There's something about Hornby

If you ever chance to lay your eyes on a Hornby Train set, you’ll see that it’s not just a mere train set. It’s way more than that. It’s a work of art, a marvel of precision engineering and the ultimate benchmark for railway scale modelling.

To consider your Hornby a plain old train set would be like calling a Ferrari a plain old car. Well, technically speaking a Ferrari is a car. But ask those who own it and they will tell you it’s way more than a car. It's a feeling, it's an emotion. It’s really something else.

2020 marks 100 years since the First Hornby clockwork 0 gauge model rolled out to the public. With this blog I aim to pay tribute to one of the finest pieces of precision engineering ever made.

I first happened to come across a Hornby Set way back in time, when my age was just crossing over from single to double digits. It’s an age where the budding soul craves for something out of the ordinary.

Before I encountered a Hornby, Train sets for me were just plain old battery operated mobile boxes of plastic, crudely shaped to resemble trains with a rudimentary track system. But one glance at a Hornby set made me throw all my preconceived notions out the window. To say that I was bowled over was an understatement!

The first thing which struck me was the striking attention to detail and the intricately carved livery on the coaches and freight wagons. It was as if the makers had put the actual wagon through a shrinking machine and packaged it as a toy. So detailed was the craftsmanship that I could actually see the nuts and bolts holding the wagon plates together.

While I was assembling the track layout, I was overawed with the precise fitment of the tracks and the elaborate track changing mechanism. It was just like the real thing !

Upon operating the train set, I was in for another pleasant surprise. The train ran smoothly and noiselessly on the tracks, unlike the noisy and clunk pathetic train sets I had played with earlier.

But that was not all. I casually happened to glance at their product catalog, and was overawed by the sheer variety of items in store. There were so many varieties of train sets, tracks and equipment! There were all types of locomotive models.

There were ancient steam engines (including the legendary Mallard). There were precisely modelled exact replicas of Diesel engines. Then there were the models of the high speed electric freight and passenger locomotives. There were all types of train sets (including the old Flying Scotsman and the high speed Intercity Rail set) and an incredibly huge variety of passenger and freight wagons, each decorated with it’s own delicately carved intricate livery. Then there were all types of props and equipment such as model railway stations, level crossings (manned and unmanned), trees, plants, fences, sheep, signals, turntables, stoppers and even working electric wires and poles. It was like glancing at a whole new parallel miniature model railway world.

Needless to say, my experience with the miniature Hornby Train set made a big impression on my growing mind. I made a firm resolve to become a proud owner of a Hornby one day, even if it would take me an entire lifetime. Hornby sets weren't available in India at that point in time and I thought I would have to wait a long, long time for my dream to be fulfilled. But I was willing to wait.

Fortunately, it didn't take an entire lifetime for my wish to materialise. Several years later, when I was in my late teens, I became the proud owner of a Hornby Eurostar High Speed train set. I don’t get much time to operate it due to various constraints. But when I do, I forget all inhibitions and once again become the same eager young boy I was when I first chanced to lay my eyes on a Hornby.

Image Taken from Alamy.com

Cheers to Hornby Railways! I hope you keep rolling out more and more awesome train sets with the same dedication and detail in the coming years.