Super Stoked to announce I have managed to cross another off the bucket list 
I will probably throw this in a post of its own in the tinplate section, but this thread and the people in it are my first love on this forum ... now enough soppiness and on with the show !
Thanks to a bit of cross forum negotitation elsewhere ( the Sakai peeps) I became aware of this one going up for sale and staked and battled til she were mine ...
Its a rather unusual locomotive from the Brimtoy company in the UK , and it is rather a mystery to the collecting community with a few theories bandied about but no actual evidence of when, why, and how it was made ... All shall be expounded on later but for now .... PICS ! ( cos thats why you are here right ?)
Brimtoy 6201 locomotive tender and carriage set ! ( and possibly THE best condition I have seen anywhere )
Brimtoy/Wells logo in "shakyvision"
But get a load of this eyeful
Look at the beautiful carriage connections
( I believe they also came in 3 carriage form , but 2 is all we get here )
Now to the mystery/undocumented/what the? component... anyone recognise the motor in this big bad boy?
Yes it appears to be "Marx" or at least of Marx origins ... And here is where the speculation begins .. perhaps the best reference to this loco can be found at http://toyandtrainguides.com/m...british/brmtymrx.htm
I include this photo from there for those too lazy to click ( lol )
You can see that apart from the mainspring key shaft and sideplate attachments the Brimtoy motor is very similar ...It appears the Brimtoy would MUCH more servicable as it can be easily pulled apart .
Now the Marxtin folk have speculated on Marx actually owning Brimtoy at some stage ..if that were true there WOULD be a record of it , and none such exists , so the claim that Marx owned "everything toy-wise " (lol) is just smoke and mirrors and patriotism IMHO
However if we apply company history we can see that both Marx and Chad Valley at one stage had their bases not too far from each other in Birmingham and surrounds , Brimtoy and Chad Valley often co-operated over the years with esp railway accesories , but then in 1948 British Marx set off to establish a new Factory in Swansea ( Wales ) as after the war the UK was looking to provide employment in the other areas of the UK , reinforcing the UNITED in Kingdom, so no doubt there were incentives for many manufacturers to head into the "provinces" such as Wales Ireland and Scotland .
My personal theory on this loco is that it became part of a joint comercial agreement between Marx and Brimtoy in a "You scratch my back , I'll scratch yours" scenario .. where British Marx contracted Brimtoy to supply some accessories for their sets ( like tinplate stations etc) and in return Brimtoy just might have placed an order with Marx for motor components etc .. An exercise in helping Marx establish in Wales ( as eventually Brimtoy did too a decade and a bit later ) .. now as to the body .. I reckon it bears more than a passing resemblence to the Unique Arts American locos... which it is rumoured Marx bought the tooling of... now Marx never used that tooling themsleves .. but perhaps it was loaned to Brimtoy for the purposes of this 6201 , or Marx used the tooling to form shells for Brimtoy as part of the exercise???
I have no proof of this , but it just kind of makes sense in the new prosperity after the war , rather than fight each other , many companies banded together to increase each others productivity and everyone benefitted .
More toys , more sales. more moolah for everyone ! At least for the short few years in the late 40's early fifties .
I can find no exact dates for the years this set was produced but I would guess @ 1950-54 , I have seen an ad for it but no reference date was attached to it sadly ... Still it remains that not too many of these are out there , for instance a search at Vectis ( one of the UK's premier toy and train auction sites) lists only 4 examples crossing thru them in the last 20 years and TWO of those four were the ones from the Michael D Foster collection sale last year after writing the book on them
Huge thanks to Bryan P for letting this come to live with me 
