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I've been fond of the Bedford Lomas since I was very young. I've been fortunate to find four with roof crosses - two with silver wheels, one grey, and the elusive black wheeled version too. All were cheap, as part of bigger lots. They've all seen plenty of play: three are without back doors, and the one with doors has no decals.
I was wondering how rare we think these really are? How many do we have between us?

I like this model too. I've had a number of these over the years, but I've never owned the one with the roof decal which would be the real rarity for me. Of the rest, I've seen plenty with spw, less so with gpw and only a handful with bpw.

Black wheel model with roof cross casting is very hard to find in any condition, a very nice find indeed.
J

I agree with both Johnboy and Nearlymint, the SPW and the GPW with cast roof cross are both available here in the U.S. also, and cannot really be considered as Rare. Only a tiny batch of the BPW pre-production with cross outline and red decals are known to have come in to Fred Bronner because he first pictured that one in his published Dealer catalogues over here. The decaled roof models were considered a possible trial run by Mike Stannard in 1985, and because so few genuine red cross roof models are known to exist in old collections today, I am of the opinion they were definitely an early limited pre-production release. They are for that reason SUPER RARE! The BPW with roof outline and no decal are also Rare, I had never found or seen one here in the U.S.A. till a fellow collector sent me an excellent example years ago, presumably found outside our U.S. borders. I am most proud of that one, Thanks for showing us yours here......Kwakers

There are enough of the Lomas ambulances with roof decal around for them to have been issued in penny numbers along with the initial release (c.f. 13d reverse wrecker) . They therefore probably represent a very late design change decision and, as we have seen before with other rare releases, are semi-pre-productions.

I do have one of the elusive 14C Bedford Lomas Ambulances with 9.5 mm black plastic wheels, pure white body, and the cross outlines (no red decal). Admins get out your cropping tools! I’m including a couple of pictures and one of which shows at right he more conventional knobby 10 mm wheel. The paint finishes a very dark cream on that one.



Image rotated and resized by Ghosthunter.

Solo picture re: 14C



Image rotated and resized by Ghosthunter.

EarlyWheels wrote:I do have one of the elusive 14C Bedford Lomas Ambulances with 9.5 mm black plastic wheels, pure white body, and the cross outlines (no red decal)

that's lovely and so much better than mine! I think it's the same - 9.5 mm (actually 9.2 - 9.3 mm) x 20 wheels, pure white body, cross outlines, no round block on the floor brace. I think that the side decal changed fairly early in production. The film on early decals only just extends beyond the red cross. I think this changed quite quickly to a decal where the film still has the shape of the cross but is a few millimetres bigger, and then later to a film that makes a triangular shape on each side (and finally, to black instead of blue letters in this shape). Reproduction decals are more like the last shape, I think.