Farmer's son ploughs new furrow

The strange thing about Nick Metcalfe's model-making factory is that although it is a few yards from the Leeds-Carlisle railway line, you don't hear the trains.

He started Metcalfe Models in the early 1990s, borrowing his then boss's printing works at weekends, where, with his wife Judy, he developed the push-out card kits which are in demand as far away as New Zealand. The theme is railway buildings, augmented by terrace houses, country pubs, a church, farmsteads, a brewery, garage and so on.

The only one which is exactly true to life is the village school, a copy of the one Nick, a farmer's son, attended in Airton, Malhamdale. Here his headmistress called him the Cardboard King. Nick explains: "In free time I was always making things out of cardboard". Time passed. He became a printer in the Skipton area, latterly as works manager at the long-established Ellesmere Press, where the owner Rufus Carr allowed the weekend shifts that led to Metcalfe Models.

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This year he opened a new workshop, in the grounds of his grade II listed farmhouse home at Bell Busk, a hamlet once renowned for its silk mill. Part of the planning proposal for the stylish development by the local architect John Wharton was rural jobs, and the company has 10 employees, including the Metcalfes' daughter, Sophie, who handles mail order and advertising, and has a slot on local radio.

Nick's father, Jim, who once lived at the farmhouse, does morning shifts gluing the boxes "and keeps telling us what we are doing wrong", quips Nick.

So far, the plan is working well. Sales are rising and they sell 200,000 kits a year through shops and mail order. They range in price from 5.50 which buys several sheets of tarmac or brick, to 13.99 for an engine shed.

The biggest seller is the pair of terrace houses. Why? Nick explains: "Because they have to buy more than one kit – you can't have just part of a terrace".

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It is a world of paper and cardboard. The images are printed on to thin paper and then glued to a backing of cardboard. The 1mm thick sheet is then part-cut to two depths, one for pressing out and one for folding, boxed in flat packs and dispatched. Apart from some printing overflow it is all done in-house.

The cutting presses are printing presses from the mid-1950s, converted by Senior Graphics in Wakefield, a world centre for rebuilding redundant presses. The cutting dies are computer designed at Metcalfe Models, then made by White Rose Cutting Formes in Cross Hills. Fourfield Plastics, in Keighley, make the plastic components such as steps. Nick Metcalfe says he got quotes from low cost areas such as South Korea and the local firm was the most competitive.

The latest bit of machinery has just come on line, a 200,000 laminator bought for 25,000 as bankrupt stock. It needed three months to unjam its software.

The kits are sold as flat sheets. The customer pushes out the blanks, folds on the part-cut lines, and glues it into a piece. They are surprisingly solid, with multi-tier walls giving structural rigidity. His client base is growing because they tend to be over 50, maybe retired, and the mid-1940s baby boomers are now in this audience. Christmas is, naturally, a rush time for orders, with modellers in Britain busiest in the dark months from December to February.

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One spin-off is that the business brought the near derelict farm back into use, and it was in here that it developed, before moving into new premises. The farm had been under four feet of water in 1998 which was enough for Nick's parents to sell up, but most experts judged it unsaleable in its vulnerable flood plain.

However, though demolition and rebuild seemed the best option for a new owner, Nick and Judy, renting nearby, decided on another plan from John Wharton. The ground was raised by five feet, effectively making parts of the house in to a bungalow, with remaining vulnerable areas used for non-domestic purposes.

Nick and Judy got the inspiration for the business on a holiday in Ireland, where Judy's parents run a puppet theatre in Dublin. They saw some card kits of a pub in a gift shop. With his background in graphics and printing, Nick saw the potential for a business.

Their first design was the station at Embsay, near Skipton, even though neither are train enthusiasts. They followed this with a lot of legwork finding shops to take the model, and then made Punch & Judy and Noah's Ark model cards.

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The Settle-Carlisle Railway Trust commissioned a series of card kits. The Metcalfes sent samples to Railway Modeller. One Sunday night they had a call from its publisher, the late Sidney Pritchard, who was also managing director of Peco Models, and became the sole distributor for the Metcalfes' models. This immediately took the problem of marketing off their hands.

They have done commissioned runs for Hornby and for Scalextric – commentary boxes, garage and grandstand units – but the core business now keeps them busy. It would be fitting to hear that their hobbies include train spotting and model layouts but Nick hasn't had one since he was a lad in the Dales. "We like gardening, travel and weekend city breaks", he says, rather disarmingly.

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