Fancy missing this!

Posted on September 3, 2013 by Philip Webb

The Internet has had a mild buzz recently over the latest venture by James May of “Top Gear” and “Man Lab” fame. He has already fronted up a BBC TV series looking at extreme uses for classic children’s toys such as Lego, Plasticine, Scalextrix, and of course Meccano. It looks like he has decided to go back to the best of the lot for a Christmas 2013 special. This time the challenge was to produce a full-sized Meccano motorbike which could trundle round the Isle of Man TT course!

I have seen various bike models, large and small, but I would have said this ambition couldn’t have been achieved without recourse to lots of non-Meccano parts – but it was! I take my hat off to Simeon, James’ sidekick and the designer and engineer.

Geoff Brown, chairman of NMMG, was down at the annual Gathering at Henley-on-Thames on the usual Saturday following the August Bank Holiday. But for a family wedding, so would I have been! And the bike duly appeared at the Gathering to the surprise and delight of all.Geoff reported: “This really eclipsed everything in the Meccano World this p.m. Just got back from the pub to find that Simeon and his mate were motoring down the M6 on their way back from the island when Sim’s mother phoned to say there was a Meccano show at Henley and why didn’t they call in! Sim lives in Watlington and his mate in Reading so it was handy enough! We had the time of our lives with the cameras, the bike and these two most obliging of guys!”

The "James May Meccano Motorbike"

The “James May Meccano Motorbike” – photo – Ralph Laughton

Peter Finney records the details: “I discussed (construction) with the builders. There were no large-axle parts used. The bearings were built up using standard Meccano parts – ball bearings using standard Meccano balls. The wheel hubs are built up using multiple Meccano (or perhaps 4mm) screwed rods. The most impressive facts abut this model (IMHO) are:

  • As far as I could determine (other may be able to add to this list) the only non-Meccano parts used are: a. Batteries (lead acid accumulators). b. Electronic control unit/invertor (from electric golf buggy) and sundry switches and gauges. c. Auxiliary motor (3Kw) – used only when going uphill! d. One bicycle disc brake with dual calipers (this enabled the trike to be licenced to run on I.O.M. roads – it is not street-legal in UK). When originally built there was a disc brake on the front wheel – when applied this caused the entire front end (forks and wheel) to collapse – surprise! e. Tyres f. Final drive sprockets g. 4mm stainless steel rod used instead of standard Meccano axle rods.
  • It has completed a full lap of the IOM TT circuit under its own power with human cargo.
  • The primary drive is from 96 (yes ninety-six!) standard Meccano MO motors!! These are grouped into sub-units – each with 6 motors – each motor has a part no 26 19 tooth pinion, and the six pinions in each group then mesh with a single part no 27b 133-tooth gear wheel. The drive from the six groups is then combined onto a layshaft using standard Meccano chain and sprockets. The final drive uses a 1/2″ pitch roller chain built up from Meccano bolts, collars and 1/2″ narrow strips. This arrangement can propel the vehicle at 10mph on the flat! At list prices there are about £5,000 worth of Meccano parts – supplied by Meccano free of charge. However, I was told that Meccano want it back to go into their Museum (negotiations continuing I believe). IMHO this a fantastic example of what you can do with Meccano – given the parts; as has already been said – there must be several groups of Meccano engineers who could have done it – but all credit to the two guys who actually pulled it off.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-isle-of-man-23898497
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Under New Owners – again!

Posted on August 15, 2013 by Philip Webb

You just can’t go away, can you! I had just come back from a very enjoyable spell in the Netherlands on a “Bike and Barge” cruise which did a lot for my fitness (I am just about recovered!) and enabled me to get a lot more lovely crane photos from Amsterdam and Rotterdam; I’ve been working my way through all the accumulated emails and messages, and then this crops up – news that Meccano has changed hands again!

In all fairness we have had a very settled period compared with the General Mills – Airfix years, but with the radical new Evolution series coming out in a month or so one might have thought that we were on a new and steady path. But news seeped out through various abstruse channels that Meccano has been bought by Spin Master. Ever heard of them? Or of their leading names, Bakugan Battle Brawlers™, Air Hogs®, Aquadoodle™, Hedbanz™, Tech Deck™, Zoobles™ or SpyGear™? No, neither had I, but then I’m not Canadian and apparently they are big over there, the firm being described as Canada’s largest children’s toy and entertainment company. And in all fairness, I’d never heard of Rabbids, either, until Meccano started producing tie-in sets for them. (Though judging by current Amazon discounts they may not have been such a good move.) Apparently Spin Master are going to build “a more immersive toy, entertainment and gaming offering,” whatever that means.

