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Thank you very much for your reply Bert.
Yes you can put it in another thread if you wish .
Regards
Gary

Well done on that reply, Bert, and thank you for bringing all the available photographs together in one place.
I must confess that these trial axles (for what else can they be?) had completely slipped my mind.
I shall now move and rename the thread.

Hi All, never seen any axle ends like that, has anybody got any pictures of the machine that crimps the axles or rounds the axles & base plates pete

Bert, I am impressed!
You were able to pull together 4 different postings from several different years ago and then to date the originals back to late 59 is very helpful.

What may have been dismissed as a one off oddity now has some context.

Well done!

I look forward to the further discussion about the axle end evolution.

Kurt

fascinating - definitely something to keep an eye out for!

Early days yet, but it's interesting that more than one example of two different models have surfaced. The question has to be, just how widespread was this trial?

With the two models found so far what interests me is the timeline between the 63a fine tread and coarse tread and then the 31b spw 20 and 24 tread count overlap.
Bert

The 63a only the rear wheel has the three way axle end.

George T.

kerbside wrote:The 63a only the rear wheel has the three way axle end.

...which is, of itself, an interesting detail. Since the logical assembly method would be to fit both axles, peen the first one, and then move the model over in order to peen the second, this surely indicates that the trial axle end was struck as a completely separate operation (by someone else on a second machine?).
The obvious question is why? Could it be that accuracy was required, meaning that the model had to be held in some kind of jig, and that jig only held the 63a in position for the rear axle not the front one? There again, we have one 31b with both axles trialled, and one 31b with only the rear axle trialled, so perhaps the jig idea doesn't work.

The mixed axles bother me, actually. I suppose you might make a mixed axle trial model to give to a child for destruction testing, but that obviously hasn’t happened here. I’m also slightly surprised that these models seem separated in time - the 63a army ambulance was in production with peened axles for a while before the fine tread wheels were introduced. Is it possible that these axle ends are the result of a normally-spinning machine not turning and being pressed down hard instead?