The Bolton branch of the International Plastic Modellers’ Society will be celebrating 50 years of Matchbox model kits.

Today, May 12, the club will hold its AGM at St Catherine's Church in Horwich. 

As well as reviewing the year just gone and planning for the year ahead, members will also be showing off some of their latest work and hoping to win the coveted "Model of the Month" award.

As an additional feature, they will be displaying models to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Matchbox Models.

Bolton IPMS members have been raiding their stashes of models for some of the now very rare Matchbox kits and will be displaying some of the finished models at the meeting.

Bolton IPMS is one of the largest model clubs in the north west. As well as regular club meetings, it also hosts the Bolton Model Show at the Bolton Wanderers Unibol Stadium in January.

Matchbox are better known for their range of diecast cars and vehicles that were popular in the 1950s and 60s, but took the step of moving into the world of plastic kits in the early 1970s.

They produced kits of aircraft, armoured vehicles, cars and ships in a variety of scales, many of them featuring subjects never previously modelled, and in some cases, nor modelled since.