My goodness fellows, its not even Saturday and the tinplate thread is really going strong. NWL the MLW cars are neat but the matching bridge is truly unique. Frenchtrains - where do you come up with these sets, this one is magnificent!! Fatman - always got some cool stuff, a psychchedelic breakdown van. By the way, I liked your comment on your restoration philosophy, I fully agree...over restoration takes away from some of the historical perspective and removes the witness to the play that many of these toys have seen. PD - a PINK tank! my military friends are going to have an issue with Arcade! cool toy though. Robert S. Butler - an "Adams Express" baggage car, never saw one before...really cool! Arnie - what a great tank car. I am about to post a tanker as well, not nearly as vintage or rare but fun.
My find this weekend comes from acquiring a few Mettoy Ltd goods wagons- alas no engine. These all date from the period of around 1949-1951 as best I can place them, using Michael Fosters series on English Toy Trains, Vol 5. IAW Foster's illustrated book, all these cars were introduced in the Trade Catalog of 1946 but Mettoy moved its factory in 1949 and this (for some reason) caused a change to the stamping of the common base...the area between the embossed brake mechanism in the side frame between the axles was no longer punched out, the material was left in place giving the frame a much more solid look.
Here is the "Open Wagon" which because of the solid frame dates from 1949 and then continues with the pre-nationalization Railroad names until about 1950-51. After that, the wagon continued but the lithography was either no namewith just the detail of the sides and the reinforcing ribs lithographed in a contrasting color to the sides or all one color (typically a pale yellow) and labeled British Rail across the width of the car. According for Foster, for all of these cars, the base frames came in Yellow, Grey, Dk Blue or Red, were used for all the car types, and were interchanged constantly as far as color is concerned.
Here is the Stanchion car, the uprights came in all of the colors of the base but were always colored in contrast to the base color. Note that this base, is simply the standard car base used by itself, with the uprights just riveted in place. They were offered both loaded or unloaded and sometimes with a chain across the top of the uprights. There is a quite rare one that came with a tin auto as the load - no such luck for me. The most common load was a cargo box of some type.
And here is my TANKER! The Shell motor / spirit tanker from the same period. Mettoy made two tankers postwar, this SHELL in red and an ESSO in Yellow. For either car the base, lettered the same way, could be various colors. In this case, my tanker was made in about '49 and I could not find any tanker's offered in sets post about '52 but I can't confirm that end date. According to Foster, the last Mettoy track trains were made in 1959. This tanker did appear in Goods Sets 5404/02 from 1946 through 1952 (although the only pictured example in '52 is of the ESSO tanker but I am assuming that the SHELL tanker would have been uses equally often).
Happy Tinplate Weekend Everyone! Good hunting!
Don
