The Postcard
A postally unused postcard that was published by Puffin. On the divided back of the card they inform us:
'There's nuffin like a Puffin!'
They also tell us:
'A Book of Trains, 1961.
Cover illustration by F. E. Courtney.'
Bassett-Lowke
Bassett-Lowke was an English toy manufacturing company based in Northampton. Founded by Wenman Joseph Bassett-Lowke in 1899, the company specialized in model railways, boats and ships, and construction sets. Bassett-Lowke started as a mail-order business, although it designed and manufactured some items.
The company closed in 1965, with its rights to brand acquired by Corgi Toys. When Corgi was taken over by Hornby in 2008, it secured rights to the Bassett-Lowke brand, which is still commercialising.
Bassett-Lowke was originally a sales organization, contracting manufacturers such as Twining Models and Winteringham Ltd., also of Northampton. Until the Great War, the company also carried models made by Bing and Märklin.
The name Bassett-Lowke is mostly associated with model trains, but the company also had a long history of contracting skilled craftsmen to make 100 ft. to 1 inch or 1/1200 scale military and civilian ship models out of wood and wire.
These detailed hand-crafted waterline ship models are so highly desired by ship model collectors that they often command higher prices than the Bassett-Lowke model trains.
In the London Bassett-Lowke store in High Holborn there was such a demand for the hand-made wooden ship models that the company had to make available to its customers a less expensive line, cast in white metal, to meet the demand. The metal ship models could be purchased individually or in numbered boxed sets.
At beginning of the Great War, government censors prohibited Bassett-Lowke from selling their line of detailed 100 ft. to 1 inch scale models of Royal Navy ships. The concern of the censors was that the accuracy of these detailed models could give vital information to the enemy.
In order to have some representation of the Royal Navy for their war time catalogue, Bassett-Lowke replaced their prohibited Royal Navy models by selling the less detailed metal ship models of the Royal Navy made by the neighboring company, B.M.C.
These metal B.M.C. models while detailed, had their origins as game models, and were therefore less accurate depictions of Royal Navy warships. This lack of sharp detail was apparently found acceptable to the government censors, and therefore they were allowed to appear in the catalog.
The resulting model fleet in metal carried in the Bassett-Lowke war time catalogue was of every class of ship in the British navy then in commission as of 1914.
The models found in the collection range from the early 1889 Royal Sovereign class Pre-Dreadnoughts, some of which had been retained by the navy as bombardment ships, through to eventually the newest Revenge class Super-Dreadnoughts which had just come into service.
The 1917 Bassett-Lowke catalogue proudly boasts that
"Practically every ship in the Navy has been
modelled, including Super-Dreadnoughts,
Battleships, Battle Cruisers, Armoured Cruisers,
Light Cruisers, Destroyers, Torpedo Boats,
Submarines, Mine Layers, Mine Sweepers,
Troopships, Transports, Armed Liners and all
Auxiliary Craft."
The models were formed in lead with the wire masts cast into the hulls in a scale of one inch to 150 feet or 1/1800. They were painted and issued in numbered boxed sets by Bassett-Lowke, the boxes bearing the label “H.M.S. Irresistible”. Paper flags were supplied with each set, to be cut out and applied to the masts and sternposts.
Every class of vessel was easily recognizable by the funnels, guns and masts. While rudimentary by later standards, the B.M.C. production of over 101 different castings was the first scale metal ship model fleet ever produced, and established the precedent for all subsequent scale metal waterline recognition ship models.
In addition to the ship models, B.M.C. produced a fort with movable guns, four lighthouses and a game featuring a large fold-out map of the Dardanelles channel showing forts and minefields.
The game was supplied with fifteen metal ship models, including two mine sweepers and two submarines.
This collaboration between Bassett-Lowke and B.M.C. was a great benefit to both companies. It allowed Bassett-Lowke to have a representation of the Royal Navy in their war time catalogue, and at the same time it gave the small metal casting company of B.M.C. a broader outlet for the sales of their metal ship models.
Today the larger highly accurate wood and wire ship models in the scale of one inch to 1200 inches command high prices at auction. These hand-crafted ship models continued to be sold commercially until the mid-1960's.
-- Model Trains
Bassett-Lowke produced trains from 15-inch (381 mm) gauge live steam models to Gauge 2, Gauge 1 and 0 gauge trains.
The first 15-inch steam locomotive, test run on the Eaton Hall Railway in 1905, was Little Giant. Unlike other engines on the line, it was a replica of main-line locos, built for a public miniature railway at Blackpool.
It was a quarter-scale 4-4-2 "Atlantic" tender engine, though not an exact copy of any particular prototype. The engine still exists in private ownership.
In 1909, along with Henry Greenly, W.J. Bassett-Lowke started and edited Model Railways and Locomotives Magazine.
In 1914, Bassett-Lowke produced the second "Pacific" 4-6-2 of any size built in Britain (the first was GWR 111 The Great Bear). That was John Anthony, built for a miniature railway at Staughton Manor, Cambridgeshire. It was never delivered, but after storage at Eaton Hall during the Great War, was sold to the Ravenglass and Eskdale Railway and renamed Colossus. It was scrapped in 1927.
In the 1920's, Bassett-Lowke introduced 00 gauge products. The company provided custom-built railways, and one such gauge 1 layout survives in modified format at Bekonscot Model Village in England.
In 1939, Bassett-Lowke was tasked with producing a working model of Churchill's trench-digging tank known as Cultivator No. 6.
-- Bassett-Lowke's Decline
Bassett-Lowke's decline, starting in the late 1950's, can be blamed on at least two factors: people would browse the firm's free catalogue and buy similar or nearly identical items elsewhere at lower price; and the interest in technical toys declined in the late 1950's, and even more in the 1960's.
Bassett-Lowke's fall was mirrored by its U.S. counterparts, the A. C. Gilbert Company and Lionel Corporation. In 1964, the company ceased retail sales and sold its shops, including the one in High Holborn, Beatties. Bassett-Lowke went out of business in 1965.
In 1993, the name was revived with short-run white-metal models. These included a Burrell-type traction engine, Clayton undertype steam wagon, Burrell-type steam roller, and a London B-type bus.
The name was acquired in 1996 by Corgi, which linked it with live steam 0-gauge locomotives.
Key competitors to Bassett-Lowke were Hornby and Exley. Hornby acquired Corgi in 2008 and originally continued to make the 0 gauge models before later discontinuing them.
The Bassett-Lowke brand name was revived by them in 2020 for a range of 00 scale steampunk models based on existing Hornby toolings.
