Ice cream factory diagram

StuartAndTheAve you are a megastar, "I may be of some help" indeed! A little adjustment, and.....



I just thought it was important to get the picture and text generally available in their original form, and here we are. Result.

[Super]

Mystery solved...Thank you Stuart

Now, it looks like the doors open...wonder whats inside?

@StuartandTheAve

The way I think this set works is this:

Percy stops and the truck tips the barrel into the elevator entrance, the traction from his wheels spun a mechanism that made the barrel roll up to the top, then it rolls back down into the truck. 

Tons of Trackmasters once said this set may have had a mechanical flaw as the reson for it never being released.
Perhaps the barrel would get stuck in the elevator or the barrel would just fall out of the truck instead of going into the hole like it is supposed to. Who knows

Now, it looks like the doors open...wonder what's inside?

Duh.

Sorry to interrupt, but I noticed something interesting that I thought I'd bring attention to. The 2007 fun guides have a layout on the front cover showing different destinations that HiT was planning to release in the Trackmaster range (This guide is a different to the one that contained the Ice Cream Factory; the layout is on that guide as well, but the interesting part is covered up by a red border):


Now if we zoom in to the left, right above Knapford Station, lo and behold, we find our Ice Cream Factory:


However, there's something peculiar about this pic; take a look at the stop/go switch and the (assumedly) dumping platform (the thing the car is supposed to dump into). Notice how they're both orange? If we look at the image from the other guide, we can see that the switch is clearly yellow, and the dumping platform is grey:


Of course, this doesn't really prove anything. However, I was thinking, why would HiT change these two pieces and only these two for a single promotional pic. The track and ramps are the same colors in both pics. I don't see why they'd change those two pieces... unless:

Now, this is purely speculation, and I have nothing backing this up, but you know how the Brendam Docks set had different "versions", which changed the colors of the cargo, cargo car, and crates on the dock piece? I wonder if they planned to do the same for this set too. Might the pink cargo from the Gordon & Toby pic be related to this as well?

[Super]

A keen observation Stuart...good eye and btw...

You are not interrupting...you are joining in and welcome at that

@Stuart,
Actually, this does prove something!
This proves that the 3 ice cream factory sets (from these promotional booklets) are 3 different ones.

This would mean that it WAS mass produced and even had variants. Unlike FF Gordon (who likely never passed the prototype stage) Percy DID pass the prototype stage and may have even been sold at some point.
There is no official mention of this set ever being 'cancelled' .

This would mean that it WAS mass produced and even had variants.

I would suggest an entirely different interpretation. When you are preparing an item for manufacture, you make prototypes, you try them out, you make changes, you make a few more, and so on until you get to a stage where mass-production starts. There is no particular reason to use the same colour of plastic in the injection-moulding machine each time you do this, so it's entirely possible that all we are seeing in these photographs are different versions of prototype. 

I can very easily imagine a situation where the Marketing people are badgering the Development people for something, anything, please, to put in their brochure photographs, and they are reluctantly, because it really isn't ready yet, given any of the prototypes that happens to be lying around, as long as it has a general resemblance to how the mass-release version is going to look. That's how industry works, in my experience.

There is ANOTHER promotional image that the Ice cream factory appeared in as you can see Gordon is going through it here. my theory is that the product had some sort of mass defect that hindered its production and by the time it was somewhat ready to be marketed and be mass-produced the company (HiT) was brought out by fisher-price. Just my thoughts though haha