Liverpool Museums interview with Norman Hatton - March 2001

[Andy Y]

Norman Hatton (aged 83) interview with Liverpool Museums, transcription from 27th March 2001

 

 

Could you just tell me your name please?

 

My name is Norman Hatton. 

 

What date did you actually start your business?

 

About 1946

 

How did you come to get involved with the business?

 

Well, I had just come out of the Army and I had no job to go back to and it came over the news one evening that anyone could now open a shop without having to obtain a licence. Previous to that date you had to have a licence to open any type of shop. So I opened one at 136 Smithdown Road and, erm, started selling anything I could lay my hands on; second hand bicycles, furniture, frying pans, anything at all because everything had been in short supply, well it had been impossible supply for the four years of the war so everything I was able to obtain had a ready market.  I remember buying 36 frying pans in one week and sold the lot in a week. And I sold a lot of Government Surplus such as Gas Masks and haversacks and things like that. Well then I found that the items that sold the best out of the whole lot were Hornby Trains. I used to by them one evening and there was a ready market the next day for them.

 

Where did you buy them from?

 

I used to go round, as I say, in this Austin Seven car and get them second hand cos it was the only way they could be obtained. Then when Meccano recommenced they were still in short supply, they allocated one or two per shop for Christmas each year and they couldn’t obtain any more. So there was still a market for second hand. But then as I say this takeover bid came from their opposition firm Triang and they had in about 1960 they had a very, very large stock of Hornby Dublo. The reason they had such a big stock was the Triang trains were inferior quality but they were about half the price. And when people came looking for a train set for a child they looked at a Hornby Dublo set which might be about eight pounds and even though it was higher quality people wouldn’t pay it, they preferred to buy the Triang item which was made out of plastic because it was about half the price. The competition was so severe that Meccano Ltd couldn’t sell their product, even though it was a superior product because it was all made of metal whereas the Triang was plastic and obviously plastic things can be made at a much cheaper price than the Hornby Dublo. Then as I say they wanted to clear out the factory because it now belonged to the opposition company and they wanted to clear it out so there would be no competition. So that was a great opportunity for me and I bought nearly all their stock of Hornby Dublo which was a much superior product.

 

And as you probably know Meccano was on war work until the end of the war and they didn’t start making Hornby items again until about 1946. But there was a big demand for second hand Meccano and Hornby trains and I used to go around in a little Austin Seven every evening buying up second hand which found a ready market. And then Meccano recommenced the production of Hornby Trains about the end of 1946 but they were in very, very short supply and in most cases they only allocated one per shop for Christmas and then they had to wait for twelve months to get another set. So of course I carried on selling the second hand stuff and then, let’s see now, about, about 1960 Meccano were in financial difficulties and an opposition firm who manufactured Triang Trains made a takeover bid and the production of Meccano ceased. It wasn’t quite as advertised, it was advertised as the amalgamation of two famous makes Triang and Hornby but in point of fact it wasn’t, it was a complete takeover by Triang and they wanted to move the Hornby Dublo which was a much superior product so there would be no serious competition – and that was my golden opportunity. I bought up practically all that was in the factory of Hornby Dublo, and Hornby O Gauge, which is the larger size for next to nothing. And they were very pleased to sell them to me because from then on there was no competition from Triang you see.

 

Can you remember how much that cost you, to buy the stock that they had?

 

Well, I used to go on a Wednesday afternoon and the Sales Manager would  have a big sheet of foolscap with all the stock that they had and they said ‘do you want these, do you want those?’ and I used to say I wanted these and I wanted that and what I did was if there was a big stock of a certain item I only ordered two or three hundred but if they had…I remember one item they had four thousand of, so I bought the whole lot knowing that it would give me the monopoly you see. But I did very well with it and I sold it for about twenty years.

 

Really? The stock that was left over took twenty years to sell?

