The Regurgitator

A recent three week holiday, you could say, was a welcome break from all the Meccano model building to which I always seem to be dedicating so much time. The downside though is that I don’t like exhibiting the same model more than once and with three Meccano meetings all in June, I found I had to be a little inventive. Rather than find the sparse time needed to make something new, I took two of my existing models but that had not be seen on show at each particular Meccano meeting; taking my ‘Phantom Ship’ model to the RMG meeting and the ‘The Spiralizer’ model to the WLMS meeting. However such a tactic was not possible for the SELMEC meeting, as my existing models had already been seen there. With this I had no option despite lacking sufficient time, but to start something new. With only a few days to go until the meeting!

I thought of a new shape and started building another one of my fairground concept models, knowing full well that I was unlikely to finish it. Anyway, after a week I managed to almost finish it to a satisfactory first prototype, though unfortunately without a working motor attached or the kind of finishing detail I like to include before exhibiting, resulting in it being the first time in years that I displayed an unfinished model at any club nor had I even come up with a suitable name for it.

Maybe I’m starting to slow up a bit or my standards are dropping, but I prefer to think of it as just circumstances instead. On the flip side there is a break now before the next Meccano meeting and I hope to properly motorise this new model and get it performing like I first envisioned it.

And so to finding a suitable name. `The Regurgitator’ was kindly suggested to me and though the thought of describing my model as something that's been swallowed and then thrown up, doesn't necessarily put my model in the best light, it does remind me of how I have felt many a times when coming off a fast spinning ride, and it also rings a little true about how I feel any time I am forced to exhibit the same model twice, and why I driven always to do something new.

This is a rotating model with eight swinging cars flying at high dizzying speeds, thrilling all of its riders and forcing some to unwillingly regurgitate something too!

The Regurgitator: Some rides throw up something new — there’s a real chance it could be you!