Jouef

Jouef was a French manufacturer that specialized in model trains and other vehicles.

History

Manufacturer Georges Huard founded Jouef in 1944 toward the end of World War II. The traditional home of the company was in Champagnole, France. In the early 1950s, as with many manufacturers, the company abandoned the use of lithographed tinplate for trains in favour of plastic injection moulding.

In 1979, Jouef opened a factory in Limerick, Ireland, but the ill-fated venture closed in 1981. In 2001, Jouef was subsumed by the Italian Lima. After shutting down in January 2004, Jouef was acquired a few months later by Hornby Railways (Tran 2004).

An Expert in Trains

The company's first offering was a rather toy-like tinplate 'Trans Saharan Express - Algiers to Tombouctou' (Gurney 2003, 28). Other notable offerings were the French BB9200 which hauled the famous 'Le capitole' express. The locomotive had features like the overhead, diamond-shaped, pantograph completely detailed on the model (Gurney 2003, 322). Even today, as a part of Hornby, a main offering has been the French TGV high-speed express. Also during the 1960s, Jouef marketed a limited range of British outline model railways under the brand name 'Playcraft'.