 

Not because it was difficult to sell, because it was easy to sell and I kept putting the price up and I made a fortune out of it. But those days have gone now and strong competition has developed from a firm called Bachmann. They also are made of plastic but they are very well-detailed and they are well advertised. And then the firm that was Meccano Ltd was bought over by a firm called Lines Brothers who were the biggest toy makers in the world at that time. They transferred the name Mecc…, no transferred the name Hornby on to their product which was really Triang and only made of plastic nowhere near the quality of the goods that came from Meccano. As I say people wouldn’t pay that little bit extra because they thought, well,  this set at five pound would satisfy the child even though its nowhere near the quality, it would satisfy for a Christmas present. And so eventually there such strong competition and there was enormous stock of Hornby Dublo left at Meccano, in fact I think they had to reinforce the stock rooms to take the weight. And then they got orders from Lines Brothers who were their owners to clear out the factory completely so there was no competition, and that was the Sales Manager rang me up.

What was his name, can you remember?

 

Warnekin, W-a-r-k-e and I think he must be dead now, I think. But I can remember his words exactly. He said ‘Listen Mr Hatton we want to clear out this factory complete to make way for more products, he said this, he said ‘how about a shilling each for everything?’[laughs]

 

I bet your eyes lit up didn’t they?

 

Well, they did, yes. At that price I didn’t have a cheek to make him an offer. So I said well I’ll take as much as I can and I filled all the rooms over the shop with Hornby Dublo and a lot of my friends houses, one of my friends had a three-storey house and I filled all his bedrooms with Hornby Dublo stuff as well.

 

Was that before you moved to this shop?

 

Yes, it was at 136 Smithdown Road, strangely enough it’s a shop that does what do you call it, on your arm…those things?

 

Tattoos?

 

Yes, tattoos, I don’t know if they sell much. [problem with microphone] But our business is now almost eighty percent mail order. We send, we buy the present Bachmann of course and we buy the present day Hornby, which is not to be connected with the goods made by Meccano.

 

That’s made in Margate?

 

That’s right it’s made in…well it was, I’ll tell you a bit more. It’s made in Margate and they transferred the name from Triang onto Hornby. We’ve expanded our business so the products go all over the world…in America, Australia, New Zealand and we even had an order recently from Russia.

 

How do you advertise then for people to know about you?

 

Well there’s specialist magazines which cater for nothing else but model railways and we take, well I started taking an eighth of a page then increased it to  a quarter of page and now we take three full pages. We are the largest advertiser in it and also there’s three or four other magazines and we advertise in all of them. The business is now managed by my son and daughter.  My daughter is mostly on the computer but my son does all the buying and all the advertising and we have a staff of about eight who pack the parcels and answer the telephone, well we have three telephones actually.

 

You said a high percentage is mail order then?

 

Yes, when I was buying second hand we had one or two quite famous people who dealt with us. One of them was John Moore’s son who came in a chauffeur-driven Bentley and brought in his collection of Dinky Toys and another quite well-known person was Norman Evans. Do you remember Norman Evans?

 

No

 

Oh you’re too young. He was the comedian that did that sketch ‘Over the Garden Wall’ and he bought a set off us and sold it back to us a few years later. Another day a taxi drew up and out stepped Ken Dodd waving his tickling stick, but he didn’t come in our shop - he went next door which was a record shop at that time and he went to sign his records so he wasn’t actually a customer. And people keep asking us have the Beatles ever been? And, erm, no, I can’t say they have.

 

Have you got someone who is your best customer that you have had for a very long time?

 

Well, funnily one of our, probably our biggest customer is in Japan now so the Hornby trains which were made in Margate as you say are now manufactured in China. So the history is they were made in Meccano Ltd in Binns Road, then most of them came here to Smithdown Road, then they were manufactured in Margate and they were, stuff from Margate also came to Smithdown Road to our shop and now they are able to manufacture so cheaply in China that its not worth them making anything in this country at all. The Chinese I believe will work very well, very hard and very efficiently for a fraction of what a British workman will do and they’re very, very high quality as well. So the two main makes we have, are selling are Lima which is an Italian make, Bachmann made in China and Hornby which is made in China. So the funny part is, they’re made in China, they come here and one of our biggest customers is in Japan which is next time to China. So it’s a shame the British industry has gone down so much, no motorbikes are made here.

