Dinky Toys have been around since 1934 and have amazed boys of pre-war Britain and oth­er coun­tries to which they were export­ed. Dur­ing the 1940s and 1950s they filled the Christ­mas stock­ings of Baby Boomers, and by the late 1960s inspired adult col­lec­tors reliv­ing their youth.

But the roots of these world renown col­lec­tables go back to 1900, when Frank Horn­by designed some met­al parts for a con­struc­tion set that was patent­ed in 1901 and known as “Mechan­ics Made Easy”. By 1907 its name was changed to “Mec­ca­no”, which was to become a house­hold name.

By 1920 the first “O” gauge ready to run trains were avail­able and from 1931 a set of acces­sories con­sist­ing of fig­ures and plat­form dec­o­ra­tions was intro­duced. These were num­bered 1 to 21. In 1933, a set of six road vehi­cles num­bered 22 called “Mod­elled Minia­tures” was intro­duced. These were thought to look “dinky” mean­ing attrac­tive­ly small or cute, and so a brand name was born, lat­er to become syn­ony­mous with the likes of “Hoover” for vac­u­um clean­ers.

In this arti­cle, I present a selec­tion of some of the acces­sories num­bered 1–21 that pre­dat­ed the set of cars. Some are in orig­i­nal box­es while oth­ers have nice repli­ca box­es that have been cre­at­ed by a good friend.

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Hornby Series Modelled Miniatures

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Dinky Toys ‘O’ Gauge accessories

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More pre-Dinky and Hornby Series accessories

In this sec­tion, I present some more ear­ly pre-Dinky and Horn­by Series acces­sories.

The first exam­ple is a French Dinky issue which I believe is from the ear­ly 1960s, in which the fig­ures are made of plas­tic rather than met­al.

The sec­ond exam­ple below is of two recent Atlas Edi­tions sets from 2013. These seem to be pro­duced in resin rather than met­al or plas­tic.

This next exam­ple is Rail­way Acces­sories Set No. 1 in which all pieces are made of tin­plate.

Shown below is Plat­form Acces­sories Set No. 3 which was made in 1934 and also made from tin­plate.

Here is a pic­ture of the same set made a bit lat­er between 1935 and 1940.

The final image below is of Set No. 5 which I acquired at the Blue­bell Rail­way Col­lec­tors Fair in May 2025. It’s miss­ing six of the twelve pieces which I hope to even­tu­al­ly locate.

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Dinky Toys road accessories

In this final sec­tion, I present var­i­ous road acces­so­ry sets that include road signs, hoard­ings, mail­box­es, pave­ment sec­tions and petrol pumps.

Road signs

Hoardings

Mailboxes

Pavement sections

Petrol pumps