Category:The Hornby Book of Trains: Difference between revisions

The Hornby Book of Trains, 1925 [image info]

The Hornby Book of Trains was a much-loved part of the Meccano/Hornby stable of publications, and first appeared in 1925.

"HornBoT" was initially part book and part colour catalogue, and was printed in landscape format with a soft cover featuring artwork of a steam locomotive. The first instance of a "HornBoT" was undated and un-numbered and gave no obvious indication that it was planned as the first part of a series. The book's format was (1) the colour cover, (2) editorial up to the centre pages, (3) a double-page colour advert, and (4) all sucessive pages showing large illustrations (mostly in colour), descriptions and prices of the Hornby Trains range.

The impression that the 1925 issue was designed as a one-off was strengthened by its ambitious decision to use the "editorial" section to attempt to describe and illustrate the entire history of the steam locomotive.

The experiment seemed to be a success, because in 1926 Hornby issued a new "The Hornby Book of Trains", which followed up on the first by now trying to describe and illustrate all the working parts of a steam locomotive. The cover of the 1926 publication was again undated and unnumbered (apart from a slightly cryptic publication code on the back cover), but the first inside page did make amends by making a point of saying that this was the 1926 version, and describing how its contents related to those of the previous one, identified as the 1925 version.

Subsequent versions had a year printed explicitly on the front cover, starting with 1927/28, with a new version being released each year (1928/29, 1929/30, and so on).