 

Why do you think, what’s your opinion on why the Meccano factory closed?

 

Well, they concentrated on the high quality perhaps for too long. They would never use plastic for seven years, they wouldn’t use and consequently the price had to be much higher as they were made of metal. And perhaps they kept on with that policy too long.

 

Did you feel upset when the factory closed, that it was the end of an era?

 

Well I wasn’t upset because I made a tremendous profit out of it didn’t I? But it was a shame for the employees of Meccano; I believe there was two thousand of them who lost their jobs. But it was a golden opportunity for me. Mind you it wasn’t entirely luck, any other person in the trade could have done

what I did because they wanted to get rid of it. And anyone could have gone in and had a word with the Sales Manager Mr Warnekin and he would have wrote the same sheet of foolscap out and sold to anyone at the same price. He had orders from the owners in London that he had to empty the factory and I happened to be near at hand and after the Hornby trains had gone too, they went first of all to a dealer, a very large dealer who concentrated on buying surplus or bankrupt stocks so a large amount of the stock went down to Cornwall and besides being a bankrupt stock dealer he also owned a coach firm so I rang him up and said I was willing to buy them, was he willing to sell them and he said yes, come down and see me. So I went down to Cornwall, to Oak Hampton actually and I bought the whole lot that he had and he shipped it up here in his, in two or three of his motor coaches. So its had an unusual career, then shipped down to Cornwall, then bought by me and shipped back to Liverpool only a mile from where they were manufactured, then manufactured in Margate on the South Coast and now manufactured how many thousands of miles away in China.

 

But it still comes back to you?

 

And a large amount of it still comes back to us and then one of our biggest customers is in Japan so it goes back to Japan which is rather interesting I suppose?

 

It is. So why did you move to this shop from your other one?

 

Well I was renting the other shop you see. To tell the truth in 1958 the owners wanted to double the rent so I thought rather than pay double the rent I’d sooner buy a shop. So I walked along Smithdown Road and found this shop was for sale, previously it had been a paint and wallpaper shop. So I agreed on a price with the owner and then we filled all these other rooms with stock. It happened to coincide with the period when Meccano was clearing out their stuff so it was a lucky move for me. I filled all the rooms, next door to this it was, not this, with stock and I advertised it at what I thought was good prices but people bought it in such overwhelming quantities that I thought it was wise to put the prices up. So I gradually put the prices up and people still bought it because it was a superior article. People belatedly seemed to appreciate that it was a high quality article but why they wouldn’t buy it a few years previously when Meccano was struggling is a mystery. They were willing to buy it when it was no longer manufactured. I suppose its human nature really when you can’t get a thing you are anxious to buy it.

 

Do you think it was the novelty of things being made in plastic that they went for that and then realised that the craftsmanship was better on the Hornby?

 

Well you can get great detail with plastic you have to admit that, but they are nowhere near as good, they are not as strong. I mean the trains made by Meccano out of metal you could drop them on the floor or hit them with a hammer or use them very roughly and they’d still work while the goods made by the present firm are very easily broken, but people still seem. They are cheaper of course, and people still seem to buy on price.

 

Then there’s a lot of collectors have started, they’re a peculiar breed of men who never play with them at all they just buy them just to put in a glass case to look at and a lot of our trade is with that type of person.

 

Do you have more older people than younger people buying?

 

Yes a lot more. The average age of our customer must be about sixty and not many of them buy for children, we don’t do a big Christmas trade now.

 

So you said before you used to buy from Meccano, did you actually go into the factory where they made the trains and you had a look around, what was that like?

 

Well I used to go and sit there, there was a pair of revolving doors you went through, the Sales Managers office was just on the left down a passage and I used to go there and sit with him on a Wednesday afternoon and he just said what price he would take and they were so low there was no need for me to make any offers.

 

Did you actually go around the factory at any point?

 

No I didn’t actually

 

It was just to buy?

 

I knew what everything looked like, there was no need to, I could just tell from this list that the Sales Manager had what they were and what they looked like.

 

From those original Hornby’s made at Binns Road was there a most popular model that sold more than the other trains.

