Brighton Toy and Model Museum

About

Brighton Toy and Model Museum (sometimes referred to as Brighton Toy Museum) is an independent toy museum situated in Brighton, East Sussex (registered charity no. 1001560). Founded in 1991, the museum holds over ten thousand toys and models, and occupies four thousand square feet of floor space within four of the early Victorian arches supporting the forecourt of Brighton railway station. The model collection focuses on exhibition-grade engineered models, and large overhead radio-controlled aircraft (fixed-wing aircraft mostly by Denis Hefford, and helicopters by Gordon Bowd), The toy collection focuses on commercially produced toys that would have been available in UK toyshops up until the 1950s and 1960s. Manufacturers and brands represented include Anchor Blocks, Brickplayer, Britains Ltd., Bayko, Bing, Bassett-Lowke, Budgie Toys, Georges Carette, Corgi Toys, Dinky, Hornby Trains, Lotts Bricks, Märklin, Matchbox, Meccano, Mettoy, Minibrix, Minic Ships, Pelham Puppets, Primus Engineering, Rock & Graner, Signalling Equipment Limited, Steiff, Skybirds, Spot-On, Tri-ang (Lines Brothers) and Trix. The museum also features a large 1930s-era gauge 0 model railway layout and two smaller modern 00-gauge layouts (pushbutton-operated), dollhouses, and mechanical coin-operated penny arcade machines, originally from John Hayward's Slot Machine Museum at the Palace Pier.

Adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA). Photography via Wikimedia Commons.