My wife found me a Hornby French Railway HO passenger wagon sans trucks and couplers. I restored it with spare parts and voila, the madame is now complete. I’m sure the original trucks were talgos but I mounted regular ones with Kadee body-mounted boxes. Love those oval end windows!
I’ve no idea how old this wagon is, maybe someone can offer info. The underbody says HOrnby acHO MADE IN FRANCE MECCANO. Thanks for looking. -Rob
[^o)] 1960’s, ???
[:)]
Found it:
https://www.hrca.net/wiki/File:Acho_7458_a.jpg
and likely made in the 1960’s.
If you get a chance to watch James May (the Top Gear May) and his Toy Stories tv show on Amazon, do. His Hornby and Scalextric shows are fascinating as is his full sized Airfix Spitfire “model.”
In the Meccano episode he gives a potted visual history of Meccano.
The acquisition of Meccano France by a French company was relatively recent. 1985 according to Wikipedia. The UK Meccano went belly up, twice. In 2013 Meccano was acquired by a Canadian company.
In the 60’s Hornby railway stuff was pretty primitive. When and why Hornby might have contracted manufacture of railway carriages to Meccano France is an interesting question but I doubt it would be as long ago as that.
But a quick google reveals that Meccano France was formed in 1912 by Hornby’s son.
Hornby of course usually makes OO scale not HO so your “wagons lits” (sleeper trains) was made for the European market. Probably. There are scale modellers in the UK who prefer the more correct HO scale on HO gauge track.
It seems likely that your model was made by a French division of Triang according to this:
https://www.world-of-railways.co.uk/reviews/the-history-of-hornby-tri-ang-hornby-era/
Scroll down to nearly the end and there’s a little blurb about HOrnby acHO which was “continental” brand (old pre EU UK speak for Europe) made by Meccano France for Triang UK.
Be glad it came without couplers. Triang couplers are awful. They intend to mimic old style bar couplers used on British Railways right up to at least the 60’s. Buffers and bar and chains. Every goods train (freight train) came to a halt with a sequential banging of buffers and cleaning of bar and cha
Thanks Mike for your generous research. If the body-mounted couplers give me trouble on curves, I can always display her. She’s fascinating to look at. -Rob
My very first train was a Hornby O gauge clockwork tank freight (two rail so never intended for electrifying) .
My second was a Hornby OO tank freight train set sold without a powerpack. My Dad built me a transformer from parts acquired from an electrical supply store, presumably when he got tired of buying pairs of 6v dry cells. Since the transformer he built was in a perforated metal box (for grounding and it would also have a Faraday cage effect I now realize) I could physically see how a train set powerpack worked by tracing the wires (the lid came off the box with a screwdriver). I’d previously learned the difference between parallel and series wiring connections hooking up my two batteries. That was the first model railway I spent my own money on buying a freight car (a Hornby OO Saxo Salt wagon).
My third and last trainset was a Triang HO CN freight with a F7A locomotive made for the North American market. I traded that entire set in on a Athearn BB F7A undecorated.
Last year I began my first model railroad. My first project was to paint and decal that BB F7A in my chosen prototype road markings…which I later discovered did not ever own an F7A.
I have an interest in old British model railways stuff so your post caught my eye.
I also like recovering decent models from being discarded. They don’t have to be collectible. They just have to be interesting or will be something I won’t mind my grandsons accidentally crashing or dropping while they learn about model trains, as I did. A lifelong interest reactivated.