 

They advertised one a Hornby Dublo one called the Duchess of…

 

Atholl?

 

Yes, the Duchess of Atholl train set that was coming out I think it was Christmas 1926 but they never actually came out, they didn’t have any ready. I had no end of customers coming and asking if I had the Duchess of Athol train set that they’d seen advertised in the Meccano list and I said no, its no use asking for that its never been produced. But I’ve got another one, I sold any amount of alternate items. But then that the Duchess of Athol train set came out a couple of years later but when they’d advertised it originally there were none, it was only that they intended to make, there were none available.

 

What about the City of Liverpool one, was that particularly popular because you were in Liverpool or not?

 

That was made by the present Hornby form in Margate. That was made specially for us. We went down to the Toy Fair in Brighton and we asked them if they could make a City of Liverpool locomotive and they said yes if you’ll take a thousand, so we said yes we’ll take a thousand. So and the reason of course we took the lot was so we wanted to have the monopoly. But we didn’t overcharge we just charged our normal price, making our normal profit. But they’ve all gone now.

 

And what date was that when they started making them for you?

 

It was about five years ago. I think we’ve got two or three left now, that’s all. But we’ve been able to sell them of course because we were the only ones in the country with them, with that name on. They promised us that we would be the only ones, that’s why we were able to take, was it a hundred or a thousand, I think it was a thousand, yes a thousand it was.

 

And would you say that you have enjoyed your career, you’ve obviously carried on for a long time?

 

Well. I’ve made a lot of money out of it and now my son and daughter are reaping the benefit. My son enjoys it very much and he’s rather bossy. My daughter, to her it’s just a job really; she’s not as dominating as Keith.

 

I take it your customers are men and not many women?

 

Well that’s right yeah, they are mostly men, mostly middle aged men.

 

Do you have a model railway layout yourself?

 

No, not really no.

 

So it’s just a business interest not a personal hobby or anything?

 

No, it’s a pleasant business. All the customers are very easy going. Sometimes I feel I’m taking advantage of them [laughs] because they’re such nice pleasant men.

 

So you’ve got to know people over the years I assume, built up good relationships with them?

 

Yes, a big group of our customers are actually Clergymen. They come from all walks of life but there’s a lot of clergymen. Cos the man who introduced Thomas the Tank was a clergyman wasn’t he? We sell those products as well. The biggest customers in the world for Thomas the Tank are the Americans and that is because the Americans couldn’t get the licence to import them direct from Hornby so they are forced to buy off us at our prices which are marginally above the price they would be charged for Hornby but they can’t do otherwise. So, that’s the reason they are our biggest customers. This customer we have in Japan was over here last Easter, over a year ago, and he spent over a thousand pounds and he didn’t even ask for any reduction [laughs].

 

And does he have them running or is he another one of these collectors were he just puts them in…?

 

Well, I suspect, well, I am pretty certain that he actually is in business cos he buys such large quantities. I mean he’ll buy a dozen train sets all the same and no private person would do that, he must be selling them over again in Japan.

 

Is there anything else you want to know?

 

I don’t think so. You said you started in 1946 and you’ve been going on since then? You haven’t got any plans to retire?

 

Any what?

 

Plans to retire?

 

Well I take more holidays now than I did then but…it’s a case of helping my son and daughter now and watching over them to see that they don’t make any blunders.

 

So it’s a big part of your life then isn’t it?

 

It has been yes, I was, I’d be about 30 when I started and now I’m 83.

 

It’s been a happy experience?

 

Er, yes, it’s been a very profitable one but of course money doesn’t always bring happiness does it?

 

No

 

I lost my wife (Jean Hatton, nee Carr) last year, last September and I lost my brother (Harold) within two or three weeks.

 

Oh dear

 

It was very sad

 

Had you been married for a long time?

 

I’d been married since 1955 and my wife used to work in the shop.

 

Incidentally, another little anecdote was when I was selling both the Triang trains and the Hornby Dublo the chief designer from Meccano Ltd at Binns Road used to call in at the shop and he used to ask to see the latest Triang item and my mother, who worked for us, would bring it out and show it to him and all he did was examine it closely and say ‘thank you very much!’ So my mother got quite annoyed with him because never once did he ever buy anything.

