ploughmaster

Wattle Hurdles came in a green and white box of 6 cat no 1720 from 1957 to 1966. The accessories make quite a good collection on their own, once you start you find there are more than you thought, and a lot of colour/shade variations and a few changes to some of the moulds. I started collecting the Floral Garden (unboxed) 20 years ago, but it has become so popular now, and the prices that some people seem willing to pay for small quantities (even of common pieces), means I haven't added to it for some years now. Strange really, because it was not a great seller when current in the 60's, and Britains dropped it after only 10 years. Most of the trees (the first were introduced the same year as the Floral Garden) didn't survive much longer either. They did try re-introducing a very limited range of it in 1976 as 'Lucy's Little Garden', but it was a dismal failure and was withdrawn from the catalogue at the end of 1978. I doubt if it would perform any better now than it did then.

According to James Opie in The Great Book of Britains, 'set 2094 State Open Road Landau' was introduced in 1954 and not deleted until 1967.

The vast majority of the things I see sold on eBay seem to stay at very low bids until the last few seconds, then all the watchers snipe at the end and it often ends at a price more in line with normal expectations. A case in point was the green Britains silage trailer which sold on Sunday. It sat at about 30 pounds until the final day, and until the last 30 seconds had only reached £77 if I remember right. In the last half minute it went from £77 to £180!! I don't think it is possible to assess something that is offered on an auction style listing as being cheap, until after it has ended. I suspect the Fastrac will go for somewhere around £20 to £30 in the end. The forage harvester BIN linked by 4055power, does seem cheap - it's a shame I already have that version \

Agreed. He may as well anyway. In my experience, if you cut conifer hedges back to the dead wood, they never green up again anyway.

It is indeed against eBay rules. Use the button at the bottom of this link to report it http://pages.ebay.co.uk/help/policies/png-vat.html

I agree with all 3 of you. If they were reasonably freely available at a sensible price, I would probably go for them simply to keep the my Britains collection complete, but the very low numbers made of some the gold models, their extremely restricted availability, and consequent astronomical price when and if they do become available means I have basically ignored them. Nice to see two going to members on here. I hope all these sprayers will go to good homes (i.e. the genuine collectors who actually want them and will treasure them) and we won't see them suddenly appear on ebay (I have noticed 16 of the gold Agritechnica JD8345R have been offered on eBay so far - 3 from the same seller \ , and all round at about 200% profit)

Another green one has just sold: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Britains-High-Sided-Tipping-Trailer-9566-In-Box-Vintage_W0QQitemZ290373249118QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_ToysGames_DiecastVehicles_DiecastVehicles_JN?hash=item439b98285e Some people really do have far too much money (but possibly not for long )

The main point with water soluble bags was that they cut out the risk of exposure to the dust altogether, and there was little risk of spillage. Most sprayers back in the 80's were designed to be filled via the tank lid, induction hoppers were still a rarity. Nowadays, I usually put the powders straight down the hopper (though the last couple of years, the only powders I have used have been fertilisers (mainly manganese).

I did think it was moving in the powder/granule direction a few years ago, but it doesn't seem to be going much further. They are not only easier to handle, but potential for spillage is more easily controlled. Back in the 80's some fungicide powders started coming in water soluble bags that could be simply dropped into the sprayer tank, no mess, no spillage, no risk of contamination, but these seem to have disappeared nw. There may be chemistry related reasons why some active ingredients can't be made solid ? I also think that the future will possibly lie more towards closed transfer systems and reuseable containers for which liquid formulations will be better suited.

It has also benefitted massively from the demise of Smithfield, although its success is now causing access problems at Newark. With it being at the convergence of two exceptionally busy roads (A17 and A46) with the busy A1, the traffic problem experienced by many last year is not going to be easy to solve. It has come a very long way since the days when the few exhibitors were only from the Lincs area and all fitted into the one exhibition hall on the Lincolnshire showground at Grange d'Lings. It has rather outgrown its title now

Hear, hear. After all this time of being told we must avoid any spillages, and yet far too many pesticides are still being supplied in containers from which it is impossible to decant them without them spilling/slopping down the outside of the can. I actually got to the point a few years ago where I refused point blank to use Beetup because of this, but Beetup is far from the only one. There are also too many containers which are either difficult to wash out, or impossible to drain fully, often made worse by them being in inappropriately sized bottles. Agreed re. the foil seals too, although a few manufacturers are phasing them out now. (I usually leave them part attached to the can, so they at least get cleaned during the can washing process, but they're still a blasted nuisance).

errrrrr; no.

