Special toys go under the hammer (From Gazette)

Special toys go under the hammer

2:49pm Thursday 11th October 2012 in News By Wendy Brading

LABOURS of love are to go under the hammer at a specialist toy auction in Colchester.

More than 500 lots will be up for grabs at Reeman Dansie’s auction house on Saturday allowing collectors to take a trip down memory lane to the days of their childhood.

Amongst the toys on sale will be two model railway locomotives which were built from scratch by Len Goddard, 86,  and his twin sons Tony and Terry, 55.

The brothers, who are now engineers, worked with their father on replica locomotives in Mr Goddard’s shed.

The first, the Evening Star, is a copy of the last steam locomotive to be built by British Rail, and took Mr Goddard and his son six years to build using steel and copper. The second was a copy a locomotive from the Rainhill Trials in 1829.

Michael Bowles, a collectables specialist with Reeman Dansie, said another pensioner was also selling a painted pine rocking horse which had been bought for him by his parents from Selfridges in 1937 when he was five.

To auction begins at the Auction rooms in Wyncolls Road, Colchester, at 10am.