Museum Background

The museum is an independent, non-profit making organisation. It was founded and registered as a charitable trust in 1990. The trust was originally known as the Sussex Toy & Model Museum and was based on several important collections. Since 1990 these collections have been refined and enhanced to bring the museum to a point where it houses one of the finest displays of model trains, tinplate toys and other related exhibits on public view anywhere in the world. For this reason the museum is well atronised by collectors and experts from near and far. Research students and school parties are frequent visitors, since toys are included in the National Curriculum. The majority of our visitors are the general public who come to see the collections and marvel at their diversity and quality.
 

"I used to have one like that!" is a frequently heard cry.

The museum is staffed by a group of volunteers; without their enthusiasm and dedication the museum could not survive. The voluntary staff and day to day organisation s the responsibility of the museum manager who is supported by the museum secretary. Toy and model restoration is undertaken by the museum's founder, Christopher Littledale, one of the world's foremost experts on the subject.

There is a thriving shop which sells both new souvenirs and collectable period toys and books.

Click here for Brighton Toy & Model web page

Our Sound-seeing tour today is to Brighton’s Toy and Model Museum on the south coast of England. Chris Littledale is a self-effacing man in his early sixties who might appear a little eccentric to people who don’t know him. I spent a couple happy hours being shown around the museum by him. He explained about his  lifelong passion for toys, so much so that his passion took over his life and his small apartment. In the end, things came to a head when his friends intervened and persuaded Chris that he needed to find a permanent home for his vast collection.

So it was that fifteen years ago, Chris and his little group of helpers found the arches under Brighton's main railway station were for rent and the Brighton Toy and Model Museum was born. After more years than Chris Littledale, the founder cares to remember, the museum has become a landmark in the South of England for model train and toy aficionados and the general public, who take their children along to see the kind of toys they played with when they were children.

Inside the museum you will find over 10,000 exhibits on display. including: collections of toys from the last 100 years, many period antique toys, examples from the world's top toy makers, and a priceless model train collection. Brighton Toy and Model Museum is one of Brighton's most fascinating attractions and an Aladdin's cave for the whole family.