Hornby is bringing digital control systems to its train sets

The company produced a pre-tax profit of �8.2m for the year to the end of March, up from �7.6m the previous year.

Hornby reported a difficult UK trading environment, but had seen early profits from its recent forays into the French, Italian and Spanish markets.

It now plans to make more train and car-racing sets digitally controlled.

"We expect trading in the UK market to be challenging again in the new financial year," said Hornby chairman Neil Johnson.

"However, the overseas subsidiaries are all now extremely well placed to become the main drivers of growth in the business during the coming years."