Oops - Manual Labour - Part 2A
One That Nearly Got Away! - A Pre-War Addendum!

For a sense of completeness, I should start this page by pointing out that this page shows an article is, in reality, an addendum to the second part of a two part article…

I regularly get asked why I don’t write a BAYKO book rather than focus on the website. This is a classic example of why not!

I recently wrote a two part article on pre-war BAYKO manuals for the B.C.C. magazine in which, among other things, I quoted that there are three versions of the 'New Series' manual – fool that I am! Within a little over a month up pops Bob Burgess with, albeit fairly battered, version four. Don’t you just love it when that sort of thing happens‽

It’s not totally surprising that this version has remained unrecognised until now, after all there is only one page which has been changed. Sounds a reasonable excuse, but it’s actually the page, page two to be precise, which shows all the set and part prices – not the easiest to miss!

Enough of the self flagellation.

The page concerned [right] shows a significant change in set prices and is probably linked to the wartime purchase tax changes. That places this version of the manual as the third of the, now, four versions of the 'New Series' manual. It dates from late 1940 or 1941. There are also a few changes to the price of spare parts, for example, you’d only get 24 Bricks for your shilling [5p] rather than 30, and 30 Half Bricks instead of 36 – those were the days!

So now you know – and understand why, as new information emerges, I'm much happier facing the problem of updating the website rather than the frustration of not being able to modify a book.

A little later I then penned a three part series on BAYKO's post-war manuals…