Roger Loxley of Roundhouse Engineering was good enough to respond regarding the history of Beck Locomotives. He writes:
A little background on Beck... The original German company, which had been in existence for many years, went into receivership about 1981/82. Tom Cooper (of Steamlines fame -ed.) had been buying and importing their locomotives for a few years and selling them both as standard engines and modified to English outline, firstly through his 'Minitrains' business at Kendall, then later as 'Merlin' from his factory in Wales. He persuaded a third party, a Mr Alec Matterson, to buy the company from the receivers and everything to do with the Beck railway locomotive production was moved to Mr Mattersons factory in Telford, England, where he then traded as Christian Beck & Sons Ltd. It was widely thought at the time that Tom Cooper himself had actually bought 'Beck', as he was trading as 'Merlin Beck' at one time, but this was never the case.
Tom Cooper continued buying parts, sub assemblies and locomotives from Beck at Telford for a short while only as he was already going down the road of developing his own designs with the aid of his son Colin and Ian Pearse who now worked for Merlin. They did several variations of 0-4-0, 0-4-2, 0-6-0 0-6-2 etc using the basic 'Beck' components but with a variety of English outline bodies on them. After a couple of years, Tom Cooper was no longer using any Beck parts in his Merlin locomotives and they lay dormant in the Telford factory for some time.
Around 1986/7, Mr Matterson decided to try and do something with all this stuff that he had and attempted to assemble and sell the engines through a local model shop, 'Telford Models'. Large adverts were placed in the model press around that time proclaiming, 'Beck is back' and offering three (or perhaps four) different models at quite cheap prices, however, for a number of reasons, the venture was not a success and at the end of 1987 he contacted us to see if we were interested in purchasing what he had. I well remember the visit to his factory that winter and seeing the mountain of wooden boxes containing all the parts and the racks of brass tube and bar stock. We decided it would be a good move and in January 1988 we purchased all parts, materials, jigs, tooling, designs and right to use the name of the former Beck range of engines and moved them up to Doncaster in a large container truck.
We made one or two small changes to the design and ran them alongside our own range of engines for two years until we finally discontinued production in 1990 when stocks of the major components had about run out. This still left large quantities of certain parts however and, to this day, we still have thousands of parts left for motion and valve gear on certain models.
Beck actually produced three basic 'G' scale models, 'Anna' the 0-4-0, 'Helene' the green 0-6-2 and 'Zillertal' a black 0-6-2. 'Helene' and 'Zillertal' shared the same body, though in different colours and with different badges, but quite different boilers and chimneys.
Incidentally, I am curious about the photo and drawing of the 'Helene' in your Beck section as it has a 'Helene' body but a 'Zillertal' boiler and smoke box. I though at first that it may be a Tom Cooper/Merlin mix up but it is fitted with the Wilesco safety valve that Beck used and I don't think Merlin ever did. I would like to know more of it's history.
Beck also produced quite detailed gauge '1' loco's also and we have all the designs and thousands of beautiful lost wax castings for an engine they were about to produce just before going into liquidation though I do not think anything will ever be done with them.
Oh, I almost forgot a fourth 'G' scale engine, 'Bertha'. I understand that only a very small number were made by Beck and Tom Cooper had one or two more put together before he stopped buying the Beck bits. She was an 0-4-4-0 Mallet type loco with four cylinders. I have one in my own collection.
There you have a brief diary of events as far as our dealings are concerned. Beck locomotives are still owned by Roundhouse and will probably rest in peace for evermore.
