Johnston Road Sweeper

Here we have a familiar vehicle from the streets of the 1970s. A Ford D Series cab with a sweeper/gully sucker unit on the back. There are features a plenty too. For a start the cab doors open which is a really rare feature on die-cast trucks, from memory only Dinky really did this. Then there's the business end of things. The sweeper mechanism. It is driven from the rear wheels and there are two brushes, one sweeping the floor and the other cleaning out the gutter. The boom also swings out for sucking out drains. What a lovely toy.

The Johnston Road Sweeper, 451, was released in 1971 and remained in the range until 1977. Over its lifetime it had a number of changes of colour of paint. There is an orange cab and metallic green tan; all yellow, both cab and tank; metallic blue cab with metallic green tank and metallic green cab with orange tank.

All yellow or the blue cab versions are the ones to look for, orange/green or green/orange are the most commonly found.