In true corporate-speak we read that “Spin Master is strategically focused on driving immersive extensions to many of its toy lines through the creation of entertainment properties, companion applications, games and digital experiences that are suited for changing consumer play patterns.”

Michaël Ingberg, Chief Executive Officer of Meccano, seems happy, though. He said, “We are extremely happy to be part of Spin Master and are excited with the culture and track record of continuous innovation. I have the utmost respect and confidence in the Spin Master leadership team and am eager to help Spin Master position Meccano as an even stronger competitor in the construction category.”

Time will tell what this means for our favourite construction system. What we do know is that the decision was made to retain Meccano’s manufacturing base and industrial facilities located in Calais. Let’s hope it does mean capital injection and genuine innovation for the company. Set prices to rival those of the metric competitors from Eastern Europe and the Far East would be welcome, too! As always they will be faced with the usual balancing act between satisfying the adult enthusiast and inspiring the youngest modellers. We can only wish them well as, rather nervously, we watch this space!

 

 

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Skegness here we come!

Posted on July 2, 2013 by Philip Webb

The excitement mounts! The first weekend in July is almost here. I have made the trek east for many years as a day visitor and photographer, but for the first time ever I am booked in as an exhibitor at Skegex, the mammoth Meccano show in the Embassy Theatre in Skegness. (5th – 7th July this year – see http://www.skegex.nmmg.org.uk)

First question: have I got the stamina? Time will tell! I always exhibited at Henley in the glory days of that show in the Town Hall, but that was a two-day show, and the latter end of the second day could sometimes drag on a little. Of course, it depended on the weather – the worse it was, the better the attendance as soggy parents sought somewhere under cover to take their bedraggled children. This weekend looks set to be fair but cool, or, as they say in Skegness – bracing! So we shall see. I may just need to pop out occasionally to get some natural light!

Secondly: have I got enough room? I’ve produced rather a lot of models trucks for a group display, so there is some question about the table space that would be required to do them justice. Still, being several items rather than one giant at least I can be flexible. Not all exhibitors come for every day, so gaps appear one day, congestion the next. To see what’s coming, check out

Meccano Australian Road Train Tractor

The third question is – will they all go in the one car? I haven’t actually tried that yet, so the moment of truth is rapidly approaching. I suspect some careful wrapping and packing will be required!

Lastly – will they survive the journey? One of the most famous phrases in Meccano is “Well, it worked all right when I left home!” But long journeys up motorways and across country roads shake all sorts of things loose, which is why the exhibitor always travels with a tool kit and a box of spares for running repairs – and also why we shall be setting up from Thursday in advance of the opening on Friday at 10am.

Last weekend Greg and I had a multi-hour photoshoot documenting the current set of models as only he can: they will appear on Flickr in due course. Look out for them there, or maybe I will even get to see you in Skegness? Until then, keep on trucking!

 

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Cartagena Cranes

Posted on June 13, 2013 by Philip Webb

What makes for an ideal holiday? You will have your own priorities, but for me blue skies and warm days come pretty high on the list. Not that there seem to be many of those in the UK recently! Jane and I have just had a week in Spain which we very much enjoyed – but when one of the Spanish waiters asked where we came from, his response to “England” was “Ah. Cold!” I can’t disagree with that as I sit at my desk wearing a great deal more than I was last week!

But the memories linger happily. And factors that make a good holiday? Well, being peculiar, a good crane is always a bonus. (Once we even got to stay in one in Harlingen overnight – it had been converted into a fantastic luxury apartment! But that’s a story for another day….) and true to form, we found a dockyard with some lovely cranes in it – this one is at Cartagena in Murcia, Spain, with great views looking down from the castle ramparts. More pictures on Flickr if you want them! Cartagena cranes 2a

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Smile, please!

Posted on May 22, 2013 by Philip Webb

Last Saturday was the spring meeting of the North Midlands Meccano Guild, so I made the familiar journey over to Oxton with a couple of models. As my homage to “Convoy” continues to grow, this time I took my GMC truck with me, (the “Jimmy haulin’ hogs”) and a new model – of a VW camper van. As I said to some there, everyone I know has either had one or knew someone who did, and before restoration became the vogue, they were all the same – made of various multi-coloured bits of metal that were often rusty and full of holes. An ideal subject therefore for some of my older Meccano!

The “Convoy” song includes the lines: ….”and eleven long-haired friends of Jesus in a chartreuse microbus ….

  • (Ah, Rubber Duck, this is Sodbuster. C’mon here?)
  • (Yeah, ten-four Sodbuster. Listen, ya wanna put that microbus in behind that suicide jockey?)
  • (Yeah he’s haulin’ dynamite and he needs all the help he can get!)”

 So here is the latest edition to my own growing CONVOY – A Chartreuse Microbus.

