Furiosity Fairground Ride
Built by Santiago Plicio in March 2026
After finishing my models The Disc Cutter and The Spider’s Bite in 2026 I decided to add another new model to the collection.
I built a base and a tower to support a tilting or swinging platform which holds the large rotating unit on top.
This unit is an eight arm fairground ride with eight struts bolted in straight angle to support or hold the eight cars.
On top of the swinging platform is a heavy-duty axle where this rotating structure which slides in to move freely.
The diameter of this wheel structure including all cars is 110cm.
Originally when I built this unit the eight struts for the cars were fitted in angle so the overall diameter was over 120cm, bigger than the space available in my car, so I dismantled all of them and repositioned them in straight angle not to exceed the space available.
The rotating unit was rather heavy and once fitted in its main axle on top needed weight balance so the movement of tilting up and down was smooth and easy.
The main motor came next, and fitted underneath the tilting unit with not much space available, so new adjustments were made, engaging the moving unit with double elastic bands from a pulley in the motor and a large circular plate with eight large bolts supporting wheel disc so the bands will go round them without coming out when in movement.
Changes and adjustments made the system perfect and working well.
Next was how to tilt the whole unit up and down from a tilting position to ride in the cars and then the big wheel will go to an horizontal position while at the same time were rotating.
So a second motor was fitted at the back of the base with a set of gears to be very slow in creating this up and down movement.
Once in the horizontal position the edge of the rotating structure came to be in line with the front of the base so I built a second smaller base as the main entrance to the ride to put it together attach to the main unit.
Judging for the scale of this model this ride could have been very big and very imposing.
Furiosity will scare you, so be brave.
Furiosity was built before the March 2026 West London Meccano Society meeting, a fairground model with a big Ferris wheel at the top of a tower which not only rotates, but also can tilt up and down from a moving platform operated with a motor. A second motor moves the model from a tilting position to the horizontal.
The rotating canopy could be slid in or out from a heavy-duty axle fitted at the top of the swinging platform.
After been displayed at the meeting I took the decision to dismantle the big wheel and change the model to a different one, which became Furiosity Mk II.