979 Racehorse Transport (1961-64)

Is the Newmarket Horse Box unusual with plastic hubs ? I recently bought one so fitted, but all the pictures I've found online so far show metal hubs. The baseplate is the later version. Fred7A

The Newmarket Horse Box with plastic hubs I have never seen before. I have only seen this model with light yellow metal and with dark yellow metal hubs. I would love to see a picture of your Horse Box. There are more models with plastic hubs that are hardly ever seen like the Guy Warrior Snowplough, the Mighty Antar with Propellor and the 984/985 Car Carrier and Trailer. Kind regards, Rob

Dear Jan W. Congratulations for your very nice and very scarce Newmarket horse box with plastic hubs. I searched the net but could not find an other one. It must be a very late issue. You missed to tell us which baseplate is fitted to this version. Jacques

Hi Jacques, I have taken a set of pictures, but troubles with my desktop make the processing rather complicated at this moment. So they will be published here one of the days to come. I managed to take and process two photos of a couple of new additions, however, to be posted in the 'New Arrivals' thread. Kind regards, Jan

I have to disappoint you, Jacques, no plastic hubs. Nevertheless, I can post some new pictures here, because my computer has been replaced in the mean time, after having crashed some weeks ago. Notable are the plastic horses, still sealed in their plastic bag. They were planned to be made of lead, back in 1953 already, but were issued in plastic to accompany this Racehorse Transport only. The lid top illustration shows a text not mentioned elsewhere. Kind regards, Jan

I still do not know which of these two chassis were fitted to the Newmarket horse box with plastic hubs. Can someone help ? It would be interesting to know if the Newmarket truck with plastic hubs has been fitted with the both the bases 1 & 2. Back to some old posts above, I do not think that the different melting temperatures of zamac and alu alloy makes any difference to the dies wear as the moulds are water cooled. The reason why the horse box, the Pullmore transporter and the Vulcan were not cast by Meccano is very simple, Meccano did not have any casting machine powerfull enough for these models and if cast in zamac, the toys would have been too heavy and may have not met the toys safety standards. If two bases's moulds had been made early and used simultaneously during the life of the horse boxes and the Pullmore then two dies would have been made for the bodies as well. This could be the case as pointed by Kevin in his post #22 above. More comparative information is needed for the possibility of two different moulds and to prove that a die has not been modified to make the second casting. I have not yet heard about any casting differences for the body of the Pullmore transporter so iy is very unlikely that there were two dies for the Pullmore's body. I think that I have already written about the Vulcan and why the mould did not fill properly. The air contained in the mould could not escape. When the metal filled the cavity the air was compressed so much in the wing tips that the zamac could not fill the cavity completely, the castings had to be rejected. To avoid this BACC increased the injection presure so much that they damaged the die. Solido solved this sort of problem by adding small vents chanels and reservoirs which were removed when deburing. The compressed air escaped into those reservoirs and the injection presure remained acceptable. Had BACC decided to add these reservoirs the Dinky Vulcan would not be so rare.