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Saved from the peril of toy steam engines Government anti-terror ban forces closure of UK model steam train firm
A historic British firm which produced model steam trains for 87 years has been forced to close its doors after getting hamstrung by red tape.
Mamod this month closed down production in its factory due to dwindling sales and spiralling overheads, in an era of gaming consoles and social media.
The firm was also hobbled by a government ban on the ‘dangerous’ hexamine fuel tablets that had long been used in the models to heat water and set the intricate engines chuntering.
Founded in 1937, Mamod’s steam trains quickly became a favourite of children across the country, boasting static generators which powered models with wire loops and scaled-down traction engines.
While it is true that model steam engines of this type had all but disappeared as toys, there is a considerable market for them among dangerous men with names like Kenneth and Stanley who might convert their garden railways to hexamine-powered rail-mobile nuclear missile launch systems.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
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It’s just one more benefit of our diverse, multi-cultural society. There once was a time when people just didn’t make bombs using hexamine tablets, not even the IRA. I used to use them in camping stoves and never gave them any thought. But times change. We now live in a vibrant Britain, enriched by diversity, but denuded, it seems, of Mamod traction engines.
I’ll get mine out tonight, fill it with meths and enjoy the petrochemical aroma of banned goods. Afterwards, for giggles, I’ll play with some little magnetic cubes safe in the forbidden knowledge that I won’t eat them.
It would be interesting to know which was the bigger factor, the ban, the ‘dwindling sales’ or the ‘spiralling overheads’.
It’s sad to see yet another thing that brings joy to people’s lives snuffed out.
I will stick with my beloved Gilbert Atomic Energy Lab complete with real Uranium.
https://youtu.be/zeyoJGqKbOQ?si=35i2GOblbJ2YzhJo
Here’s another excellent Gilbert toy which enables young boys (or girls – why not?) to make their own model cars out of molten lead:-
https://youtu.be/FzG_B93QiY4?si=wRXKEK4a9zWb8cmY
The regime is absurd – but it is also vicious, its regulations are destroying everything.
And it is a lot more than hexamine fuel tablets. Even under the “Norman Yoke” knives were not banned – but they are being banned under the modern regime.
And there is no point in appealing to the elected government against the unelected regime – as they are both now the on the same page, they believe the same things. The officials and the elected Members of Parliament are no longer in any conflict – because this Parliament is now made up of people who believe the same things the officials believe.
It may well be “game over” in the United Kingdom.
And in a couple of months it may be “game over” in the United States – remember a couple of appointments to the Supreme Court by “President Harris” and the Bill of Rights is dead.
So if K. Harris (the daughter of two Marxist parents – a classic “Red Diaper baby”) and Tim Walz (with his very long relationship with the People’s Republic of China – and his “Progressive” record as Governor of Minnesota) are elected – it is “game over” in the United States – as there will be couple of Supreme Court vacancies before long.
Even if a Supreme Court justice does not get run over by a car, and another Supreme Court justice does not die in a yacht sinking.
It is very rare in the rigged American legal system to beat 15 charges – normally one has to “make a deal” plead guilty to lesser charges as “the jury is bound to find you guilty of something”.
To fight and beat all the charges was impressive – but the Corporate State is not known for being magnanimous in defeat.
I must stress that I am NOT alleging anything – indeed I have absolute faith in the moral probity of our overlords.
I have a different take on the demise of Mamod.
As a boy, I played with and enjoyed their products. I’m so old, mine still ran on methylated spirits, much cleaner-burning than hexamine but, or course, horribly dangerous. But I watched a video on the Tubes of You, documenting the last day of operation in the Smethwick factory. And it struck me that they were building the exact same models that I played with, over a half-century ago. Built using machines that looked like they were landed off the Ark, in a shop that looked like it had only just gone over to electric light, they were still happily churning out designs first seen in the 1930s.
When you can buy a much-more-complicated, much-more-detailed, much-more-beautifully-made, and much-more-interesting model steam engine on Amazon for not-much-more money than a Mamod, the only thing they had going for them was the nostalgia of farts as old, and older, than me. Just like Triumph, or Austin, or a half-a-hundred ‘historic’ British manufacturers, they thought that name recognition and nostalgia were more-than-enough as a business plan, and found out way too late that the world had passed them by. The hexamine issue, while a fine example of rather-silly pearl-clutching over-reaction by government, is a mere distraction, not the core reason for their failure.
Sorry to see them go, but not surprised.
llater,
llamas
llamas.
No business plan, no matter how brilliant, can save a manufacturing company from endless regulations and government backed union power (what W.H. Hutt called the government backed “Strike Threat System”) the British government, the unelected government and, now, the elected government, is determined to destroy what is left of British manufacturing industry.
And they will succeed in their task of destruction.
People with financial resources (which I do not have) should relocate whilst they can.
@Llamas- see also Airfix, they are constantly re-releasing old kits for nostalgic boomers and doing little to attract new customers (IMO).
In their defence there aren’t that many new planes/ships/etc to model compared to the 50’s and 60’s. However compare them to Bandai and the like in Japan, who now do some amazing kits moulded in multiple colours and with features you’d never see in an Airfix.
I never really liked Airfix models anyway. It would amuse me for a couple of hours while putting it together but left you with something that was far too flimsy and delicate to use as a toy. Sticking it on a shelf and looking at it didn’t really appeal to me that much.
Lego was by far the most popular toy at our house.
Re – Airfix. Evwn when I was a lad, it was universally-understood that Airfix wasn’t all that. Hasegawa and Tamiya were the benchmarks for accuracy, detail and quality.
There used to be a shop called Model Time located on the upper level of the Whitgift Centre in Croydon that featured fabulous WW2 dioramas of airplanes and armoured vehicles in the window – little boys could press their noses on the glass in amazement for hours. Always Hasegawa or Tamiya models, Airfix just wasn’t good enough for that level of reality.
@Paul Marks – while pettifogging government regulation may well be the death of many an enterprise, it doesn’t seem to be the case with Mamod. Other makers of similar products (eg Wilesco) seem to be rubbing along just fine, and Mamod had the answer to this regulatory issue (electric heating) 50 years ago. Whatever killed them, it wasn’t hexamine regulation.
llater,
llamas
I have a store of these things used to provide heat. As a soldier in the 70s we had these metal gizmos that had these things as a power source. They coud boil a tiny kettle in about 10 minutes, but the British Army relied on them to give frontline troops a cup of tea and some warmed up bully beef as sustenance on the plains of Northern Germany as the Russian hordes invaded !!!
llamas.
The policies of the British government, both the unelected government and the elected government, of ever higher energy costs, ever more labour market “rights”, and endless “pettifogging” regulations, will destroy what is left of British manufacturing industry – and British farming is already only a small fraction of what is needed to feed the population.
“The City” is a Credit Money bubble – the idea that the United Kingdom (with its population bloated by vast immigration) can survive on “financial services” and can wave goodbye to both manufacturing and farming is insane.
This country is going to go into hard times – very hard times indeed.