Meccano

Meccano is a model construction system created in 1898 by Frank Hornby in Liverpool, United Kingdom.

In 1965, Meccano released a train set featuring a clockwork model of Percy with a yellow truck wagon and a red goods van on a circle of blue track. The model of Percy was a fair likeness to the pictures in the Railway Series books and was about the size of an O-gauge engine. The box featured artwork by Peter Edwards and included the title "Percy the Small Engine, brought to life by Meccano".

Adverts for the set, showing the model train "emerging" from the Percy the Small Engine book, appeared in "Meccano Magazine" and on the back of the dust-covers for several Railway Series books. The train set was only produced for a limited time and is now extremely rare. The set did not sell very well and to sell the remaining stock, Meccano rebranded it as the generic "Meccano Playtrain", removed the face for a smokebox door and repainted the black colour of the smokebox, as well as the brass colour of the domes, whistle and window frames into red. It is notable as the last O gauge train set to be made at Meccano's famous Binns Road factory in Liverpool.

Trivia

Illustrations of Thomas. Henry and James are seen alongside Percy in the packaging's interior, as well as an express coach and some hoppers. It is possible that additional sets might have been released had Percy been successful.
The plastic track was advertised as "gauge O track that clicks together and includes Brake Rail for automatic braking. Rails specially designed to make it easy to put train on the track". Although it was advertised as "gauge O", this only indicated the size of the model, since the track was incompatible with any other models.
The Meccano Percy set made an appearance in "The Avengers" series 5, episode 13, "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Station".
The tooling for Percy would later be reused by the company Lyra, albeit modified to be battery powered and replacing its face with an LED light.