T is for Telsalda

I've seen references to this company as being Spanish, but as far as I know it was a Hong Kong maker or brand, shipping to various markets one of which may well have been Spain? They have been linked with both Lucky and Clifford (all three carrying the same vehicles), but the links I posted the other day also suggest they produced a range [their own?] of scale-ups from Lucky.

Just to be devious we will therefore look at a third scale! This is as close to an OO -gauge compatible scale as makes no difference and could be a copy of any British maker's; as it's such a distinctive vehicle there were several 'original' models to copy from.

What I mean is; while it's easy to say all versions of the Humber 1-ton truck are ultimately copies of Dinky, as Dinky were the only firm to make a decent version of a vehicle which in 'real-life' never went on to have a large run or become a service vehicle, the London bus was so iconic everybody made one . . . or two! And providing the windows are in the right place, the roof sections, 'lines' and so on properly modeled - in scale - there's no way of telling who the 'donor' was. There's a very real chance it was based on the Tudor Rose plastic version - it all seems to be in the bonnet (is this one a Leyland?), the bodywork rarely differs greatly.

Again, this has the fold-back tabs holding the motor-housing in place that yesterday's VW Beetle had (except I'm loading this the same day the Beetle publishes - which I loaded last week - but for you it's 'yesterday's'!), this is not necessarily a big clue, but it's one of those identifiers which help place these toys (of which there were hundreds) in groups to build a better picture of the HK toy industry and its supply-chain relationships.

The other main variant is the four brass (or 'brassed' (brass-anodised) - some of them rust!) eyelet-rivets, with others having screws, small slot-head bolts, or solid aluminium rivets

I think the model code was No.454, but it's not as clear a picture as I hoped! This is not a typical Lucky code (they were 1xx, 1xxA, 30xx, 50xx, 70xx, and 6xxxx for combined sets), but as the Telsalda box code is B5046 (closer to a Lucky code!) there's the usual lack of clarity there - that one expects from Hong Kong! Was 5046 a Lucky bus, leaving 'B' as the contract code for Telsalda?

Telsalda did another version of a Routemaster bus with larger bonnet/engine (Daimler?) but otherwise the same configuration of windows, roof &etc. It had clear windows, yellow seating and a driver, this (probably later) model has blue tinted windows hiding the fact that it’s hollow!