The Golden Horizon Ship
Built by Santiago Plicio in November 2021
I have always loved ships and have been fascinated by them from a very young age. I equally enjoy the effect they have on the imagination, seeing them set sail and slowly disappear off over the distant horizon.
Despite having by now at this stage of my Meccano modelling hobby career having created many models of ships, the romance of them all always appeals to me enough to consider building another.
My history of building such models begins in 2012 when I built a small model of a galleon ship, but without any sails. I was so pleased with it that it gave me the idea of building another in 2013 which I called the HMS Voyager. This was itself succeeded by another in 2015 with The Wrath of Tides. Both of these had white sails made of cloth and looked much more the finished article compared to the first one.
Having got the boat-building bug, in 2016 I constructed a totally different kind of ship in the Phantom which again I was delighted with. These seafaring vessels just fire the imagination so much that I find it impossible to tire of them and so it was no surprise that same year when I went on to build the Slayer of the Seas which also featured white sails.
In 2019 I made two sleeker models, one being a yacht and the other The Barracuda. Those were promptly followed by the Lord Admiral, and these all featured red plastic material used for the sails instead.
I was always trying to use different ideas in the building of the hull, and went for a much larger design in The Jugger-Nauticus which also had a removable top mast to aid transporting it by car, and naturally I was over the moon when this monster of a ship featured on the front cover of the Runnymede Meccano Guild Magazine in February 2020.
Later in 2020 the Phantom was reshaped and upgraded and became The Phantom Uprising and I built another new ship, The Crimson Crusader, using a creamy colour plastic sail instead.
So when I recently stumbled across a large roll of thick plastic black material with a gold shiny finish on one side, it gave me the idea in using it on a new ship model and I immediately pictured it against the sunset reflecting on the distant horizon and suddenly the urge to get constructing something new overtook me.
This time the shape and details were going to be different, but I hoped the golden sails would make the model even more striking, so I started building it in October 2021 and it took me two weeks to build to complete.
I have secured the ship onto a piece of wood board painted blue to simulate as if it was at sea. A light unit is also bolted to the board inside the hull of the ship to help illuminate it.
A stronger hull makes this model very robust, but with cabins, steps, cannons, a crane, and anchor it is also quite heavy.
Finally it is in my imagination no more, and the model is now ready to sail the seven Meccano seas.
‘The Golden Horizon’ — Where only ships and the imagination dare sail.