 

So he was just eyeing-up the competition?

 

That’s right yeah, and taking it back. Unfortunately he died in a motorcycle, a motor accident many years ago.

 

So you’ve never been interested in selling Meccano and Dinky Toys, it’s always just been the trains?

 

Well we sell another make called EFE they make model buses and cars, they’ve only been going about five years but then again they’re exceptional quality, very, very good. But people are still very anxious to buy second hand Dinky Toys and I don’t know whether it’s just because of the name or what because they’re no better than any others.

 

 

End of recorded interview. Conversation continued off tape for a short while.

 

Norman died 4 years later in August 2005

 

 

 

 

[Joseph_Pestell]

My mother (born 1930) knew the shop in its pre-model railway days. It had a bit of a "reputation".

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

...Really? The (Hornby- Dublo old) stock that was left over took twenty years to sell?

 

Not because it was difficult to sell, because it was easy to sell and I kept putting the price up and I made a fortune out of it...

 So, no more complaining about present RTR manufacturers jacking their prices up please.  ;-)

[Arthur]

 

I never knew that, until the post war years, you needed a licence to open a shop. Interesting interview, I wonder how many tons of Dublo they had stacked away.

[beast66606]

I remember Smithdown Road and old Norman - an interesting character at times.

 

Some of the second hand stuff was priceless. (in the funny sense of the word)

[APOLLO]

Interesting story, thanks for posting Andy

 

I used to go to the old shop at 180 Smithdown Road back in the 60's in my Tri-ang TT days. I remember Norman in his brown dust coat. I would ask for the secondhand TT tray and he would bring a large tray out from the back. Most of my TT gauge stuff came from this tray, and I still have most of it.

 

He also sold lots of Hornby tinplate O gauge, and my brother was into this back then. He also had many unusual items around, a real Alladin's cave - live steam locos, handbuilt coaches etc (mainly O & 1 gauge) - but that was far to expensive for us back then.

 

I liked the days out with my brother. We usually went from Wigan Wallgate to Liverpool Exchange, (usually a Black 5 or 2-6-4 tank), a walk down to James Street (down the long, long sloping tunnel - is that still there !) and a return to New Brighton for fish & chips (and a ride on the LMS electrics). Back to James St and a bus from the pier head to Smithdown Road.

 

Grand days. Thanks Norman, R.I.P.

 

Brit15

[Michael Delamar]

I always remember him seeing him several times coming out of the toyfair in Liverpool city centre before it opened with bags of locos while we were all queing up.

[railsquid]

I wonder if the Japanese purchaser mentioned is the owner of this shop in Tokyo, which is as far as I am aware the only retailer of Hornby in this corner of the planet, and they mentioned when I had a chat (they were most excited to see a foreigner, especially one from the same shores as Hornby) they said they source their stuff from Hattons. Not that there's a huge market for British OO hereabouts...

 

Never had a chance to visit Smithdown Road, alas, though I can claim to have ordered stuff back when one did that on the basis of a price list in Railway Modeller and a cheque in an envelope.

[Hroth]

Verbatim oral history transcripts are curious things to read through!

 

...Really? The (Hornby- Dublo old) stock that was left over took twenty years to sell?

 

Not because it was difficult to sell, because it was easy to sell and I kept putting the price up and I made a fortune out of it...

 

34theletterbetweenB&D

So, no more complaining about present RTR manufacturers jacking their prices up please.  ;-)

 

 

 

 

Over the 20 years from the early-mid 60s when Binns Lane shut down,  the collectors market for Dublo took off.  What was once unsaleable (3-rail Metrovics for example) became collectable and market prices rose.  Hattons prices undoubtably rose in line with them, it wasn't just a case of "profiteering" - imagine the cost you could put on warehousing tons of Dublo surplus over that period of time!

[plarailfan]

Thanks Andy, it's an interesting interview and I was fascinated to discover, from this post, how it all (Hatton's) started.

