BMR and BDR bandits

[fourfive]

Can anyone identify this machine for me?
It stands around 4'6" tall, it was originally painted dark green. I can't find any maker's name anywhere on the mech or case.

[badpenny]

BDR .... British vending machine manufacturers in Bristol, they made those massive chromed cigarette machines you used to see on railway platforms. They also ventured into gaming machines.
http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/comm ... ed-bristol
Not a good link I'm sure there are others out there, haven't time to look at the moment .......

[malcymal]

Interesting, but what a god damn ugly machine...

[badpenny]

Beauty is in the eye of the bee holder ................. wear thick gloves then you won't get stung!

[daveslot]

I think these are great machines, vastly underrated. Incidentally they are made by BMR: Brecknell, Munro and Rogers (BDR came later- the Munro part becoming Dolman). This is a version I have not seen before.

[badpenny]

I agree with you, I adore them. I nearly bought one of those from an aged collector in Doncaster but its handle assembly was loose and it was dribbling oil everywhere, so I walked away with a Jennings Victoria instead ................ incidentally, I have a lisp my M sounds like a D

[daveslot]

Was that the machine in Doncaster?
Fourfive's machine looks like it was made after the New Tote and before the black one.

[badpenny]

No I reckon it was the first one, I don't think I'd have been able to resist the one you've posted.

I have the more standard BDR upstairs, the one that looks like a stainless steel bread bin, it has the jackpot and its original stand, fantastic mechanism that looks like it could power a battle ship! I really don't think they have ever been appreciated enough and consequently have been fantastically cheap.

[Bent Copper]

That's because they're ugly and look like a stainless steel bread bin.

[pennymachines]

Nice BMR line-up Dave. I didn't realize there were so many variations.
And interesting link BP - useful bit of background history to the company.

Brecknell, Munro & Rogers (1928) Ltd. also made ticket machines for the London Underground. According to Paul Braithwaite they made 11 other types of amusement machine, but examples of these seem, for the most part, non-existent.

The early version of the Brooklands Racer was a (heavy) counter-top game. The manufacturer clearly went to some length to ensure it didn't resemble a three-reeler fruit machine. The reels were replaced with flat discs and the fruit symbols became British racing cars. Most remarkable, the mechanism was reinvented, instead of copying Charlie Fey's design like almost every other bandit. Instead of multiple stacked payout coin-slides, a rotating disc slices out the coins one-by-one. This payout mechanism required a second timing clock. Patents GB429625 (1935) and GB452877 (1936) describe the mechanism in full.

The conical reels on the floor-stander were a step back to something more like a conventional bandit and by the sixties they felt safe to adopt the ubiquitous fruit symbols on the Brecknell, Dolman & Rogers stainless steel "Bread Bin". The mechanism remained as quirky as ever.

The humorously named Metro Golden Player looks to me like a BMR product, but I've never found one so I can't confirm it.