Huge Meccano bridge

[ppppenguin]

Is this the biggest structure ever built from Meccano?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-34301870

[Terry]

According to the Guinness Book of Records it is!

I note that the nuts are hexagonal, rather than the traditional Meccano square ones.

Also, in one shot I got the impression that they might be lock nuts - which wouldn't be a bad idea for something like this!

[Brianc]

I bet they're a metric thread too! That does raise a question though - as Meccano was a French company, were the threads metric or, as, IIRC, they were about 1/8" in diameter so could have been 1/8" BSW.

[Terry]

 as Meccano was a French company ...

Wash your mouth out with garlic, Brian!

Meccano might be made in France these days but it was originally invented and manufactured by Frank Hornby in Liverpool with nuts and bolts using 5/32 inch BSW threads

[Brianc]

Oh dear, what have I said?    

[Nick]

My younger son is a 3rd year civil engineering student at QUB. He only spent a small amount of time on this last term, but he says it was really impressive and great fun to be part of...

[Yorkie]

Doesn't look like the original fiddly 'child sized' modelling Meccano I recall from days of yore - it looks far more 'chunky'.

Not the first time that Meccano has been used for a large scale bridge. To quote a snip from Wiki:

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"A  large model, weighing approximately 500 kg and 23m long, was built in September 2009 by TV presenter James May and a team of volunteers from the engineering department of the University of Liverpool, who created a Meccano bridge spanning the Leeds and Liverpool Canal in Liverpool. As with other models of this size and weight some non-Meccano parts were used. It was built from [about] 100,000 pieces of real Meccano", taking 1,100 hours, and consisted of a 9-metre (29.5 ft) "swing bridge” section, and a 12-metre (39.4 ft) "drawbridge" section"

8-<

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meccano

The number of parts (allegedly) used for the shorter Liverpool bridge is stated as about 100,000 pieces, which is ten times the quantity (allegedly) used to build the Belfast one.

Someone seems to have got their sums wrong!

(Don't know how the span of the Belfast bridge compares to the Liverpool one, as stated above, at 23M, though the Belfast one is said to weight 600 kg, as compared to the Liverpool one at 500 kg).

[Alan Douglas]

I spent many many hours building with my Gilbert "Erector" set, which eventually passed to my younger brother to be combined with a "Constructioneer" or some such knock-off. I also had some parts from a much older Erector that my father got somewhere. But no Meccano that I recall.

[Nick]

The number of parts (allegedly) used for the shorter Liverpool bridge is stated as about 100,000 pieces, which is ten times the quantity (allegedly) used to build the Belfast one.

Someone seems to have got their sums wrong!

Go to the source :

http://www.qub.ac.uk/schools/SchoolofPla...idgeBuild/ and https://www.facebook.com/thebigbridgebuild

The 11,000 number is excluding nuts and bolts, i.e. if included each nut and bolt as a Meccano item, then I suspect the numbers would be similar.

I'm not sure why QUB built this, other than a bit of fun, as it's Liverpool where Frank Hornby started out, so their claim as the home of Meccano is undisputed.. FWIW, "Erector" is now owned by Meccano.. (as of 1990).

[Terry]

I spent many many hours building with my Gilbert "Erector" set ... I also had some parts from a much older Erector that my father got somewhere.  But no Meccano that I recall.

Alan, Meccano is sold in the US under the 'Erector' trademark, so what you recall was  Meccano!