33 Mechanical Horse and Five Assorted Trailers

John, Nice pictures but which is the tourer next to the van ? It looks like the French 22a or c Roadster Sports but this model is left hand drive when the picture shows a right hand drive car.

Jan, Thanks very much for your help, it is a nice picture. Jacques, it is a Liverpool 22g if I compare with my models. However the artist did not a very good job on the model. Windscreen is straight and not split, rearcover for the wheel is not present and the position of the steering wheel seems to be wrong. I keep searching these rare pictures. John.

Hi Terry, Ah, they are beautiful, you're right, they weren't the same after the War, some of the real charm of these was lost, that's why I love Pre War so much. To modern eyes the Men look a bit too large, but in reality the Mech Horse was actually quite small, to work in very tight spaces I suppose. Chris Warr.

Chris I think the real Mechanical Horse was pretty small, so those Dinky figures might be pretty close......close enough anyway! With so many different scales used by Meccano, it is sometimes either difficult or amusing to mix them..... Terry

The mechanical horse was 1/48 or 1/4' like a lot of other Dinky Toys and Supertoys. If the proptotype of the 35 mm high figures was 1,68 m then the scale of those figures is also 1/48. The Dinky Toys mechanical horse is not a very realistic model as the three wheels are much to big they should be about half that size and the trailers should be four wheelers. Photographed at the National Railway Museum York on June 28, 2007. The railway companies had a fleet of horse drawn trailers and the mechanical horse was designed to pull these. Hence the name mechanical horse. Only three Karrier horses are known to survive. When the next model of mechanical horse was designed by Scammell, all the wooden carts were obsolete and the tiny wheels were not necessary any more. The new types were all fitted with the Scammell patented automatic coupling like the Dinky Toys Hindle Smart Electric truck ref. 421 the wheel size of wich is correct. Unfortunately in the National Railway Museum in York the horse and the trailer are exhibited at a distance, they should be brought back together to explain the origin of the word 'Mechanical Horse' and to show why the wheels of the horse are so small.

Hi Jacques, Here they are together, (Not my photo)

Chris Warr

Chris, That's the best picture that I have seen of a horse with a trailer. Thanks for posting it.

Terry that is truly a fantastic example of the 33 set & I am pleased to see it is in such a good home. Thanks for sharing it, gives me hope that I will be lucky enough to find a similar item in such fine original condition. Stef

Stef--Thanks....it is a very special set, and the highlight of my Dinky collecting career. It is fun to just look at it and imagine that it is almost 80 years old and in wonderful condition. After seeing the photos posted of the real thing, I decided to mix and match a bit to kind of recreate that image. So I took the LMS tug and hitched it to the flat trailer from the 33 set. Obviously not a color match, as I am sure they would have been painted to match. But I would also guess that the flat truck was the most common load behind it. I have never seen any photos of the other trailers, so wonder if they were really used, or the product of Meccano imagination. Terry

Hi Terry, Lots of local Councils used these, as well as the Railways. There were certainly bin wagons, though they were usually rigids not articulated, just like the Bedford O Dinky, but with a Karrier 3 wheel cab, the only picture I could find of an artic is this one,

Shame Dinky didn't do this beauty Pre War! Chris Warr

Hi all, Just sorting some photos and found these, before I got them in 2012 they had sat in a cardboard box on a shelf in a garage with a 24 series, a 23 series, a couple of 25 series and a couple of 22's, since about 1939 or so, two trailers one cab,

I've since picked up this cab for the tanker..

Chris Warr. BTW...I did get the others too.

Rob-- Thanks, and would love to see your set as well when you get time to post it. I did some searching this afternoon in the old Meccano Magazines, to see when this set first appeared, and it shows up first time in the June, 1935 issue, where Meccano is claiming over '150 varieties'. The August issue is the first one where they now claim '200 varieties'. In the May, 1937 issue, the Mechanical Horse with Four Trailers makes its first appearance, so the original version with five trailers was made for less than two years..........at least according to the Meccano Magazine. Jacques....thank you also for your always knowledgeable comments! Below are some older closeup photos I took of the individual trailers.....Terry

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