F is for Fire Engines

Now called Fire Appliances, which I've never been happy with as a hose-end is an appliance, an axe is an appliance . . . fire 'trucks' are mighty engines and should be called such. Equally and on the other hand I still have to change the tag from Firemen to Firefighters as that's the right-and-proper thing to do.

I've been keeping an eye on the display cases at Fleet library, hoping for another Christmas toy exhibition/spot the spider, which still hadn't happened (as of Thursday evening), but maybe this weekend will see a change, in the meantime they (Fleet and Crookham Historical Society) have had a display on the history of Fire Fighting in Fleet, and knowing there are several ex-firefighters or firefighter figure collectors watching the blog, this is for them!

I think this line-up is Matchbox original in the middle and two Lledo's either side? The green one has 'Guildford' transfers (which is only 20-minutes up the road), the Matchbox is labelled 'London' and the other seems blank.

We compared the figures years-ago, but I can't remember if it was here or in One Inch Warrior? Basically the two riders are reversed poses in Lledo's Days Gone (DG5) of the Matchbox, the driver's differences are more subtle, but Matchbox's Yesteryear's (Y-4) are smaller.

The little one here is again a Matchbox oldie, from the origianl 1-75 line, but the other two I'm not so sure, they look very alike, but there are subtle differences (the ladder clip-in for instance) so I think we may be looking at Lledo for the red & white one (DG12, Essex?) and 'new' Corgi for the WWII National Fire Service one?

Which would make these; two Lledo and an Oxford Diecast N-gauge example? The green one is Auxiliary Fire Service (also WWII) while I can't read the red one! Lledo issued up to 30 variants of their earlier models in each initial release, both commercially and on contract to corporate entities and premium issuers, as well as - later - some private collectors clubs, and with the older models having the more versions, and the Fire Engine being among the earlier ones, there will be whole cabinets full of these somewhere!

These were in the low glass table display only, the three-tier had photographs of fire stations and other memorabilia, hopefully; they'll both be full of toys any day now, we've got too used to it after three years to not see it over Christmas!