Lledo horse drawn vehicles, scale ?

[wagonbasher]

I have been looking at lledo days gone range and they have a small selection of horse drawn vehicles. Considering buying, improving, repainting etc for a 7mm Victorian model but are they all 1:43 scale.  eBay lists some at that size but most sellers have excluded scale in the write up.  Looking at the horse drawn bus they are a very low price, would need to change the horses (they are quite corse), wheels ? etc.  You get 5 passengers, maybe it’s 4 and a driver, if they are 7mm the figures are worth £4 a piece anyway.  
 

Anyone know this range.

Andy

 

[Nick Holliday]

A search for Lledo here comes up with plenty of discussions. I suspect the horse bus you are referring to was analysed by @Edwardian and  the conclusion was that the bus was under-scale for 4mm although the horse might have been a bit larger.

[PaulRhB]

Days Gone seemed to be 4mm ish for the horse drawn vehicles and 1/64 ish for the motor vehicles. 
The horse bus was similar in size to the Langley 4mm kit. They would work in 4mm due to various makers and sizes but certainly not 7mm. 

[PaulRhB]

[BernardTPM]

The figures supplied with the horse bus and fire engine were quite a bit smaller than those with the milk float and delivery van. The horse bus is like a slightly larger version of the old Matchbox Models of Yesteryear Y-12. That was 89mm long, stated scale 1:100. Working from that the Lledo does come out as 1:76 scale.

Going by the figures, DG2 & DG3 are closer to 5.5mm scale, but not big enough for 7mm scale. There's an adult woman in the DG3 set who is 29mm tall (excluding base). in 1:55 (5.5mm scale) that's about 5' 3" which seems about right.

[Edwardian]

3 hours ago, Nick Holliday said:

A search for Lledo here comes up with plenty of discussions. I suspect the horse bus you are referring to was analysed by @Edwardian and  the conclusion was that the bus was under-scale for 4mm although the horse might have been a bit larger.

 

My musings, not especially scientific, were Here

 

I suspect that the 'bus body is not, in general (no pun intended) too bad, though may not be proportionally typical.

 

For sure the horses and people are really very much too big. 

 

Here are the Lledo horses next to a 1/76 scale horse:

 

 

It is not, I think possible, to claim that the horse-drawn vehicles are to a constant scale. They really are not, and nor are the accompanying figures; they are all different sizes.  Only the horses remain a constant. It is true to say, however, that the motor vehicles are generally to larger scales than the horse drawn.

 

I did, in an idle moment, distress the Lledo Pantechnicon as a bit of a joke (it's a promotional livery; Abels don't go back far enough to have had a horse-drawn pantechnicon), but included in the post is my conclusion that the only figures that are sufficiently close to scale for a model railway are the standing figures from the horse tram and Pantechnicon sets.    

 

Turning to the individual vehicles:

 

- The delivery van and milk float are way too large.

 

- The Pantechnicon is way too tall and the proportions completely wrong

 

- The fire engine I suspect is also over scale, but, perhaps, not so obviously so and the seated firemen are also not so obviously over scale as most of the figures.

 

- The horse tram and the horse 'bus are much closer to 1/76 and potentially the most useful. 

 

I think you can get a good approximation of a typical garden-seat horse 'bus from the Lledo item.  I think you would need to ditch the horses and there will, I'm sure, but something a little off in the proportions and some crudities resulting from the die-cast medium; parts too thick, the solid sides to the stairs etc. Nevertheless, it's full of character and captures the character of the prototype and I've seen some good results from them.  It is probably one of the most usable of the horse-drawn vehicles.

 

My assessment was, however, that it would take too much work for too imperfect a result to be worth it when Langley do a perfectly serviceable kit.   

 

 

 

 

Edited September 8, 2021 by Edwardian
Fix broken link

[Michael Hodgson]

1 hour ago, Edwardian said:

- The horse tram and the horse 'bus are much closer to 1/76 and potentially the most useful. 

Rail Replacement Service?

 

If the horses are oversized for 4mm, couldn't you use them as O gauge pit ponies or repaint as a Shetland ?

[Tricky-CRS]

Lledo vehicles were not designed to a scale but to fit a standard box. The horse drawn vehicles my all look to be a similar scale simple because 1 set of horses were tooled but may vary. The vans and lorries are I suspect all different until the introduction of the trackside and vanguard ranges just before the demise of Lledo. The trackside was introduced to bring scale consistency for the OO market. The Vanguard range was a compromise where the vans and cars were 1 scale and the lorries a different one, but always the same. When Lledo started them and Oxford Diecast were both in the limited edition / promotion market and scale didn't matter. OD were quicker to realise the move for scale models and left Lledo behind. Lledo to eventually become part of Corgi after bankruptcy. OD were also quicker to move production to China where as Lledo still produced a lot in the UK right up to the end.

