Mec­ca­no Liv­er­pool had a good rela­tion­ship with the Bed­ford truck com­pa­ny, and many Bed­ford mod­els were repro­duced by Mec­ca­no. The Jan­u­ary 1960 issue of Mec­ca­no Mag­a­zine con­tained an adver­tise­ment for the new Dinky Super­toys 930 Bed­ford Pal­let-Jek­ta Van, a Bed­ford mod­el that Mec­ca­no Liv­er­pool used them­selves for trans­port­ing their own prod­ucts. Among oth­er jobs, it was used for trans­port­ing cast­ings from the Mec­ca­no Speke fac­to­ry at Edward’s Lane near Liverpool’s air­port to the orig­i­nal Mec­ca­no fac­to­ry at Binns Road, a dis­tance of about 5.3 miles (8.5 km), or 17 min­utes by car.

While search­ing for a pho­to­graph of the real Bed­ford Pal­let Jek­ta Van, I came across this pic­ture in a Face­book group for truck dri­vers that I had­n’t seen before. A fleet of Mec­ca­no Lim­it­ed Bed­ford trucks are parked at the entrance of the Mec­ca­no fac­to­ry on Binns Road in Liv­er­pool. This pic­ture reflects the glo­ry days of Mec­ca­no Liv­er­pool.

All the vehi­cles sport Mec­ca­no and Dinky Toys logos. I was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised to see a Bed­ford CA Van with the Dinky Toys logo, because its exis­tence was doubt­ed. I find it remark­able that these four dif­fer­ent types of Bed­ford trucks were parked togeth­er at the Mec­ca­no fac­to­ry entrance. Per­haps the pho­to­graph was com­mis­sioned by Mec­ca­no Lim­it­ed. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, there was no text accom­pa­ny­ing the image.

The Bed­ford CA Van at the front with the Dinky Toys logo was repro­duced by Mec­ca­no Liv­er­pool in 1956 as mod­el 482. Behind it is the Bed­ford TA Pal­let Jek­ta Van. The third vehi­cle is a Bed­ford O truck with a cov­ered car­go bed and the Mec­ca­no Liv­er­pool logo on the front. It looks as if the left side of the car­go bed is open and cov­ered with a tar­pau­lin. The fourth vehi­cle is a Bed­ford TA artic­u­lat­ed lor­ry loaded with parcels. This pho­to­graph must have been tak­en around the mid 1950’s, per­haps by the dri­ver of one of these trucks. The door on the right of the build­ing is the main entrance to the office of Mec­ca­no Lim­it­ed. A clear­er pic­ture of the same loca­tion is shown below.

Shown above is the Dinky Super­toys 930 Bed­ford Pal­let-Jek­ta Van with its beau­ti­ful Mec­ca­no and Dinky Toys adver­tis­ing trans­fers on the closed car­go bed in red and out­lined in black. The load­ing bed of the real Bed­ford Van was equipped with a mov­able plat­form, the so-called Pal­let-Jek­ta mov­able floor, to speed up load­ing and unload­ing. This was repro­duced in the Dinky mod­el.

This is the sec­ond repro­duc­tion of a Bed­ford Van that was put into ser­vice by Mec­ca­no Liv­er­pool. The first was the Dinky 482 Bed­ford 10 cwt. Van “Dinky Toys” released in 1956 and super­seded by the Dinky Super­toys 930 Bed­ford Pal­let-Jek­ta Van in Jan­u­ary 1960.

The Dinky Super­toys 930 Bed­ford Pal­let-Jek­ta Van was adver­tised in the Jan­u­ary 1960 issue of Mec­ca­no Mag­a­zine as shown above. On the right is part of the arti­cle by Toy­man describ­ing the new mod­el.

The Dinky Super­toys 930 Bed­ford Pal­let-Jek­ta Van is an attrac­tive mod­el with lots of play val­ue. The enclosed car­go bed has two rear doors that open to the sides, and an inge­nious slid­ing plat­form is built into the load­ing bed, which can be moved back and forth using a turn han­dle on the left side of the bed. The turn han­dle can divide the bed into three plat­forms, as shown in the 1960 Dinky Toys (UK) leaflet below. The mod­el is equipped with three pal­lets that can be lift­ed onto the plat­form by the Coven­try Cli­max Fork Lift Truck.

