Graham Shepherd, a retired Maths lecturer from Rhodes University has one week to go before his colossal hand-built Meccano coal-mining machine is complete.
Graham Shepherd, a retired Maths lecturer from Rhodes University has one week to go before his colossal hand-built Meccano coal-mining machine is complete.
Meccano is a model construction system invented in the United Kingdom in 1904 for children wanting to create working models of mechanical devices.
It consists of metal strips, plates, angle girders, wheels, axles and gears; nuts and bolts are used to connect the pieces.
Shepherd was introduced to Meccano by his father at the age of eight.
Like his father, Shepherd now has a large collection of Meccano parts.
Two years before his retirement, Shepherd devised a project to keep him occupied after his lecturing days came to an end: building the largest Meccano machine in the world.
He has since been working on it consistently for almost five years.
Shepherd had to learn some new skills to build the machine and said that there were a few glitches along the way, but nothing worth giving-up over. “I have been surprised at how good it has been,” Shepherd said.
He chose to build a model of the German Bucket-Wheel Excavator used to mine coal, commonly known as the Bagger 288. The model is built on a scale of approximately 18 to one.
Lacking sufficient parts for this project, he had the parts lasercut by a firm in PE but had to drill all the holes himself – a million in total.
Like the German prototype, the model runs on electricity and has 57 electric motors. It weighs 1.3 tons, is 41 feet in length and 17 feet high.
Shepherd’s wife Eileen set up a blog for him over a year ago, tracking his progress.
“She’s been very patient and tolerant of the project over the years,” Shepherd said, “I’m sure that she’d like to get it out of her living room now”.
The United Kingdom’s Constructor Quarterly magazine published an article in September 2013 about Shepherd’s project and has commissioned a second article on the model from him.
Shepherd will contact Guinness World Book of Records to recognise his achievement.
When asked about what is next he said, "renovating the kitchen”.
Visit Shepherd's blog here.
