Thought I'd post this as it's a great little model and may be of interest to some of you guys.

As a long-time builder of live steam engines and also a collector of certain die-cast models, I never in a million years thought that a mainstream manufacturer would ever die-cast something which would combine these interests along with locks, safes or vaults...
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But here it was, a very unusual choice on Matchbox's part to say the least, but a great little model which may even have some truth behind it. It's only a die-cast and not a working model in any way, but the fact they even considered it was a miracle by itself!

My initial reaction was this was just another 'generic' model produced to 'milk the market' so to speak, and get as much return from the manufacture and costs of tooling etc, as the model was typically released in many different liveries.

But, the Noel Currier-Briggs book on Chubb Collectanea does show a 1909 open-back steam wagon built by the St Pancras Ironworks, used for safe and vault deliveries. It mentions little apart from they took delivery of it new, and that it didn't go down well with the workers as it filled the factory with smoke!
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The Matchbox model is a 1929 Garrett wagon some 20 years later, so I'm unsure whether they actually had any or not, but either way it makes a great and unusual addition to the collection. And going back to when I had my locks on display it looked great tucked in with Chubb safe locks and miniature model vaults etc

Although these Yesteryear's date back to the late 1980s/early 90s this variation never seems to fetch that much and often pop up on fee-bay if you want one...