G & R Wrenn

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G & R Wrenn was a toy company specialising in the manufacture of model railways. It was founded in 1950 by George & Richard Wrenn ^[1]. Its early product line was trackwork for 00 gauge model railway equipment. In 1960 G & R Wrenn branched out into electric car racing toys similar to Scalextric but whereas Scalextric adopted the popular 1/32 scale, Wrenn produced their system to 1/52, and with a twin conductor rail on each side of the 'slot' the system was capable of running three cars at a time on each track. The smaller scale meant that quite comprehensive circuits could be fitted on to an 8' x 4' baseboard, but generally, electrical conductivity was quite fragile, so many users adopted a practice of a second conductor track piece on the far side of the circuit.

Some accessories were marketed, such at track barriers, lap counters, pit buildings etc, but as the only proponents of the 1/52 scale, the system was never popular,

The original cars were a Ferrari and a Cooper, and used an electromagnetic rachet and pawl system and a contact breaker, rather than the more traditional wound electric motors. This first motor could be run on 16v AC or 12v DC current, with AC current providing slightly more power. Power was either 'on' or 'off' and cars would freewheel around corners, needing a totally different driving technique to variable speed motors. Cars could only run for a short time as they were rather prone to overheating, and performances varied wildly, according to contact and brush settings. Later developments moved on to more traditional DC motors with a variable speed control, and the addition of Vanwall, Maserati, BRM and Porsche to the rather limited range.

Wrenn set up a '152 Drivers club' complete with metal badge and a short lived newsletter. ^[2]

Other products included battery-operated boats.

The mid 1960s were a bad time for the model trade and several companies collapsed. Lines Bros Ltd (operating as Tri-ang) bought up the Hornby Dublo line after the collapse of the Meccano Ltd empire ^[3] and a year later bought a controlling share in G & R Wrenn. Wrenn were given the old Hornby Dublo moulds and continued to produce these models under the Wrenn name as well as acting as the distributor for the remaining unsold Dublo stocks. Around the same time the Wrenn car racing system—which competed with Lines Bros.-owned Scalextric—disappeared. Speculation has always been rife as to whether a deal was cut involving the Dublo moulds and the disappearance of the Wrenn racing system; but no details of any such arrangement have ever emerged in surviving records from the time. In 1968 Wrenn took on the same role with TT as it had with Dublo, and the 'Wrenn Table Top' name was used to sell off the remaining stocks of the abandoned Tri-ang 'TT' 3 mm scale models.

In 1971 the Lines Bros Ltd group collapsed into receivership ^[4]. Wrenn bought itself free from the receiver and traded under the name 'Wrenn Railways' for some time thereafter, primarily selling mostly die-cast products from the former 'Hornby Dublo' line. Although they obtained rights to many of the Hornby Dublo models, they did not acquire the Hornby brandname. Lines Bros had obtained this name as a result of buying up Hornby Dublo and used it as part of the name 'Tri-ang Hornby'. The Hornby name was subsequently sold to Rovex Ltd.

G & R Wrenn also had a sideline reselling Lima N scale models into the United Kingdom under the name 'Wrenn Micro-models'. ^[5]

In 1992 G & R Wrenn finally closed down. Although they traded from 1972 to 1992 and kept a huge following they did little new manufacture beyond new liveries and numbering for the models they made. This was not to be the end however. Even as the closedown took place, Dapol was busy purchasing the remaining materials. Unfortunately, many of these materials—including many Wrenn company records—were later destroyed in a fire at Dapol and are lost forever.

Dapol made little use of the Wrenn material, selling a few wagons and reusing some of the designs in N gauge. In 2001 Dapol sold the name and most of the original tools and equipment to three collectors who have since released a small number of collectable items. Some other moulds which had been modified and improved by Dapol for the wagons manufactured at the Dapol plant remained in Dapol hands and have been used to make commemorative special releases for the Wrenn collectors club.