Over the years there have been very few Water Mills shown in Meccano manuals this short lived one is from the 1937-1938 9/10 manual shown below, it was replaced in the manual with a LightShip. I thought the mill would look very good in the 1934- 1941 blue and gold colour scheme shown in the illustration and I was not dissapointed with the result. From the start I decided to only use the manual instructions as a guide using more parts that in the late nineteen thirties No.9 outfit to make "improvements". The model as per the instructions does really some need  beefing up, the mounting of the motor leaves a lot to be desired as does the surrounding fence which is only just about attached to the building. The instructions do in fact hint at this by suggesting mounting the model on a board with a painted flowing steam. The water wheel needed improvement too, I did this by using two circular strips not in the number 9 set to fit the spokes to. I doubled the number of buckets on the wheel also the mounting was not up to the weight of new heavy wheel this again was strengthened with extra parts. The side with the machinery should have a roof but then you would not see what is going on so I left it off. Like the original instructions I have used a Clockwork motor to power the model on my version its a poweful 1930's Number 2 clockwork motor. I have used rubber drive belts instead of the sprocket chain drives shown in the instructions. All the blue plates are original, the gold parts are a mixture of original and restored. The red circular parts are 1950’s. Cheddington Flint Mill in Staffordshire on the River Churnet has many similarities with the Meccano model.  In the Cheddington mill flint is ground and mixed with water to form a slurry  for use in the areas pottery industry. This operation can be clearly seen in the Meccano version. You can view a video about the Water Mill on my YouTube channel click the logo.

Page published December 02 2020 revised March 27 2021