The Meccano Apprentice

A few weeks after I made an attempt to rocket power a Dinky Toy, nearly blowing up the Toolroom in the process, I left the Meccano factory to present myself at Cardington Air Force Base to do my National Service in the R A F.

Three days later I was back, having been pronounced unfit to serve Queen and Country because I had suffered two severe bouts of pneumonia as a child. At a previous medical I had been graded A1.

My family were happy to see the return of the ‘prodigal’, not so my current girlfriend, she had wasted no time in finding a replacement.

After my explosive exit I was also less than welcome when I arrived back at Meccano on the following Monday but, because I had left to do my duty in the armed forces, by law they had to give me my job back. I was immediately moved into the Tool Repair, next door where, presumably, they thought  I would be out of harm’s way, and the main Toolroom staff would be safer without a budding bomb maker in their midst.  

Life moved on, then one Sunday afternoon I happened to be near Binns Road and decided to pay a nostalgic visit to the old Meccano factory, now closed. Outwardly the building looked much as I remembered but when I peered in through a small window set in one of the massive doors I looked upon total devastation, demolition was well under way. For a long time I gazed as the memories flooded back so real and fresh, that I realised such unique experiences should not be allowed to simply fade away as the place in which they were created was fading away, they must 

be preserved. And so . . . .

All the incidents in this narrative actually happened although, obviously, not precisely 

as depicted.

This book has not been written to extol the wonderful products which poured from the Binns Road production lines for over fifty years, that has been done many times, but rather it is to bring to the reader the experiences, good and bad, happy and sometimes traumatic of a young apprentice growing up in the legendary factory that was Meccano.  

Except for the author most of the names have been changed to protect the innocent (and the not so innocent).