The Boucher Manufacturing Company, founded by H.E. Boucher, was an American toy company based in New York that
specialized in toy boats and toy trains. Horace E. Boucher was a French-born naval architect who headed the U.S. Navy’s model shop. Boucher created ship models that came to be prized by museums all over the country — more than 40 are displayed in the Smithsonian Institute. His innovative idea of mass-producing cast fittings and selling kits to the general public started a new industry and helped turn what had been the art of a few highly skilled craftsmen into a hobby enjoyed by thousands.
Boucher Manufacturing is best remembered today as the last of the makers of Standard gauge/Wide gauge trains until the much smaller McCoy Manufacturing
revived the Standard gauge in the mid-1960s. The Boucher Manufacturing Company only made model ships previous to their 1922 purchase of Voltamp's line of trains.
Voltamp had been a direct competitor to Carlisle & Finch, the inventor of the electric toy train. When Boucher bought the Voltamp line in 1923, they retained three of the five basic steam-type locomotives and dropped all
Voltamp electric and trolley types. They also modified from 2" 2 rail to 2 1/8" 3 rail to be compatible with Lionel's Standard Gauge line. In 1928, the
factory and showroom was located at 152 Lafayette Street, New York City.
Boucher marketed their trains as highly accurate 'scale' models, and occupied the high end of the market. Their catalogs touted the products as 'mechanically perfect' 'Railroad Trains in Miniature'. Boucher was
the only manufacturer ever to catalog a six-wheel drive standard gauge locomotive. The famous 4-6-2 Boucher Blue Comet can be called one of the top desirable classic sets of all time, and are highly sought after by collectors. Boucher sales literature stated that by assembling their train engines, a youngster would gain the knowledge of how an engine actually worked. H. E. Boucher also claimed to have used the highest quality materials available in the manufacturing process to assure that each engine could be taken apart and put back together again as often as desired.
For the duration of Boucher's life the toy train market was dominated by the so-called "Big Four" of
Lionel, Ives, Dorfan, and
American Flyer. Like all of them, Boucher struggled through the Great Depression, and
while it outlived all but Lionel, by 1940 the 2 1/8-inch Standard gauge had become an orphan standard that was
priced beyond the means of most consumers. Without a smaller, more affordable product to sell,
and with World War II limiting what it could produce, Boucher went out of the train manufacturing business in 1943.
