Karl Bub founded this company in 1851 in Nürnberg, Germany. American toy train collectors are familiar with the 'KBN' trademark, which stands for 'Karl Bub Nürnberg'.
Bub made a superbly enameled and later lithographed line of clockwork tin
transportation toys including trains. They started making trains that ran by clockwork in 1903. Then in
1914 an electric train was added to the product line. A partnership with Issmayer and
Carette allowed all three companies to produce similar looking
trains which often had only the logo that was different. Many Bub toys reached the American market via exclusive
distributor F.A.O. Schwartz, New York City, during the 1920s-1930s. Bub is known to have
acquired the tooling for Bing toy trains when Bing went out of business in 1932. Bub was able to keep manufacturing costs low during the depression era because it utilized paper thin sheet metal. Bub
restarted production of the Bing models in 1934 for the German market but this in turn ceased at the outbreak of
World War II. The original Bub factory was destroyed during the war. After 1945 a production of trains in an 'S' like gauge (1:64 scale running on 22.5 mm track) was created, but these train products could not compete
with the upcoming trend of HO gauge and was a commercial failure. Production was completely ceased in
the early 1960's and the company closed in 1966.
In 2002 a new firm began producing HO and large scale trains under the Bub name. There is no lineal connection between the old Bub and the new Bub. The new products are manufactured in China, but the company offices are located in Nürnberg. Their web site address is www.bub-toys.de.
