powerrabbit

Been cleaning up and preparing these for a local show on Thursday.

Perhaps prices have peaked for certain models and the lack of the bag of 'rubble' held it back a bit.

17 David Browns and a 1949 Allis B.

A lot of the smaller 'studies' of the animals and birds are very good and at good prices. The tractor studies however are expensive and although sales are held of discontinued and secondhand ones, you see very few come up, especially down this part of the country. I very often trawl through the listings for BFA on eBay just to see what the prices are, nice to compare to the catalogues and leaflet prices that BFA, or I should say Gray's, list them at. Same as any other field of collecting though, a minefield.

I find that the best way of dusting these are with a long bristled soft pastry brush, reasonably thin one so you can get in all the little crevices and to dust them off regularly.

I found one in a little local toy fair back in April that just needed the bonnet decal and an exhaust, which I had in my spares box, other than that it was mint, early one with the swept front axle. Paid £4 for it. (Chap had a mint TW25 as well, same money so I grabbed it).

That's a horny looking little tractor! Enough money for it as well.

I have my tractors, the ones I term as vintage or classic, insured as 'agricultural' and on the policy it states that I can use them for carnivals, shows and rallies and 'for pleasure'. Being insured as agricultural avoids any taxation in any other class such as you state, 'light goods' as this comes under the 'agricultural' umbrella. Your insurance company or whoever is is telling you that you that you have to tax it under 'light goods' is telling you porkies as a trailer is seperate and classed as an implement which should come under the agric classification in the policy. In short, if on the registration document of your tractor under 'class' it says 'agricultural machine' or 'agric tractor', no way is it a light goods vehicle and any agricultural machinery that either carries or tows, including a trailer cannot be light goods.

Running my D.B. 780 on white diesel and always drive that one myself and is the main tractor I use for this sort of thing and do the local shows with. A mate of mine will be driving my 880 with a float but that one is still on red and I have no intention of changing it over.

Technicly white diesel should be used as the tractors would not be being used for 'soley agricultural purpose'. Early days yet, but in my local carnival, as per previous post, the Police dont worry about that, they love to see tactors pulling floats, especially older tractors, but then, it's the Customs and Exise that are the bods to look out for.

I think that the one with the red/brown metal frame and yellow tines only came in the set with the mule-dozer type front linkage.

From memory I believe there were 3 versions, the one pictured, an all ruddy-brown all plastic one and an all green plastic one. The 2 latter ones I think were in yard scraper sets.

Are you going to Moretonhampstead carnival BGU? Normally quite a few tractors pulling floats. I have 2 tractors pulling floats, one of which I shall be driving (pulling the Prince and Princess this year). Last year there were about 15 tractors, all the people dearly love to see tractors pulling the floats. It's on Thursday 28th August, all the floats congregate in the assembly field from 4.30pm, judging is 5.15 and the prosession starts at 6.30. The Police close the road to traffic at around 6.00 and re-open around 8.30 so anyone going should get parked up in the carpark fields by 6.00 or in one of the towns carparks by 5.30 otherwise no-one gan get near.

Nice few instruction books there. Ive got the majority of them in my archive collection. Flogging any?

The way you adjust the height on an Acrobat is by the tension on the headstock spring and the length of your tractor top-lonk and use the 'height control' if you have it on the hydraulic lever.

Rory. Fully understand what you are saying about the Meltham 'do'. I'm not wishing to be critical from the article point, as you rightly say, if you do not have, or the organizers can't be bothered to supply sufficient information, then you are somewhat limited. The lack of this information does not surprise me as some of my freinds that attended did'nt exactly know what was going on either at times, much like previous events.

Picked up a copy in my local Co-op today, a bit early this month. There were 2 pages of mine stuck as well but not bad enough to spoil it. Another cracking issue as per usual. Only one slight thing if I'm going to be a little picky, I thought that the report on the 29th June gathering for The D.B. Club do was a little lacking.

Going into my local little town to do my weekly shopping today, in the centre of the town there is a cross-roads. Stopping at this cross-road to ease accross, like you do, from the left, a large white van came up the road and stopped right in the middle of the cross-roads and the driver, an Irish man, shouted accross to me "Do you want to buy a diesel generator?" You can guess where I told him he could stick it!

These Corgi tractors were a little 'spurious' in scale, although the majority of the tractors (and their cars for that mater, although the later cars were 1:35 scale) were aproximately 1:48 scale, or so we are told by the experts. The Corgi buses and lorries were, and still are, 1:50 and 1:76 scale although now, for these, the standard scale for the lorries is 1:50 and 1:76, the standard scale for the buses is 1:76 scale. Corgi incorporated Vanguards some time ago and are now one.

Would have to be one of the 12 or 14 series Lee as the bonnet side panels have two raised pressings on them and are deeper than on the 9 series so would be a little too tall a model for the D.B purist. Cracking looking convo, be nice to see the finished article and very nice to see proper style wheels on it too.

Another good book that covers all makers of lead models and figures up to 1966 (when lead was banned) is 'The Great Book Of Hollow-Cast Figures' by Norman Joplin. This is a large 341 page paperback book that is extremely good for reference. Paid £16 for mine and well worth it.

Me thinks you may open up a pretty large can of worms on this subject! There are hundreds of them that would probably take a month to list in a single post. Your best bet is to find 2 pretty good books on the subject. First one is 'Toy Tractors From Britain's' by Peter Baron. This A5 size book covers models produced fron 1948 to 1998, when the book was published and the last 21 pages lists everything farm that was produced together with catalogue numbers and descriptions. 64 pages in total and the cover is yellow and has a picture of the front of a Britain's catalogue on it of the Ford 6600 and plough sitting in the palm of someones hand. Published price was £7 and can still be readily found online and at toy fairs. Second book, and this one is regarded as the Britain's tractor bible, again A5 size, 'Pocket Guide To Britain's Model Tractors 1948 - 1998' by David Pullen. This book has 286 pages and covers the tractors. It lists all produced between those dates (and some more slightly later in the list at the rear) and has full colour pictures of each model, the box and description with the times price (where known). In it it also tells you about different drivers, castings, wheels and tyres, steering, cabs and variations. This book was published at £17.95 and still widely available. Hope this may be of help to you in your quest.

Very nice looking model BC and I reckon with the right sort of bulb it would really look good in the dark. So you're going to put it away in the loft then? Seems a pitty to leave it in the 'shade'

Still too much for the condition it's in.

£9 with a lot of noughts. I think it may be a mistake!