Cast Iron Toy Busses

Sunday, April 15, 2012

Cast Iron Toy Busses

     The story of  real busses is as interesting or even more interesting than the old cast iron busses themselves. From what I've read, and Wikipedia has a nice narrative about the subject, in the 1910's-1920's there were a lot of busses that overturned when cornering. Sadly, I'm sure there were lots of accidents and deaths. Keep in mind also that there were no antibiotics discovered or invented yet!

    Historically, 2 brothers by the name of Fageol, decided to design a bus from the bottom up. Supposedly this was something totally innovative. The company had previously made cars, trucks, and farm tractors. Anyway, the new bus design had a wider track (front to back, I 'm interpreting), and was wider. Both of these characteristics aided in keeping the bus on the ground when it turned. The bus turned out to be a success and its' original name of "Safety bus", was changed to "Safety Coaches". The "Safety Coach" has a more luxurious title to it.

There's more of the story at : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fageol  and it's very interesting.

I don't know who made the red bus (circa 1930's) , but the smaller blue bus is a Hubley made in 1938. Both busses are Cast Iron.

The red bus measures     7 3/4" (L) x 2" (W) x 1 3/4" (H)  or 197mm x 51mm x 45mm.

The blue Hubley bus measures  5 3/4" (L) x 1  3/4" (H) x 1 1/2" or  147mm x 70mm x38mm.

As I was unloading the last photo, the thought crossed my mind as to whether or not the above 2 busses were created after real life models?

I don't think old busses are like cars in the sense of many collectors like to collect them.  Also, they're large and require a bibber space to store them. 

However, that's "homework" for another time and day.

So I hope you all had a restful Sunday, and thanks for dropping by to visit.

Have a nice morning, afternoon, or evening, 

wherever you may be.