It’s not actually chartreuse – that is a vivid green about the same shade as the #216 cylinder that appeared in a few recent sets. But when I found some second-hand plates that had been painted in green this seemed well worth doing.

A VW Campervan

A VW Campervan

According to Wikipedia, The Volkswagen Type 2, known officially, depending on body type as the Transporter, Kombi and Microbus is a panel van introduced in 1950 by Volkswagen as its second car model, following on from VW’s first model, the Type 1 (Beetle). Like the Beetle, the van has received numerous nicknames worldwide, including the “microbus” and, due to its popularity during the counterculture movement of the 1960s, “Hippie van”.

“The Jesus movement” was a movement in Christianity that began on the West Coast of the USA in the late ’60s and early ’70s, dying out by the early 1980s. It was the major Christian element within the hippie counterculture: members of the movement were called Jesus people, or Friends of Jesus, so your “Long-haired friends of Jesus” are Christian hippies, known, among other things, for love, peace and a variety of stickers!

What I most like about this model is people seem to greet it with a fond smile! Perhaps because it has rarely, if ever, been built in Meccano. I hope you enjoy it too!

 

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Not all roads lead to Laughton ….

Posted on April 14, 2013 by Philip Webb

well, not this time! There were a couple of other club meetings on which took some folk away, we hear of (sadly) some old friends who weren’t too well, and the Highways Department were doing their best to stop devotees of the Sheffield Meccano Guild from reaching their spring meeting by closing the road! But forewarned by Rob Mitchell a very sizeable number turned out once again and found their way to the village hall at Laughton- en-le-Morthern.

The next challenge is sometimes to find table space, but somehow there were many more than usual, so there was plenty of room for all this time. Bring-your-own folding tables were much in evidence, not least groaning under the many wares of our various dealers!

Great food and conversations as always, and another competition, this time to see who could make a self propelled vehicle capable of crossing walls and trenches and then climbing a polished slope! Not the easiest of tasks, but much fun was had watching a collection of wierd and wonderful vehicles having a go. Not for the first time Russ Carr proved to be up to the challenge!

And then there was the much-anticipated auction to tempt members to acquire even more Meccano – as some of us did, once again…But you want to know what the models were like, don’t you! OK – you’ll have to subscribe and get the magazine like the other 140 or so members, but here are just a few to whet your appetite.

Thanks to all our organisers for another great day! (If you want bigger versions of any of these pix, let me know)

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Meccano for the big boys

Posted on April 6, 2013 by Philip Webb

A giant “Meccano-style” footbridge in Greater Manchester was officially opened today – 6th April 2014, with various activities celebrating the event including an exhibition of models made by the North West Meccano Guild in a nearby marquee .

20130404_111921 20130404_111930

The £90,000 steelwork 10:1 scale bridge was designed by artist Liam Curtin who described the project as “the fulfilment of a childhood dream”. The bridge has a span of 6.4m (21ft) and a height of 1.3m (4ft 3in), and it crosses the Manchester, Bolton and Bury Canal at Nob End in Little Lever, Bolt-on. Sorry – that should be Bolton, of course. But how much more appropriate could you be?

BBC News (Manchester) reported that Mr Curtin and members of the Manchester, Bolton and Bury Canal Society built the bridge to replace a disused horse bridge – and then added a couple of “Meccano” picnic tables beside it to the same scale.

The Bolton News proudly proclaimed “On Saturday, Mayor of Bolton Guy Harkin will officially open the structure, while ballroom dancers and brass bands will feature at the grand opening of Bolton’s new worldwide tourist attraction!”  (http://www.theboltonnews.co.uk/news/districtnews/10329170.Fanfare_for_grand_opening_of_landmark_Meccano_bridge/?ref=rss)

All this for the opening of a small bridge, at the end of a stony lane, which crosses a dry and derelict canal? Well, that is the nature of Meccano enthusiasts for you. and where else could you get to see steel construction elements that make grown men feel like small boys again? Enthusiasts from across the country, and even from as far away as New Zealand have already visited the new bridge, this writer among them. I wasn’t going to be able to make the official opening, but when I found that I was going to be in Manchester earlier in the week, I just had to make the detour and see it for myself.

It links Little Lever with Moses Gate Country Park and was built by volunteers on the site of an old horse bridge. Artist Liam Curtin, who designed the £90,000 bridge, said it was one of his proudest achievements and that it had won the backing of Meccano fans from around the world. “I knew we could put a bridge in using a crane so I thought ‘we’ll have to build it like Meccano’, but then I thought ‘why don’t we just make it out of Meccano?’ What I’m really pleased with is the volunteers from the Manchester, Bolton and Bury Canal Society and members of the public who’ve helped out. We couldn’t have done it on that budget without them. The Meccano fraternity has responded really well to it.”

