C is for Christmas Exhibition - 4 of 5 - Frank Hornby's Meccano

I'm not sure who invented the first pierced-steel construction system, nor which side of the pond, or Channel, it first occurred on and how much the first influenced the subsequent lines of their rivals, but just as stone-age kids played with stones and bronze-age kids played with bronze figurines (well; they might have, if they were rich enough!), so it was only a matter of time before someone in the industrial age invented something which looked like Meccano, and I suspect several sets appeared independently, at around the same time, with similar properties, but here in the UK we tend to think (and be told) Frank Hornby was first?

Certainly, it was [arguably] the most successful, and despite a few hiccups . . . survives today, as a French-owned brand with a tenuous link back to French Hornby or French Dinky, and would survive for longer - if it went final tits-up tomorrow - through the many clones coming out of mile-long factories in Szechwan and Guangdong!

Ancient and modern . . . little and large!

Although several of the components are vintage, especially the boiler, it has been put together with the modern bolts, which contrary to my previous comment in the preceding post aren't cross-cut Phillip's, but small (3 or 4 mil') hex-drives.

The racing car is built to a vintage plan but seems to be mostly recent components, or at least components I recognise from my childhood Meccano - 1960/80's, while the 'plane would seem to be referencing Tin-Tin's, and thus is probably from a larger French set?

Some more shots of both.

Some more small pieces and a wounderful vintage aeroplane which has a many model-specific parts or 'shapes' as the Metalcraft Spirit of St. Louis in the previous post, something I have to confess I wasn't aware of.

We had tons of yellow/blue, our cousins inherited a multi-drawer cabinet of red/green heavy-gauge vintage, and while I knew there were the odd specialist part (the motorway-construction and army sets in the 1970's had a pre-formed lorry-cab I think?), this is quite a specific model, of a De Havilland Moth? Hawk, Puss . . . Tiger?