Hornby Children's Play Day - 19th of May

As part of the Frank Hornby 150 project supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund, we hosted a Children's Play Day event featuring a host interactive activities.

The museum was divided into four themed activity areas: Art, Craft, Meccano and Trains. In each section, volunteers led a gaggle of very excited children through activities involving toys inspired by the legendary British toymaker, Frank Hornby. Activities included making paper crafted airplanes and helicopters, colouring sheets (designed by the museum's founder Chris Littledale and project coordinator Eric Baird), sponge painting etc. The most popular activity, with the kids, parents and grandparents alike, involved running the wooden toy train sets laid out on tracks across the floor of the museum. Not only were the activities fun, but also educational, good for developing children's imagination, focus and co-ordination.

As a special treat, the children were allowed  to take home all their work, including paint-your-own ceramic money boxes. A lot of them said that they were looked forward to using them for storing their treasures at home.

To finish it all, there was a delicious Frank's Birthday cake for all to enjoy and regain energy after hours of playing.

It was a joy to see museum's arches filled with excitement and activity this Sunday!

The event was run almost entirely by museum volunteers. Thank you all for participating!

Frank Hornby Week at the Museum

The museum is celebrating the week surrounding 15th May (Frank Hornby's 150th anniversary) as Frank Hornby Week.

• Kicking off the week, we have a Hornby-themed Train Running Day on Saturday 11th to get things moving. 
• Wednesday 15th is Frank Hornby's birthday, and the evening will be a special invite-only party and cake-cutting ceremony. 
• Friday 17th is a special "Museums at Night" evening with a talk and tour by the Museum Founder Chris Littledale, and, 
• Sunday 19th will be a special Children's Play Day, where youngsters can indulge in supervised colouring-in and painting, and can also play with wooden train and road sets and with plastic Meccano.

On top of all of this, from Tuesday to Saturday we'll be running two guided tours of the museum's Hornby, Dinky and Meccano collections each day, in the context of the life of Frank Hornby.

You can download the programme of events , and get more information about the Frank Hornby 150th Anniversary project and associated events around the country on the project website.

The Museum's Frank Hornby Week celebrations are being made possible by the generosity of the Heritage Lottery Fund.