Police Box L151 (Spot-On)
A dark blue UK Police Box with silver windows and a silver top-lamp, made by Spot-On, model L151 .
The Spot-On police box can easily be distinguished from its Dinky counterpart by its lamp - on the Dinky version this lamp has additional housing detail, while on the Spot-On version it's a simple rounded silver nub.
Police Boxes
Before the advent of police walkie-talkies, police boxes provided a way for police to keep in touch with their stations, and typically contained a telephone, a first aid kit and and a wooden desk. Various designs of police post and police box were produced, but the iconic design of police box that people normally remember is the classic Mk1 version produced by surveyor Gilbert Mackensie Trench in 1929, for the Metropolitan Police (and the very similar-looking mk2 and mk3). The boxes were made obsolete by the appearance of police radios.
The Trench-designed boxes were originally made of wood (hence the paneling), but were later constructed from cast concrete.
When most of the boxes were phased out in London, the last remaining place where one could see a decent selection of the boxes in their natural habitats was Glasgow, where it was decided to preserve them. However, since Glasgow decided to paint its police boxes red, visitors sometimes found themselves looking at boxes in the process of repainting that had been undercoated and appeared to be bright pink.
Doctor Who and the TARDIS
Nowadays, the distinctive "classic" police box design is best-known for having been used as the external shape of the TARDIS in the Doctor Who tv series.