When I finished school and started working for BR, at Huddersfield, back in 1979, I occasionally used to go over to Hatton's using a 'priv' ticket and then hop on a bus from Lime Street Station and so I guess, from this, that it would have been Norman, who usually served me in the shop.

They often seemed to have a good selection of secondhand and pre-owned trains on sale and over the years I bought some, fictitious livery Model Power US outline, also some nice, Lima O gauge NSE livery coaches as well as the grey livery '33'

I remember thinking it was a little odd, as despite saying, for example, "Burlington Northern GP40" the guy didn't always know which model I was interested in and I had to point at the shelf until he came to it ! He could obviously identify some models, but I soon realised, he wasn't as familiar with all the stock, as most modellers would have been.

Good luck to the guy and his family, he had a good business model which has clearly worked well, for decades, becoming affectionately known as the "box shifters".

[Jim Martin]

Do you know who the interviewer was? It might have been someone I knew. I met my wife when we were both working at Liverpool Museums in the late 80s. I moved on in 1988 but my wife stayed at NML for another decade after that, so I was still seeing a lot of museum people.

 

Jim

[Colin_McLeod]

Fantastic interview Andy. Thanks for sharing.

 

 

 

What about the City of Liverpool one, was that particularly popular because you were in Liverpool or not?

 

That was made by the present Hornby form in Margate. That was made specially for us. We went down to the Toy Fair in Brighton and we asked them if they could make a City of Liverpool locomotive and they said yes if you’ll take a thousand, so we said yes we’ll take a thousand. So and the reason of course we took the lot was so we wanted to have the monopoly. But we didn’t overcharge we just charged our normal price, making our normal profit. But they’ve all gone now.

 

And what date was that when they started making them for you?

 

It was about five years ago. I think we’ve got two or three left now, that’s all. But we’ve been able to sell them of course because we were the only ones in the country with them, with that name on. They promised us that we would be the only ones, that’s why we were able to take, was it a hundred or a thousand, I think it was a thousand, yes a thousand it was.

 

I did not know that City of Liverpool was a Hattons' commission nor that they were made in Margate.  Is Norman Hatton correct about the Margate role in the City of Liverpool model?

[Michael Delamar]

I think he means one they did in the 90s, I had one it came with a certificate.

[Nimbus]

I wondered if he was getting confused with the H-D 3-rail counterpart to City Of London, as Meccano had had a fire sale of 3-rail stock when they discontinued the system, and he undoubtedly bought many of those, as did Beatties. Fabulously rare now of course, and I gazed in awe at one for months on Blunt's shelf in WGC, but keenly aware of my inability to convert it to 2-rail in those days.

 

The Nim.

[Colin_McLeod]

In 1964 when Hornby announced the end of 3 rail my Dad said he would buy me my choice of locomotive. I chose the City of Liverpool or "the big red engine" as it was to a ten year old. It's still running on my 3 rail layout.

[melmoth]

In 1964 when Hornby announced the end of 3 rail my Dad said he would buy me my choice of locomotive. I chose the City of Liverpool or "the big red engine" as it was to a ten year old. It's still running on my 3 rail layout.

 

Big red engines are always good. And I say that even as an unrepentant lifelong Great Western man.

[runs as required]

I wonder what was the story of the end of Hornby's Binns Road Liverpool factory.

When I first went as a student in 1955, Hornby still seemed to be doing well. I lived in an attic room just off Prescott Road near the factory. My Barbara Windsor type landlady's best friend was a Miss Hornby (can't remember her first name) with a sexy red Swallow Doretti sports car.

 

To a raw young country lad, they seemed a terrifying pair of man-eating Totties when all got up for a night out,   

 dh

[gismorail]

I always remember him seeing him several times coming out of the toyfair in Liverpool city centre before it opened with bags of locos while we were all queing up.

I can remember that as well.  I remember one at the Lord Nelson Hotel at the back of Lime Street station and seeing him having a furious argument with one of the traders , I don't think the trader won it either . A man who knew his own mind that's for sure. 

