This BSA Post Office bike looks like it has been painted by brush,there looks like paint on part of the tyres,wonder if it is red as I cant imagine that the GPO would use khaki?
I'm currently doing up a 1940/42 GPO M20 Postal delivery combination, so colour has been a very important question for me. I have photos of larger GPO vehicles in two coloured camouflage, and information about vehicles being passed from the Army to the Post Office and vice versa ,at the time they were both Government departments.
So yes it would seem that BSAs left the factory in the standard military colour of the time, but the local GPO workshops certainly repainted some later in the war and this WB30 looks to be in a lighter colour, but its a very blurred picture so I'm not sure it can be relied on too much.
When did they actually start to paint vehicles red? This is my old mate Ted (middle) in 1939 as a telegraph boy before the war, and before he signed up as a signaller with the Para's later that year. The bikes are C10's in black and green. Royal Enfield also made a V twin 'GPO' outfit (model 155) which was painted in two shades of green. Ron
Post Office vehicles were divided into two departments, Postal delivery and Telephones which was mostly engineering but may have included telegram delivery, I'm pretty sure red was in use on postal delivery vans before the war and may even have its roots with the stage coach's of the 19th and 18th century's?. Telephone engineer livery was green pre war but obviously the post war bantams were red.
This is an M20 parcel delivery outfit of the same contract as mine, the paint on the sidecar body is a different colour to the rest of the outfit and I have interpreted it to be gloss red on the box body and matt service colour (KG3)on the bike and chassis.
Interesting to see on this last picture/advert, that the box carrier has the initials "ER" and the Kings Crown, which would date it to 1936, as Edward VIII only reigned from Jan to December 1936 before he abdicated.
That's a lovely photo of a late contract WB30 which I haven't seen before...Any chance of mailing me the best possible copy of it to go in my B30 'archive'?...Ian
That's a lovely photo of a late contract WB30 which I haven't seen before...Any chance of mailing me the best possible copy of it to go in my B30 'archive'?...Ian
Hi, Ian the B30 photo is from a site on Post Office bikes, I took a screen shot of it for my album and the quality was very poor to start with, so may not be able to get a better one.