Model railway collection is star lot in Shrewsbury

Halls in Shrewsbury was putting the 00 gauge collection under the hammer, with toy specialist Stewart Orr describing it as one of the finest collections the auction house has ever been instructed to sell.

The collection of 80 locomotives and 350 pieces of track is expected to raise up to £9,000. It has been put up for sale because the owner is moving to a smaller house and it features several rare Wrenn locomotives, including Sir Keith Park and The Hurricane – valued at £250 each.

The auction also includes the first part of another large collection of Hornby '00' locomotives from a Shropshire collector, which is expected to realise around £2,000. In the diecast section, there will be a large collection of Corgi Classic trucks featuring liveries of most of the well-known UK haulage companies. Mr Orr says the trucks, most of which have never been out of their original boxes, could make up to £2,000 at auction.

The auction also includes two large collections of unboxed Dinky Toys, which are described as "in good condition" and could realise up to £3,000.

A Foden F G 6 Tipper lorry and Dyson trailer made by James Shackleton and Son, of Sandbach, Cheshire in the early 1950s is also expected to attract interest. The model, in its original blue paintwork, is valued at up to £350. The company was formed by ex-Foden employee Maurice Shackleton in 1939 and began producing a range of wooden toys including dolls houses and lorries based on Foden models.

The company's range of diecast models was manufactured from 1948 using separate parts, which could be taken apart and reassembled using a basic tool kit.

"All the components required to build the lorries were made in-house, including the clockwork motor," said Mr Orr. "These were not toys, rather a piece of engineering and they were expensive. When the Korean War broke out in 1950, the Government banned the use of production metal in diecast toys and that put the company out of business in 1952.

"The rarest of the Shackleton models is a David Brown tractor, as there are rumoured to have been only 50 made. The model we have was given to the vendor as a child and it is in excellent condition."

The toys and collectables auction at Halls' Battlefield salerooms at 2.30pm.