Pumping Engine
Built by Adrian Ashford in January 2017
This model is based on the Pumping Engine described in the December 1936 issue of Meccano Magazine. It was built from a 1934–7 Blue/Gold outfit G, which corresponded, more or less in terms of parts, to the later Blue/Gold and pre-1970 post-war № 7 outfits. It struck me as being remarkably like one of the engines at Kew Bridge Pumping Station, with the piston rod projecting through the cylinder end connected to pumps.
I decided to build it as a ‘quickie’ for our January 2017 meeting and I began by building as illustrated and following the instructions — where they were given! Some parts of the model are well described, others hardly at all — e.g. it says "…construction should commence with the base as shown in figure 1." Not a word of instruction, though in actual fact, it was quite easy to build from the rather small photo! As construction progressed, I decided to use alternative parts to the ones used, to make a better model parts which either weren’t included in the outfit, or didn’t even exist at that time, though superficially, my model looks pretty much the same as the original. I made a six-spoked flywheel from 6-hole Bush Wheels and 7½” Circular Strips, though the fact that it isn’t possible to space the six spokes evenly isn’t too obvious!
The model is driven by one of the small black motors, through a double-reduction rubber-band drive and a ½” Pulley with Tyre pressing under light spring pressure onto the rim of the flywheel.
All in all, this model went together very well and was enjoyable to build.