Locomotive made out of scraps of wood is from 1820-30 and worth £5,000, according to expert on BBC's Antiques Roadshow

This article is more than 8 years old

This article is more than 8 years old

A rudimentary locomotive constructed out of old bits of scrap wood is being heralded as – possibly – the world's oldest surviving toy train.

It is thought to have been made by a father for his son in the 1820s or 1830s.

The creation consists of four circular pieces of carved wood that appear to have been taken from an old piece of furniture. The main body seems to have once been part of a banister while the smokestack may have been from a chair leg.

Father and son are believed to have lived in a cottage that backed on to the Stockton and Darlington railway in County Durham.

Among the trains to run on the railway was Locomotion No 1, built by George and Robert Stephenson's company in 1825. Four years later the Stephensons created the pioneering Rocket.

The model remained in the County Durham family until the current owner, Tom Robson, a teacher, bought it in the 1960s.

His son, also Tom, played with it as a child. Robson Sr said it would be the first object he would grab if his house caught fire.

Robson, from Sunderland, took the model to the BBC's Antiques Roadshow, thinking it might be worth around £30. But as, possibly, the oldest toy train in the world, it was valued at £5,000.

He said: "I bought it from a gentleman whose family had lived in the same house for years. It was a little cottage that backed on to the original Darlington to Stockton railway.

"It is the most naive and primitive little model train and probably made from salvaged pine wood that he could get his hands on.

"My son Tom played with it when he was a child, he used to pull it along on a piece of string. I thought it might now be worth about £30 but it being described as the world's first toy train puts it in a different bracket.

I'm going to keep it and pass it on through my family."

On the Antiques Roadshow, which is to be broadcast on Sunday, expert Paul Atterbury describes it as "extraordinary".

He says: "It's incredibly crude and it's made of reused components. It's old bits and pieces knocked together to please a child, and it looks like a locomotive of the 1820-1830 period."