the next few years I added ever more parts including the seriously well-built No.1 clockwork and E15R electric motors and lots of gears. Jumble sales were another good place to buy additional parts. What happened to all my Meccano? I don’t know. I suspect that once I became a teenager I lost interest in it and my mother quietly found a new home for it.
As a true enthusiast I looked forward to each month’s Meccano Magazine and as soon as the publication date came round I’d be at our local newsagent asking whether my copy had arrived. More often than not, I’d have to wait another day or two!
The magazine, first published in 1916, was originally aimed at Meccano builders and featured articles on Meccano construction and new Meccano developments but over time it became a general hobby magazine aimed at boys of all ages with high quality articles on all sorts of contemporary science and technology, e.g. ‘Highlights in the aluminium story’, ‘Harnessing the Sun to melt metals’ and ‘A [ship] pilot’s life on the Tyne’.
A typical magazine of the time had about sixty pages, roughly split one quarter ads, one quarter Meccano and Hornby related articles and one half other editorial. So very much not just a Hornby puff piece. The ads provide a real insight into what might interest a 1963 boy. Here’s some of them:
- The latest Hornby-Dublo models and Dinky Toys
- Bayko building outfits
- Adana printing presses and Mamod steam engines
- Lott’s Chemistry sets
- Webley air rifles
- Meccano Club and Model Railway Society news
- 23 different vendors offering postage stamp approvals
- Merchant Navy training for boys aged 13¾ to 16½ at HMS Conway, Menai Straits and 16-18 year-olds at the Reardon Smith Nautical College, Cardiff
- Army apprenticeships for boys 14½-16½
Key contributors at the time included ‘Tommy Dodd’, a pseudonym for Les Norman, who wrote on model railways and John W. R. Taylor, an authority on aviation. The factual articles were solid and informative.
Meanwhile at the factory ….
In 1995 Hornby advertising executive. John Gahan, an advertising executive, recalled: “When I joined Meccano the Advertising Department employed about 30 people, and at its post-war peak the factory had a workforce of about 3,000. Around 500 were employed in the train room, where final assembly and packing took place of both trains and Dinky Toys. Post-war the main business appeared to be Dinky Toys, with 40,000 a day being produced.” According to National Museums Liverpool, in 1963 there were 2,000 employees at the factory – of which 80% were female -and another 3-400 on staff.
A decline in profits led to a takeover by Lines Brothers in 1964 and the Airfix Group in the 1970s. With huge competition in the toy market, Meccano/Hornby was taken over by Airfix Industries in 1971, leading to the closure of the Binns Road factory in Liverpool in November 1979 after sixty-six years. Meccano survives – see Wikipedia for the full story
How Meccano changed the world Liverpool Museum
