BAYKO Post-War Document Combinations

I recently updated the pages for the various individual post-war manuals and other support documents, and, as I progressed, it dawned on me that there was a need for an explanation of what was going on, printwise, during this somewhat chaotic period.

In a nutshell the key issue was post-war austerity and material [paper and ink] shortages. This lead to Plimpton repeatedly having to make difficult sourcing decisions, and optimising [as distinct from maximising] things like the paper quality for the different documents concerned, e.g. the “How to Build with BAYKO” Leaflet was printed on newsprint, the type of paper that is used for newspapers.

When looking at the table [below], please don't think that everything was tightly controlled, and regimented. No way am I implying that the individual version changes [from one line down to the next] were neatly synchronised - I am certain that they were not. Overlaps happened! The dates quoted in the right hand column show the sequence of introduction, and are indicative, not definitive.

Only the sets quoted would have contained the full set of documents laid out in the relevant line, smaller sets would have received less, as appropriate.

After this, in 1949, Plimpton switched to just one single document - a conventional manual…

…at least until set #3X was introduced, in mid 1951, with its own additional manual.

Another point of interest is the fact that none of these documents included any conversion set contents…

…nor, in fact, did any post-war BAYKO manual until 1951!