Founded by Wenman Joseph Bassett-Lowke in 1898 or 1899, the company specialized in model railways, boats and ships, and construction sets.

Roland Fuller on page 49 of his book, "The Bassett-Lowke Story", states that in the London Bassett-Lowke store on High Holborn St. there was such a demand for the hand-made waterline 100 ft. to 1 inch scale wooden ship models that the company had to make available to its customers a less expensive line of waterline ship models, cast in white metal, to meet the demand.

These excerpted catalog pages contain illustrations of metal ship models sold in numbered boxed sets matching the exact description of the numbered boxed sets of metal ship models described in the Roland Fuller book.

This lack of sharp detail was apparently found acceptable to the government censors and therefore they were allowed to appear in the catalog.

The resulting model fleet in metal carried in the Bassett-Lowke war time catalogue was of every class of ship in the British navy then in commission as of 1914.

The models were formed in lead with the wire masts cast into the hulls in a scale of one inch to 150 feet or 1/1800.

The game was supplied with fifteen metal ship models including two mine sweepers and two submarines This collaboration between Bassett-Lowke and B.M.C.

is that this garage sized company had, by 1903 begun the creation of the first commercially available metal waterline ship models made in a uniform scale to each other.

The first type of copies are 31 models made by "Minifigs" These are cast in solid lead, have no wire masts and have large numbers inscribed on the bottom.

The second type of copies comprise a group of four models made by Crescent which are cast in pot metal.

These hand crafted ship models continued to be sold commercially until the mid1960's and had also been purchased by the military for recognition and war gaming purpose.

metal models, which were carried only briefly by Bassett-Lowke in the early years and are a mystery to most collectors, the larger highly finished 100 to 1 inch or 1/1200 scale wooden ship models are greatly sought after by collectors and command high prices at auctions.

Unlike other engines on the line, it was a replica of main-line locos, built for a public miniature railway at Blackpool.

It was never delivered, but after storage at Eaton Hall during World War I, was sold to the Ravenglass and Eskdale Railway and renamed Colossus.

The company provided custom-built railways, and one such gauge 1 layout survives in modified format at Bekonscot Model Village in England.

In 1964, the company ceased retail sales and sold its shops, including one at High Holborn in London, to Beatties.

Around 1969, Ivan Rutherford Scott, Allen L. Levy and Roland H. Fuller apparently made an effort to revive the model railway business.

The brand name was revived by them in 2020 for a range of 00 scale steampunk models based on existing Hornby toolings.

NGR's first railway opened in 1912 at Luna Park in the Parc des Eaux Vives, Geneva, Switzerland.

Corgi (and the Bassett-Lowke brand) was bought by Hornby in 2008 who used it for traditional sheet metal railway models.

[citation needed] In 2020 Bassett-Lowke branding was used by Hornby to launch a range of steampunk inspired railway models.

[citation needed] In 2021 brick-based construction models with steampunk themes were released under the Bassett-Lowke branding as the 'brickpunk' range aimed at both children and adults.