Meccano Exhibition

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Meccano Exhibition

The Manical Mechanicals shop in Marysville features a large MECCANO based model Exhibition. For a small admission charge you can view more than 50 MECCANO based models - both moving and static. These models were all made by Doug Wilson of Wangaratta.

Below are pictured some of the models we have on display (click on the thumbnail to see a large photo of each).

Model Maker - Mr Meccano

Doug Wilson is the Mr Meccano of Wangaratta, Victoria, Australia. As a boy, as a father and now as a retired more than 80 year old, Doug has lovingly assembled Meccano strips, plates, nuts, bolts, gears, sprockets, wheels and other parts to create the stuff of imagination. Indeed Doug has ‘value-added’ the Meccano standard parts by custom fabricating metal for his original scratch-built models.

Only a millionaire or a Meccano mechanic could have a Ferris Wheel in their backyard. And, as for the Eiffel Tower, who needs to go to France when you can build your own?

Doug was 12 when the Meccano bug bit. ‘The first thing I remember making was in 1937’, Doug said. ‘I won a prize at Brunswick Technical School for making a Meccano model. It was an aeroplane with three propellers which went around as you pushed it along’.

Meccano pleasures were later shared with his son and, when Doug retired, the passion for Meccano challenges was reignited. Doug has made more than 80 Meccano based models over the years and has exhibited several times at the Wangaratta Show.

Meccano was 100 years old in 2001. Its creator, Frank Hornby, was a father of two who made toys for his children. Wanting to build a crane for them, but unable to find the parts, he made his own components.

Hornby decided then that what the world needed was standard pieces which could be fitted together in an almost unlimited numbers of ways to create toys.

Hornby based Meccano on ‘perforated strips with rows of equidistant holes all of the same diameter’. By hand he cut and perforated, copper strips and in 1901 obtained a five pound loan from his employers to take out a patent. The company said for its more elaborate items and accessories, it adopted a ‘process of scientific enamelling, varnishing and hard baking at high temperature which resulted in a perfection of finish and a realistic appearance such as had never previously been given to toys of any kind’.

The largest model on display is a triple wheel Ferris Wheel. This model has more than 650 parts and is 5 feet in diameter. It has 3 wheels, one inside the other, 2 rotating clockwise and 1 rotating anti-clockwise.

Original Article appeared in the Wangaratta Chronicle in October 2001. Author Jacquie Schwind spoke with the master of Meccano – Doug Wilson

Some examples of the Manical Mechanicals Meccano based Model Exhibition are pictured below. Simply click on the thumbnail to see the full size image.