This book will be both an education and a visual delight. No collector, however advanced, will have seen all the trains and accessories pictured. This book has been some 6 years in the making and will have around a 1000 specially taken photographs of tin toy trains from their beginnings in the early 19th century up to about 1910, when scale began to dominate over naive charm.

Items have been chosen and photographed by the well-known Dutch collector Paul Klein Schiphorst from European, British and American collections with an emphasis on the unusual, so there are plenty of items by the early German makers Lutz, Rock & Graner, Plank, Schönner and Parisian makers such as Maltête, Faivre and Tantet & Manon as well as the well known classics by Bing, Märklin and Carette.

This has been a labour of love for Paul, for the personally has conceived, written and designed the book as well as taking almost all the photographs. I have been privileged to see the pre-production spreads and they are totally wonderful. I may be mildly prejudiced about the period and subject matter, but even the most enthusiastic scale modeller will be fascinated to see and read about the ancestors of all the more recent collectable toy trains. This is a must buy book.

David Pressland, London, 2002