600 is for Welsotoys!

For the second positive ID of the day (and second mention of Lone Star by-the-by) we go right back to the beginning of the blog and an image kindly lent to me by Moonbase Central (link) for an article on the Raphael Lipkin tank transporter (mentioned again the other day!) which I then further mined for the not-Lone Star crewman figures post . . . or maybe I borrowed the image for the later and returned to it for the former? Mass-nicht!

At the time I stated "I was not so sure about these as being also Raphael Lipkin, and suspect they are actually Triang 'Minic'" and "The figures I thought were Lone*Star are - in fact - a slightly different design, clearly copied from LS,..."], and it turns out they were neither/nyther/none [of the above], they were actually Wells-Brimtoy's under the Welsotoy branding, catalogued together with the Raphael Lipkin set.

From the box-art it would seem you only got one figure per-vehicle, and could chose weather to have him seated on the crew-bench, or operating the 'load' from a protruding bucket seat - faithfully reproduced by Blue Box in their diminutive piracy.

Now - Wells, Brimtoy and Wells-Brimtoy pre-date Lone Star/DCMT by some years, if not decades, and given the resemblance of several of Lone Star's Wild West to the Britains/Herald figures, I think it's fair to suggest that the figure we looked at in the above linked post actually originated with these '600 series' toys and was lifted by Lone Star, but in their defence it may be that both companies availed themselves of the services of the same sculptor?

The wagon in detail - there were still a few of these Bedford RL's in second-line service when I served in the mid-1980's, mostly with fixed, specialist bodies, or recovery gear. I don't know when they came into service but I think it may have been quite soon after the war, as they are 'next generation' although in Malaya they were still using QL's and - to ferry the kids to school in CT-troubled areas - armoured AEC's or Ford WOT's . . . or Indian Patten equivalents (this is from memories of pictures in Soldier Magazine, not absolute fact!).

Blue Box in copying these for their small-scale range, as well as adopting the Lone Star seat position while sticking with the Welsotoy flat-bed seem also to have replaced the crew-bench with their own design of James Bond-style control console! Albeit; not copying the gear-wheel revolving mechanism.

Thanks to Alcuin for letting me shoot this at Sandown Park while he was trying to pack-up; nice to end the mystery.