Middle aged man nostalgia alert!
When I was a boy I had a Meccano set. It wasn't very big, but I managed to
build a few models. As usual with small boys of that era, it was diggers, farm
machinery and cranes that were the usual targets. By swapping stuff with other
boys, I managed to improve it a bit but never had the quantity to build what I
wanted. I spent hours and hours with Meccano as a boy and it taught me a lot
about mechanisms and problem solving.
30 years later we have Ebay, and as much Meccano as you want. There are the
usual bunch of sad collectors who will pay £20 for a single wheel still in the
box, but 'junk' used Meccano is dirt cheap. I recently bought a large pile of
this and built a new set for myself. True, it's all different colours and some
of the bits look like they were in the Titanic, but so what? I've had many a
happy afternoon tinkering away in our conservatory with the radio on, building
all the models I never had the bits for when I was 11. Just a quick Google
search under Meccano shows that it is still enjoyed by thousands of nostalgic
middle-aged men all over the world.
| This is what small boys did before the Playstation. They
built things. This little boy obviously had richer parents than mine though.
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| I said Diggers not N*****s!
An interesting model from our
country's less PC times. I don't know if the N****r is a standard Meccano
part!
Luckily times have changed, even if some
people haven't.
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| My Ebay-amassed set that my
11 year old self could only dream of...
The yellow motor and a few other bits are all
that's left from my original set, but it's nice that there is a link.
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| Latest model is a 6ft high tower crane. |
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| Next project..
This is a dragline built by a guy on the
web. I like the 'Meccano' dragline but real ones don't
look like this. If this were a real machine that long bucket chain would
severely limit the dump height. Take a look at a real machine like one of
the 'Rustons' and you'll see that the bucket is rigged completely
differently and they run on caterpillar tracks. I want to build an authentic
looking universal excavator that can be configured as a dragline, grab or
face shovel like the real ones. My model will be a similar size to the one
here but will look like a model of a real excavator. It will be electrically
powered and capable of digging. |
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| This is the undercarriage and a temporary slewing ring. This
is already a heavy piece of kit. The next part is to design the
superstructure then the boom, then the machinery deck and finally the body.
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An early small face-shovel I built with working fully
working rope motions including in-and-out fully powered crowd stick,
(without the dodgy rack and pinion) and authentic copy of the bucket trip
without the usual 'washing line' you see on everybody else's.
My next one (above) will be a considerable larger version
of this, but its first incarnation will be as a dragline. The machinery deck
will be built in a way to make it easily convertible however like a real
universal excavator. |
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| This guy has far too much spare time! |
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A WEBSITE WITH SOME THINGS ON IT.