Well done to them all!

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“We just ain’t a-gonna pay no toll…”

Posted on April 6, 2013 by Philip Webb

So goes the line in the old song “Convoy” by the fictional C.W. McCall.

Well, there was certainly a GMC in that convoy of trucks, (driven by “Pig-Pen“, haulin’ hogs) but possibly the driver didn’t look as cheerful as the one in my latest diorama! But this is the latest edition to my own personal convoy. There will be more shots of the truck in due course, but for now it is set in context by a generic multi-lane toll booth, built using a mixture of Meccano, Stokys and Erector. Cousin-systems, of course, they all use a half-inch module and work together very well.

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Sir James Dyson

Posted on February 18, 2013 by Philip Webb

I don’t know what it I like in your country, but there is a tendency in the U.K. for people to live in the past.  People tell each other that things used to be so much better years ago, and that no-one makes anything anymore. It’s not true, of course, and we could argue for hours over conflicting statistics. But one thing is true – there are still plenty of people out there who just love inventing and making things. It didn’t all stop with the Victorians!

Blogger Matt Wharton wrote last year about a report compiled by entrepreneur Sir James Dyson, entitled “Ingenious Britain”. Part of it was headed “Education: Getting young people excited about science and engineering”. Wharton said that on reading it he was reminded of the “James May’s Toy Stories” TV series on the BBC “which showed that although children initially thought stuff like Airfix and Meccano was boring that given the chance to play with it they really changed their minds.”

“I think that if each class of maybe Year Six in schools were given a Meccano set then we’d end up with a lot more people going into engineering” he said.

Which of us would disagree? Dyson’s conviction is that raising the profile of science will help to diversify a country’s economy and will therefore boost growth. Again, which of our countries couldn’t do with some of that?

The billionaire Sir James Dyson, born in 1947, is of course most famous as the inventor of the cyclone vacuum cleaner, though many gardeners have cause to thank him for his ballbarrow, an ingenious wheelbarrow that is much less likely to tip a load all over the lawn than a conventional model thanks to its having a large ball instead of a wheel at the front.

Obvious, perhaps, but many of the great inventions are – it’s just that no-one had thought of them before – or that having done so, no one persevered with them.

I don’t know that Sir James ever had a Meccano set, but I do think his attitude encourages many Meccano engineers. Consider some of his quotes:

  • “I just want things to work properly.”
  • “A lot of people give up when the world seems to be against them, but that’s the point when you should push a little harder.”
  • “You are just as likely to solve a problem by being unconventional and determined as by being brilliant.”
  • “Inventions generate further inventions.”

Every one of those could have a framed place on the wall of your Meccano room. Of course, there is always a special place in the hobby for the collector and the rebuilder of classic manual models. But I have a soft spot for the determined builder, the designer, the creator who sets himself (or herself) a challenge and plugs away at it to make the model work as it does in his imagination, coming up with unconventional ideas and solutions, building on the innovations and ideas of others until the goal is achieved. Recently a small coterie of modellers has been achieving ever great refinements of the idea of a French Knitting Machine! Will they make the world a better place? Probably not – but that sort of attitude will, and the lessons we learn from Meccano we may well be able to use in the “real world” to lead us all one day out of these global financial doldrums.

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A Truck Gear Box

Posted on February 18, 2013 by Philip Webb

There’s another truck on its way …

A GMC (or a “Jimmy” in old trucker slang) since you ask. But you can’t keep building trucks without putting at least some of the transmission system in them! In addition to suspension, steering differentials and prop shafts, there really should be a gear box.

So this time I have gone for a six-speed box (6 forward, 2 reverse) using the splitter design first envisaged by the late Tony Bolton. This takes a three speed and reverse box with a linear change and adds a splitter to it, and the gear lever is arranged so that moving it in one direction (left-right) changes the major box, while moving it in the other (up-down) changes the splitter box. An ingenious use of gears pioneered by Richard Payn produces a splitter ratio of root-two, 1.414, or thereabouts, which means that each ratio increases by a regular factor. That means you would change at about the same rpm setting in each gear, and each gear ration is uniquely selected by one position of the gear lever so you won’t get gears clashing when two ratios try to engage at once.

6-speed and reverse Gearbox

6-speed and reverse Gearbox

As so often the ratios and choice of gears is a numbers game – just get your calculator and your spares box out and play. The trickier bit is making a suitable selector mechanism and then getting the whole thing to fit inside the chassis rails! So far so good…..

Next post – hopefully you will see it in the chassis and with controls being added as well. For more on this sort of thing, check out “Everything Automotive 3” published by MW Mail Order.

A view from underneath

A view from underneath

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