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Bedford trucks

Bed­ford Vehi­cles, abbre­vi­at­ed as Bed­ford, was a British com­mer­cial vehi­cle man­u­fac­tur­er that oper­at­ed from 1930 to 1986. The com­pa­ny belonged to the British com­pa­ny Vaux­hall, which itself had been part of Amer­i­can Gen­er­al Motors since 1925. Bed­ford was one of the larg­er inter­na­tion­al man­u­fac­tur­ers of light, medi­um, and heavy-duty trucks and vans. For sev­er­al years, it was the most prof­itable com­pa­ny with­in Gen­er­al Motors Europe.

Eng­lish Bed­fords were most­ly pro­duced at the par­ent com­pa­ny Vaux­hal­l’s fac­to­ries in Luton, Bed­ford­shire, in the UK, where pro­duc­tion began in the 1930s and con­tin­ued until the mar­que’s demise, with the last vehi­cles (such as the Midi/Seta) pro­duced until 1994.

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Bedford trucks used by Meccano Liverpool

In post 21 of the DTCA forum top­ic “Mec­ca­no Ltd, Binns Road, Mis­cel­la­neous”, user Foden­way post­ed a nice overview of trans­port vehi­cles that were placed in ser­vice by Mec­ca­no Liv­er­pool. Five dif­fer­ent vehi­cles are described and depict­ed with Mec­ca­no Dinky Toys logos on them. In this arti­cle I show some of them that most close­ly match a Dinky mod­el.

Shown above is a Bed­ford truck at the Mec­ca­no fac­to­ry in Liv­er­pool. This is the ear­li­er Bed­ford TA mod­el, man­u­fac­tured from 1953 to 1957. The load­ing bed of this truck was equipped with a mov­able Jek­ta plat­form to speed up load­ing and unload­ing, which is why it was called the Bed­ford Jek­ta.

The pic­ture on the left is of a Bed­ford Trac­tor unit with a semi trail­er at the Mec­ca­no fac­to­ry in Liv­er­pool. This is the lat­er type Bed­ford TD that was pro­duced dur­ing 1957 and 1958, and has the same cab as the Dinky Super­toys 930 Bed­ford Pal­let-Jek­ta Van. Note the “Diesel” des­ig­na­tion under the left head­light, and “Mec­ca­no Ltd. Liv­er­pool” that adorns the left door. The image on the right shows a Bed­ford Trac­tor unit (TD series) parked out­side the Mec­ca­no Fac­to­ry, in front of a British Ford Anglia.

The adver­tise­ment in the Jan­u­ary 1960 issue of Mec­ca­no Mag­a­zine indi­cates the Bed­ford Jek­ta Van is based on a 5‑ton Bed­ford chas­sis. This men­tion, along with the pic­ture of the front of the Dinky Super­toys 930 Bed­ford Van, cor­re­sponds to the Bed­ford TD truck mod­el of which I found a fac­to­ry pho­to. These trucks were pro­duced at the Dun­sta­ble fac­to­ry dur­ing 1957 and 1958.

Here is a front view of the Dinky Super­toys 930 Bed­ford Van with “Mec­ca­no” adver­tis­ing on the front of the closed car­go bed. This 930 Bed­ford Van is sim­i­lar to the Bed­ford TD shown above.

Shown here is the Dinky Super­toys 930 Bed­ford Pal­let-Jek­ta Van on its box, with three pal­lets and an instruc­tion leaflet.

Shown here is the left side of the 930 with a turn han­dle to oper­ate the load­ing plat­form. Note the attrac­tive­ly detailed “DINKY TOYS” trans­fers in red with a black out­line that con­trast well with the mod­el’s yel­low body.

Shown above is a clear­er pic­ture of the Bed­ford TA artic­u­lat­ed lor­ry that was tak­en in the port of Liv­er­pool, and the pic­ture below (cour­tesy DTCA Foden­way) shows the Bed­ford TK artic­u­lat­ed lor­ry which was in use at Mec­ca­no Liv­er­pool.

With these, all the Bed­ford trucks known to have been in use at Mec­ca­no Liv­er­pool and for which I was able to find pho­tos are includ­ed in this arti­cle. Unfor­tu­nate­ly I was­n’t able to find a pic­ture of the real Bed­ford TD Pal­let Jek­ta Van from Mec­ca­no Liv­er­pool, which served as the pro­to­type for the mod­el 930.

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Acknowledgements

• DTCA
• Face­book
• Bed­ford TA and TD series
• Alan’s Mec­ca­no Pages