While at Scaleforum with Cades Green it was mentioned that Iain had a Lesney Weatherill Loader that he intended to do something with for the layout.  Given my fascination with doing stuff with things from the toy-box this was pretty much an irresistible project to have a look at.

Weatherill Hydraulic

Weatherill were not a company I was aware of before now. F. E. Weatherill Limited was founded the late 1940s in North London before moving to Welwyn Garden City in the mid 50’s. Mr F.E. Weatherill was formerly of another similar company Chaseside.  Their machines were generally built around Ford components but later moved to Perkins and later still Leyland Engines. Chaseside used cable operation and F.E. Weatherill had tried to get Chaseside to look at the Hydraulic route for their machines but Chaseside weren’t interested. The lineage from cable operation to hydraulic was somewhat apparent in the layout of the earlier Weatherill machines.

By the late 70s Weatherill were struggling, They could not match the prices of machines imported from Scandinavia, Japan and the USA. They met with the UK government to ask for protection of UK manufacturers but that plea fell on deaf ears.  They downsized and closed the Welwyn Garden City factory, moving to Tottenham where the plan was to focus on smaller high lift two-wheel drive rigid loaders but they couldn’t carve out a market for these and in the mid ’80s the firm closed down.

Lesney

It seems strange then that Lesney would be all that interested in producing toys of Weatherill loaders but they produced 3 in total.  A big factor in this could be that the Weatherill Factory and the Lesney factory were next door to each other!  Of the 3 toys produced 2 were the same 2H loader.  The difference being that the first was to 1:75 scale (the yellow one), and the second (the orange one) was larger, no doubt to fit the standard sized box.  The third toy was a later design and part of the larger ‘Superkings’ range.

The Model

I’ve bashed quite a lot of toys into something a little more accurate over the years but I admit I had to look quite hard to see the potential in this one. In the end only the main body was usable with the cab and the diecast driver being cut away.  It was painted in something that resisted all efforts to remove it including dunking it in cellulose thinners overnight!

So out with the microstrip mainly. The driving wheels were from a JCB kit and the front wheels from my box of things that might be useful one day, Paragon models I think.  The shovel was knocked up from bits of brass using photos as a guide. The finished result.

In its new home on Cades Green.  It seemed quite popular with the Kids at the Uckfield Show this weekend.