Interesting question, and one to which I have no idea of the actual answer. You could easily ask a similar question as to why Britains made the Volvo BM2654 which wasn't sold in the UK (as far as I know). Didn't North America keep the 100 series until the end of the 70's when they were superseded by the 200 series? I can only think that MF wanted/asked Ertl to make the larger scale models for them to offer through dealerships in countries where the 500 series were sold (they were sold elsewhere other than Europe). For a large scale model/toy, Ertl would have been the main choice, and they already had a licence to produce 16th scale MF toys.

As said before, the principal reason is to give the land a break from cereals. Continuous growing of one type of crop inevitably leads to a build up of particular weeds and soil borne pests and diseases. Continuous cereals are grown on some farms, but it is difficult to keep control of grass weeds in particular, which, being cereals themselves, are more difficult to kill in wheat. Crops such as potatoes and peas/beans need keeping several years apart because of a build up of soil borne diseases and pests (particularly nematodes in the case of potatoes and sugar beet, a bad infestation of which can mean having to give up growing those crops on the affected field altogether for 15 to 20 years). There is no particular reason for not using two break crops in a row, it is more a case that wheat being the principal crop on most farms, it is mainly to serve as a break from that. I used to work on a farm that belonged to a seed breeding company. The cereal variety maintenance and purification work required a two year break from cereals beforehand (to try to cut out the possibility of volunteers in the seed crop - we are talking of seed in the generations prior to 'pre-basic' here). We achieved this by growing sugar beet followed by spring rape, and followed the purification crop with commercial wheat. The company also rented land from a local farmer who grew potatoes followed by linseed to give us the required two year break.

It's not just AgCo. I worked on a farm that ran Case MXM's a couple of years ago, and the front mudguards on them spent more time at the dealers being welded back together than they did on the tractors.

I would suggest that the British machines (certainly the ones I've used) are probably better designed and better built.

Thats interesting (haven't seen this weeks FW yet). If I remember right, Hungary is where most of them were being built before. It was only the Sapphire (and finishing off the other machines) that was carried out at Hykeham in the last few years under Case-IH. Just my own opinion, but I think we make plenty of perfectly good sprayers in the UK, and we don't need yet another import. All very well, except for the fact that the UK isn't higher cost anymore. Since the pound has effectively been devalued, the UK has become a much more attractive place to make things - hence partly the reason for this weeks news from Spyker that production of their cars will transfer to the UK from Holland next year (OK, they only make about 40 a year, but it's nice to have some positive news for once [img alt=]http://www.farmtoysforum.com/forum/Smileys/default/smiley.gif )

Rumour is that Biso aren't the only ones Rumour also has it "quite a lot bigger"!

Having seen it first hand, I can say it is at least as good as it looks. It fills a need that many have felt for a long time .

Yes, I often do. I just do not comprehend the sheer greed of some people (perhaps I'm old fashioned )

I am not interested in the gold models, so it does not directly bother me. But, there were only 100 available I am can assure you that there will have been a large number of people who really wanted one for their collection, but got to the JD stand just too late yesterday, or were just too far down the queue, and they will be deeply hacked off about it. I am sure you would feel the same if it was you!

Didn't take long for some greedy **** to cash in \ : http://cgi.ebay.de/John-Deere-8345-R-Gold-Britains-Agritechnica_W0QQitemZ260504231013QQcmdZViewItemQQptZSpielzeugautos?hash=item3ca7431c65 (NB. posts only to Germany)

Sadly my pic of it turned out blurred (I was probably shivering in the cold wind ), so hopefully Andy has a better one (it was actually a DT7000). I didn't get on too well with the MF's, there was also a very nice 1135, which I also failed to take a useable photo of I hope Andy also has a pic of Nigel Fords little surprise (which I stupidly didn't take a pic of ) It is, it has built up from very small beginnings, but this year was the biggest yet by some way. Quite a lot of rare and unusual tractors there, and of course Sunday was boosted by hosting the 'Old Sodbury Sortout'.

No doubt Andy will post a few more after tomorrow, and probably a few models too (including a little something something from Mr Ford )