Pliciosaurus
Built by Santiago Plicio in December 2023
After the glut of a Christmas dinner and a Boxing Day feast, sometimes you just need something a little bit different!
The design and construction process of making Meccano models is just like that too, and it’s been a whole year of making endless models themed on fairgrounds, robots and ships — to list just some of them — totalling 20 in number in a single calendar year.
So it was time for something different! It’s not always easy though to come up with completely new innovative ideas that feel like they have the lure to entice you. I always want to feel like I built something that I will look back at and remember, and so I haven’t always given as much time to creating more simple and maybe static pleasures, instead opting for a mechanised form of something exciting, but at Christmas time we find ourselves doing something different!
With only a few hours to spare in-between family commitments, I set my mind on making a quick dinosaur model and was immediately torn between a T-Rex shape and a Diplodocus like the one famously exhibited at the Natural History Museum.
It wasn’t long before the design of the arms felt right and the balance of the model generally started to feel pleasing, but while I had achieved the quick turnaround of an unexpected new 21st model in just a few hours on the 27th December 2023, it somehow lacked bite, and no amount of combining Meccano parts gave me the teeth that it needed.
It was time to change tack! A box of roofing felt tacks proved to be an adequate solution, and, after a quick visit to the garden shed, I had filled my dinosaur creation’s mouth with the ferocious teeth it deserved.
Just a few hours later I was able to introduce the new model to my four year old grandson as a brand new fictional scientific discovery.
‘Pliciosaurus’ — fathered, born and fully evolved in just one day, but millions of years in the preparation!