Meccano

Meccano is a model construction system created in 1898 by Frank Hornby in Liverpool, in the United Kingdom.

In 1965, Meccano released a train set featuring a clockwork model of Percy with a yellow truck wagon and a red goods van on a circle of blue track. The model of Percy was a fair likeness to the pictures in the books and was about the size of an O-gauge engine. The box featured artwork by Peter Edwards and included the title "Percy the Small Engine, brought to life by Meccano".

The plastic track was advertised as "gauge O track that clicks together and includes Brake Rail for automatic braking. Rails specially designed to make it easy to put train on the track". Although it was advertised as "gauge O", this only indicated the size of the model, since the track was incompatible with any other models.

Adverts for the set, showing the model train "emerging" from Percy the Small Engine, appeared in "Meccano Magazine" and on the back of the dust-covers for several Railway Series books.

The train set was only produced for a limited time and is now extremely rare. The set did not sell very well and to sell the remaining stock Meccano removed the face and replaced it with a red smokebox, domes and whistle. It is notable as the last O gauge train set to be made at Meccano's famous Binns Road factory in Liverpool.

It should be noted that the Meccano Percy set made an appearance in "The Avengers" Series 5, episode 13, "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Station".

Photographs of the set and the adverts may be found here and a close-up of Percy can be found here.

The tooling for Percy has been used by the company Lyra where they made it battery powered and gave it an LED in the face area. It is unknown as to whether it was purchased or duplicated from Meccano.