Kitmaster Collectors Club

The Kitmaster range of plastic assembly kits was introduced during the period 1959 to1960 by Rosebud Kitmaster Limited. The revolutionary growth in UK plastic injection moulding capabilities at this time led directly to the introduction of a range of 4 mm, 3.5mm and 3 mm scale assembly kits moulded in the then-new plastic, polystyrene. Polystyrene is more rugged and durable than cellulose acetate, which had previously been used for trains, can be easily welded with a liquid cement and forms a rigid structure, unlike polyvinyl chloride which was the softer, more elastic compound used to make Rosebud Dolls.

Boxed presentation sets were introduced very early in the Kitmaster range. There are 3 boxed sets in existence, two in OO one for TT. The first one of these to be issued was the set "One Hundred Years of British Steam Locomotive History" Issued in 1960, it contains three kits which are illustrated on the specially produced box cover. Although these kits had specially commissioned artwork for their box lids, they contain the lower halves of each individual kit box, together with a small box for the paint, tweezers etc., but not the original kit box tops. In this early set, the kits were not individually wrapped.

The wide variety of line side installations, such as Telegraph Poles, Engine Shed and the contents of Trackside Accessories, have provided endless numbers of parts and additional features to improve the detail of many a layout. When introduced in 1956, the earliest packaging for these kits used a common header design carrying line drawings in black on yellow of the first six kits. These distinguish each kit by a central title panel. They are unofficially referred to as Type 0 headers by Airfix Collectors Club members.

The acquisition of all Kitmaster moulds and stock was formally announced in the Railway Modeler of December 1962, but it was several months before anything happened. Throughout 1963, Airfix continued to sell the stock and to supply orders for the promotional Nabisco models. After carefully test firing all the tools, Airfix began an evaluation to sort out those kits that could be easily reintroduced, those that would need some modification and those that should be scrapped altogether. The decision was taken to scrap the Class 08, the coaches and all the TT and Continental prototypes at this point. For some inexplicable reason, the Rocket kit had all the parts completely renumbered. At the same time, Airfix engineers reduced the diameter and shape of the sprue runs and made some additions to the tools, usually by lengthening a main sprue, to incorporate more detail in the model.