[PhilJ W]

I have the Lledo horse bus and agree its close to 1/76 scale. It appears easy to add an interior and glazing as the upper deck floor just clips in. One thing that would enhance this and other horse drawn vehicles would be a proper and accurate harness.

[wagonbasher]

7 hours ago, Tricky-CRS said:

Lledo vehicles were not designed to a scale but to fit a standard box. The horse drawn vehicles my all look to be a similar scale simple because 1 set of horses were tooled but may vary. The vans and lorries are I suspect all different until the introduction of the trackside and vanguard ranges just before the demise of Lledo. The trackside was introduced to bring scale consistency for the OO market. The Vanguard range was a compromise where the vans and cars were 1 scale and the lorries a different one, but always the same. When Lledo started them and Oxford Diecast were both in the limited edition / promotion market and scale didn't matter. OD were quicker to realise the move for scale models and left Lledo behind. Lledo to eventually become part of Corgi after bankruptcy. OD were also quicker to move production to China where as Lledo still produced a lot in the UK right up to the end.

Thank you all for your input.  I was looking at an eBay post shortly after posting when I spotted the ‘Euroslot’.  The thing you hang the model from wether a single or double peg when I realised the horse bus was too small.  As it says, designed for the box,  Looks like the die cast route is not an option,  odd that Odell started lledo with variscale vintage horse drawn vehicles, I can’t see the market, even then.,,  maybe looking for gaps
 

Again, thank you all,

 

I will put my £0.99 plus postage to a worthier cause.

 

Andy

[Tricky-CRS]

59 minutes ago, wagonbasher said:

Thank you all for your input.  I was looking at an eBay post shortly after posting when I spotted the ‘Euroslot’.  The thing you hang the model from wether a single or double peg when I realised the horse bus was too small.  As it says, designed for the box,  Looks like the die cast route is not an option,  odd that Odell started lledo with variscale vintage horse drawn vehicles, I can’t see the market, even then.,,  maybe looking for gaps
 

Again, thank you all,

 

I will put my £0.99 plus postage to a worthier cause.

 

Andy

 

Most if not all the early models had large flat sides and plenty of advertising space. The main market was selling them to companies as promotional items so needed several places to get the brand on. That then created a collector and after sales market, which in turn lead to a standard range. Odell was from matchbox from memory, so perhaps thats where the first ideas came from. Oxford Diecast started in the same way with the bull nose van designed to fit the box, not sure what else they did before they went over to scale models.

 

[Mike Harvey]

Oxford Diecast’s emphasis on the promotional market is evident in the first issue of the Globe. No horse drawn though.

 

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1017/3257/t/20/assets/globe_01.pdf?v=11751568030970815305

Edited September 9, 2021 by Mike Harvey
Spelling

[wainwright1]

There was also a horse drawn brewers dray in the Lledo range, again overscale.

 

Interestingly, they also produced an AEC Regal single deck bus, a Tilling AEC ST type double deck bus, an LT type double decker and I think a trolleybus which were possibly around 3.5 mm scale.

 

Additionally there was another small bus fairly generic, possibly Thorneycroft, which was overscale.

 

All the best

Ray

[quicksilvercoaches]

7 hours ago, Mike Harvey said:

Oxford Diecast’s emphasis on the promotional market is evident in the first issue of the Globe. No horse drawn though.

 

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1017/3257/t/20/assets/globe_01.pdf?v=11751568030970815305

How things have changed for the better at Oxford Diecast in 25 years! The modern collector of Oxford scale models would find it difficult to believe this Lledo-esque manufacturer of 'fit the box' promotional models is the same company and the transformation is remarkable. Am I right in thinking the Chipperfields Circus Bedford TKs were Oxford's first venture into proper scale modelling in the early 2000s?

 

If only Lledo had done the same and put more effort into the 1/76 Cargo Kings range, including producing the Iveco and ERF that were prototyped. Maybe they'd still be with us today...

[BernardTPM]

I believe Oxford did the replacement Routemaster model for Seerol who owned the the old Bdugie  name. That was 4mm scale and is still in the range.

Edited September 9, 2021 by BernardTPM

[GRASinBothell]

If you're looking for diecast horse-drawn vehicles for O gauge, then the Models of Yesteryear horse-drawn bus (YSH-2), gypsy caravan (YSH-1) and Merryweather fire engine (Y-46) may be your best bet.

And Arttista do a penny-farthing bicycle to add more traffic to your road...

Gordon