A MODELS and toys business will celebrate its 30th anniversary this summer. From humble beginnings on the kitchen table to a global exporter, Nick Metcalfe – once a printer’s apprentice living in a caravan in his parent’s garden – has built a business that brings joy to people around the world. That very garden is where the Metcalfe factory stands today and is now the epicentre of a card modelling phenomenon. Metcalfe Models, in Bell Busk, near Coniston Cold, has become a popular choice for model railway hobbyists with a community of loyal fans, and it is now on a mission to grow the range via new means of print production and state-of-the-art technologies, the future of card kits has never looked stronger, it says.
Model railway business hits record sales in its 30th anniversary cravenherald.co.uk - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from cravenherald.co.uk Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Small things lead to big business Simon Eccles Friday, December 18, 2020
Christmas is coming and a lot of kids will be lucky enough to be given a model railway, still a popular hobby even in these days of PlayStations and smartphones. Big kids like model railways too, and it turns out that this year they didn’t want to wait for Christmas.
The printing industry has suffered from the Covid-19 crisis along with everyone else this year. There’s no playing down the terrible human and economic costs. But on the lighter side, one of the unpredictable effects of the spring lockdown was an immediate run on stocks of Metcalfe Models & Toys’ flatpack printed card kits of model railway buildings. Online stores sold out, so did any remaining hobby shops, and social media was awash with model railway enthusiasts excitedly reporting that they’d found a stash in obscure corners of the web.