[JSpencer]

A very interesting interview. He seems to have mixed up some memories and quotes some of the periods of time that passed as a lot shorter than it actually was. With age what was actually 20 years can seem like 5. I have met veterans who do the same, you know the story cannot be entirely correct from an historic stand point as certain events were well documented at the time, so you know what happened first. However when meeting such people, you just listen to their story and take notes never seeking to correct them. One of the most annoying interviews was for the 60th D-Day anniversary on television. Here they had a veteran who needed a few minutes to tell his story, his way. And the person doing the interview was more interested in asking questions like as if their only prior research was based only on the film "The longest day".

"Do you remember the dummy parachute dolls?", "do you use the click clack thing?", "what was the call and the reply?". I sat there like "oh shut up and let the veteran tell his story".

[Hroth]

Its not a bad interview for an 83yo subject, stories about things that happened stick in the mind, dates and details don't, and its easy to get sidetracked and lose the thread.  If the transcript at the head of THIS thread is an accurate version of the tape, then it looks like the interviewer asked suitable questions and then let the interviewee get on with it, rather than editorialising on the spot, which as JSpencer notes above, is verging on the crass/stupid end of the spectrum (unless interviewing a lying toad of a politician for broadcast!).

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

... the guy didn't always know which model I was interested in and I had to point at the shelf until he came to it ! He could obviously identify some models, but I soon realised, he wasn't as familiar with all the stock, as most modellers would have been...

 I was once told 'never retail your hobby': the reason given being that there are two risks: it potentially destroys it as a hobby interest, or you get carried away by 'romance' and trade ineffectively. Some presumably are immune to both these risks...

 

 

... rather than editorialising on the spot, ...

 Yes, one can contemplate how it would have gone if an MBA grad turned journalist had been conducting the interview. 'But didn't you realise that regularly amassing huge piles of cheap stock to sell over as many decades as it took is no way to run a business?'.

[Hroth]

Just had a thought.

 

Norman talked about buying up huge quantities of Hornby Dublo stock that Triang-Hornby were selling off after the takeover.  Given the quantities of stuff that Hattons are currently offering in the Big Hornby Sale, perhaps the wheel has turned full circle and we should be worried for Hornbys future....

[runs as required]

Just had a thought.

Norman talked about buying up huge quantities of Hornby Dublo stock that Triang-Hornby were selling off after the takeover.  Given the quantities of stuff that Hattons are currently offering in the Big Hornby Sale, perhaps the wheel has turned full circle and we should be worried for Hornbys future....

interesting!

You are likening Hattons to those big 'bellweather' buoys that roll around clanging dolefully in the swell out in Liverpool Bay?

dh

[Hroth]

interesting!

You are likening Hattons to those big 'bellweather' buoys that roll around clanging dolefully in the swell out in Liverpool Bay?

dh

Well...

 

If you mean something thats always around, is helpful and you know where it is.....

 

Do they still have bell buoys?

[andyman7]

Lines Brothers (Triang) acquired the share capital of Meccano in 1964 and formally discontinued all HD production at Binns Road in May 1965 (although it seems only a few items were made in the last couple of years, there being considerable backlogs of stock for much of the range). However the factory continued to make Dinky Toys and Meccano construction sets. Lines Brothers collapsed in 1971 and the factory (as well as the UK arm of Meccano) was sold to the Airfix group.

 

The factory was old and outdated, and suffered from a lot of industrial relations problems (common to a lot of British industry in the 1970s - I state this in a non-partisan way as the union 'problem' is also a commentary on wider industrial policy and management). It made continual losses and was the subject of various grants to keep it going, but was finally closed at less than an hours' notice on 30 November 1979. There was subsequently a protracted sit-in at the premises by redundant employees, and questions were asked in the House.  

 

The Airfix group struggled on until May 1981 before calling in the receivers. Although ultimately they were undone by a perfect storm that beset the British model/hobby business in the early 80s (caused by the almost overnight desertion of much of their core market as kids turned to computer games and licensed toys such as Transformers and Star Wars), there is no doubt that their ability to weather the storm was strongly compromised by their losses from the Binns Road factory