2009 meetings

Our autumn meeting was held on the 8th October 09 at Richard Smith’s house.

Sam had acquired a 1970s Crane Multikit from which he built a crane! He was pleasantly surprised by the range and quantity of parts in the outfit.

Ralph had a really novel locomotive from the Ravenglass and Eskdale Railway in Cumbria. "River Esk" still steams through the Lake District in a conventional sort of way but at one stage had a tender that was steam driven and this is how Ralph has modelled it.

David Northcott took to the air with a model of a Louis Blériot aircraft. Bleriot pioneered the idea of the monoplane and built several unsuccessful examples before the Blériot XI in which he flew the Channel in 1909. It was the version that David based his model on.

Malcolm recently acquired a 1914 outfit #6, the largest of the time, and decided to build a model featured in the manual. He picked the Funicular Railway. This had first featured in a 1911 manual during the key-fixing period, but the instructions not been changed after the introduction of bosses on wheels. This meant a number of alterations to the model, but it worked quite well.

The outfit can be seen here on The New Zealand Meccano Website.

There was a good turn-out at Malcolm's place in July 09 with an impressive range of models on show.

Neil Bedford had moved on to a single decker London Transport bus with a good range of movements.

Terry Childs had the beginnings of a Leibherr digger which two other members are also taking on the challenge of creating.

David Northcott brought a ‘stretched’ mantle clock in red and gold that was weight driven.

David Worth had several small models, mostly from modern kits, whilst Tony South had some small non-Meccano sets he had picked up.

Malcolm had made the 1928 Supermodel Hammerhead Crane in its 1930s blue and gold guise using a geared roller bearing.

Sam Medworth brought his windmill along for the last time in his ownership. Sam had discovered that the model had originally been made by long-time club member Roger Baker. Roger had put it together during the last recession for the Wiltshire education service as a working model of a local mill. Somehow it had then ended up in a Bath junk shop where Sam bought it before restoring it! The model was sold back to its creator at the meeting.

Roger came with an impressive display of German ski lift and cable car toys set up on a model hillside.

We also had a quick auction of parts Sam was selling on the behalf of someone else.

A happy New Year was had by all at Philip’s on 8th Jan 2009

David Northcott showed us his improved version of a supermodel orrery. This included sophisticated features such as the rotation of the planets on their axes and the rotation of the moon about the earth. This is all achieved with standard Meccano parts!

Neil Bedford has been experimenting with radio control. He brought a standard modern Meccano car and a truck he designed and built himself that uses proprietary radio control devices. Both worked very effectively.

Sam Medworth brought two models. He has been working with some older men from a Church group he supports and got each of them to build a simple Meccano model of a machine tool from a Victorian factory. He then added a base, a motor and an overhead drive shaft to create the whole factory. Each group member had therefore contributed towards the model, a lovely idea.

Sam’s other model was of a working windmill. Made mostly from Meccano it had lots of nice features. Sam had bought it from a local second-hand shop in a rather sorry state and then renovated it. Amazingly, after the meeting it turned out that this model had originally been built by club member Roger Baker in the early 1990s!

Terry Childs is working on a level luffing crane. With five separate drives it is inspired by an Eric Taylor design but with a number of additional features arising from Terry’s researches.

Malcolm brought along recently acquired mid-30s K and Ka outfits. He got the latter in a poor state from a Vectis auction and restored the box, which was riddled with wood-worm. However, chatting to Jim Gamble it would appear to be the only known version of the outfit! He also brought a 1931 Meccano Magazine “Mechanical Man” that he have made for an exhibition in Nurnberg and at the other extreme a modern Meccano robot model called Spykee. The latter is computer controlled; it takes photographs and videos, has a built in sound system and phone, can act as a motion detector and automatically returns to its base to recharge!