January 2006 Newsletter
January 2006 Newsletter
Issue 117
This was one of our informal quarterly meetings where our members showed off their latest Meccano creations.
At around 2:00pm we had a short committee meeting, followed by the Model Tour in which members were invited to give a short talk about their models — in particular their entries for the Secretary’s Challenge!
Report written by Chris Warrell
We had a very successful exhibition on October 15th 2005. There was a good show of models, and three of the exhibitors were visitors, so all available table space was filled.
Plans had to be changed at the last minute when dealer Mike Rhoades phoned in sick (in fact, both he and his wife were recovering from illness) and their new camper van was misbehaving. As it turned out there were more than enough models to fill the spare tables, and it meant that Dave Taylor had us all to himself! We also had a very successful raffle with three Meccano set prizes, held over from our auction earlier in the year.
Visitor numbers were down to probably our lowest ever with only a little over one hundred visitors – we still made a small profit, though. There’s no obvious reason for the low turnout; publicity was the same as it’s always been, and we had the usual free plugs in the main free newspapers. As you can see from the cutting below, we had a good write up in the News Shopper in the week following the exhibition, despite the incorrect caption for Adrian Ashford’s bus!
News Shopper article
Models on Display
Jim Arthur — Broad gauge locomotive; Ferris wheel; Walking Chinaman.
Adrian Ashford — 0–6–2 Tank locomotive; London Transport TD type single deck bus; Sliding bed car recovery truck, designed by Terry James; Triple and side lever marine engines, from 1934 Meccano Magazine articles.
Geoff Carter — Forth Bridge, designed by Chris Shute and published in Constructor Quarterly; HMS Illustrious (to go with bridge), designed by George Illingworth and published in Constructor Quarterly; 1918 Bates Steel Mule Tractor, designed by Bruce Geange and published in the New Zealand Federation of Meccano Modellers Magazine, powered by a pre-war Magic motor; Walking tractor, from a 1930 issue of Meccano Magazine powered by № 1 clockwork motor — this model was over 30 years old; Stomping hexapod designed by Chris Shute (Constructor Quarterly); Bugatti and articulated tanker, both Bernard Périer designs from Constructor Quarterly; Set models — Spitfire, Big Ben, Empire State Building, ‘survival’ vehicle (Master Connection series model); Tracked crane — Merkur model.
Peter Clay — Tower of Hanoi model; Overland vehicle; Mortar mixer; Calais factory-made motorbike; Caterpillar tractor.
Andrew Couzens — Flat bed lorry; Diesel locomotive and carriage on Meccano track.
John Cowdery — Aeroplane with a 9-cylinder radial engine; Ferry ship from 1950s № 9 set; Concorde; Seaplane; Rowers.
Geoff Davison — Blackpool Tower with operating lift; U. S. type ‘Big Rig’ tractor and trailer; Showman’s traction engine; Theme set locomotive and tender; Sports car; Radio-controlled car and theme set; Field gun; Army truck and anti tank gun.
Jim Ellicott — Concorde set model; Biplane factory model; Three mini models; Two space vehicles; Micrometer.
Brian Elvidge — Mechanical horse and trailer; Cyber car.
George Foard — Four small amusement models: Colour mixer, optical illusion, intermittent motion and circus cyclist.
John Gay — Snowdon rack railway.
Leslie Maher — Remote control dockyard crane in red/zinc. The joystick has been rewired.
Frank Paine — Vast display including dealer’s Tower Bridge model; 4–4–0 locomotive; Ferris wheel; Two trams; Steam derrick; Traction engine; Old sets and display cards.
Eric Smith — Harley Davidson Electra Glide motorcycle.
David Smithers — 37 ton steam crane.
Tim Surtell — Teacher and weightlifter; PCB etchant agitator, used for helping speed up the etching of the copper pattern on circuit boards.
Chris Warrell — Four small cranes; Mini narrow gauge train set.
Alan Wenbourne — 1:6 scale Hummer; Differentials; Two planetary gear boxes.
Douglas Windibank — Space centre, built with Special Edition set 0521; Special edition set 7080 motorised crane; Wwing boats from set № 7/8 manual; Engine shed; Three wheeled motorcycle using set 6700; Crazy Inventor clock from set 7651; Motorised sports car from set 7700; Tallon Tek ‘press together’ construction kit № 20 in plastic.
Guest Exhibitors
Allen Berman (North East London Meccano Club) — He brought a giant block setting crane, Super Models Leaflet 4 in restored red/green Meccano; Steam shovel, Super Models Leaflet 19a, with an MO electric motor instead of the 1929 steam engine, but it works well.
Eddie Oatley (Henley Society of Meccano Engineers and North East London Meccano Club) — He brought a paddle steamer engine.
Dick Watson (North West Meccano Guild) — He showed a gear cutting machine; Synchronous motor (from issue № 2 of Meccano Magazine Quarterly); Asynchronous motor and opposed 2 cylinder engine (Elektrikit E12 and E24); Constructor generator driving Meccano windmill.
Written by Chris Warrell
I wonder how many of you saw James May’s Top Toys on BBC2 on the Wednesday before Christmas 2005. (He is a presenter on Top Gear, by the way).
This is the programme (you may remember, if you were at the September 2005 meeting) that we were contacted about; they were after an engineer or architect who had been inspired by Meccano as a boy.
Unsurprisingly, no one in the club was keen (we thought they might make us look silly — mind you, some of us have no trouble without the help of television!) so it went no further, but the programme did feature Paul Joachim and his daughter of, I think, the West London Meccano Society. One thrust of the programme had been changed because he didn’t talk about how Meccano had influenced his career, but they both recalled how his Glasgow tramcar and track took up the entire landing at home.
Paul Joachim and his daughter
Later in the show James presented some 11-year olds with the contents of a 1954/62 № 4 set and a photocopy of the instructions for the Elevated Jib Crane, № 4.4, and they were given about an hour and a half to build the model. The results were hilarious but, as James pointed out, there were frequently errors in the instruction manuals to trip small children up! None of the models were remotely similar to the original.
The kids present their work to James
He didn’t have any good words for the current Meccano sets, having few parts and the ability to make only one model — and he expressed horror when he saw that they were made in France too!
The programme also featured Dinky Toys, Corgi and Matchbox, as well as Hot Wheels; Scalextric; Etch-a-Sketch (where some art students produced some amazing portraits of Mr. May when the best he could do was draw a box); Action Man; the Escape from Colditz board game which was ridiculously complicated (I think our family played it just the once); and Hornby Trains.
He probably upset a few Hornby purists by outbidding everyone at an auction to win an old Hornby Trains set — and then he threw away the box because he wanted to play with the trains! — or was that just for the cameras?