Gützold
| GÜTZOLD GmbH & Co. KG
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|---|---|
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| legal form | GmbH & Co. KG |
| founding | 1946 |
| Seat | Zwickau |
| Branch | Toy industry |
| Website | www.guetzold.de |
The company Gützold is a model railway manufacturer from the Saxon town of Zwickau ; it produces locomotives of nominal size TT and H0 .
History until 1989
Johannes Gützold and his wife Erna founded a piston foundry in Zwickau in 1946 ; as early as 1948 Gützold produced a model train made of wood and metal for his sons Bernd, Lutz and Hans. Shortly afterwards, he produced a small series of five complete trains with a nominal size of 1m . For Christmas 1950 he gave his sons a complete model railway system in nominal size H0 with a tank locomotive for the three-wire AC system. The locomotive had a cast aluminum housing with a zinc frame. In the same year Gützold had already started manufacturing plastic housings.
Johannes Gützold thus laid the foundation for the professional series production of model railway locomotives of the H0 gauge. In 1952, he launched the first prototypical class 24 locomotive with a tender as a direct current and three- wire alternating current version with an Ehlcke universal motor . In 1968 Johannes Gützold handed over the company to his son Bernd Gützold.
In the course of the nationalization of private companies in the GDR, the company became a state-owned company (VEB) in 1972 and traded as VEB Eisenbahn-Modellbau Zwickau , abbreviated to "EM". In 1974 Bernd Gützold, at that time the operations manager, was dismissed and the company was merged with several Zwickau toy manufacturers. These in turn were subordinated to the "VEB Plasticart Annaberg-Buchholz" in 1982 and belonged to the combine Spielwaren Sonneberg ; the products have since been marketed under the trade name Piko .
Reprivatisation
After German reunification in 1990, VEB Plasticart Annaberg-Buchholz and the associated businesses were managed by the Treuhandanstalt and largely re-privatized. In June 1990 VEB Plasticart Annaberg-Buchholz Werk 5, Zwickau, became “Gützold KG”. Gützold Verwaltungsgesellschaft mbH was founded back in 1996 , and the KG became "Gützold GmbH & Co. KG".
After initial difficulties, Gützold was able to re-establish itself on the model railway market with new developments such as the 52 series . Since then, Gützold has offered a range of high-quality locomotives and railroad cars of nominal size H0 , both for the two-wire direct current system and the single-wire alternating current system. The range also included products in the TT nominal size.
In autumn 2012, the company stopped production. According to a press release, the company was taken over by a Dresden investor group at the end of March 2013 shortly before the end of the liquidation process. On April 15, 2013, production began again. The 03.1010 was announced as a novelty for 2013 as well as an expansion of production in the areas of mold and sample construction.
The company, now named Gützold Modellbau GmbH, filed for insolvency in September 2014. (Dresden District Court, file number: 531 IN 1728/14).
On October 4, 2017, parts of the company were taken over by fischer-modell GmbH .
