Model behaviour

THEY are the men for whom a supermodel isn't Naomi Campbell but a fully-operational hydraulic shovel, for whom small isn't just beautiful but pretty blissful, too.

They are the miniature marvels, the Meccano army, the model citizens whose exhibition last weekend at the National Railway Museum in Shildon left the giants of steam in the shade.

In a word, it was brilliant, little wonder that so many came to take a look. Inadvertently it also marked the centenary, tomorrow, of the registration by Frank Hornby of Meccano Ltd.

For all that, however, it may not necessarily be considered child's play. "You do need a bit of basic mechanical knowledge,"

admits North East Meccano Society secretary Fred Thompson, a retired bank manager.

"There's a model over there with three differential engines and four motors inside.

Unless you understand how a differential works, you'd be struggling."

There's a shed load of model locomotives in display, of course, but much, very much, more. There's a magnificent Meccano Punch and Judy show, with crocodile and commentary, a Dalek with which to exterminate over-inquisitive nippers, the inevitable carousel - what goes around comes around - a wonderful working model of the River Tyne swing bridge, a whole gantry of cranes.

NEMS vice-chairman Barry Richardson from Spennymoor has made a band called Nuts and Bolts - led by Billy Bushwheel and playing their latest hit, Rod Socket Rock.

There's also a "hands-on" area, though for very good reasons quite a few hands-off areas, too.

Almost everything's geared for the little big time. Like the ladies who once advertised in London telephone kiosks, these are working models.

Meccano had first appeared in 1901.

NEMS was founded in 1975 and has members in Canada, Australia and Holland.

"We accept they'll sometimes miss a meeting," says Fred, from Hurworth, near Darlington.

They meet quarterly, exhibit regularly, differ only in the degree of reluctance with which they put asunder that which lovingly has been joined together.

"I can't wait until Tuesday morning when I can get home again and take it all to bits," says society chairman Joe Etheridge, 29 years a Tow Law lad but now in Peterlee.

"I've had some models for years, I just can't bring myself do it," says Fred Thompson.

Joe's wife Sally is helping out, too. "It was a case of marry me, marry my Meccano,"

he says.

Really? "Very probably," says Sally.

He's been a lifelong enthusiast, started young. "My dad was a miner. I told him I wanted a toy lorry and he told me to build one." His largest undertaking was a 15ft model of Big Geordie, the giant dragline which once bestrode north Northumberland. His favourite, however, was the Victorian automaton which actually performed a conjuring trick.

"To see people's faces when it worked was unbelievable," says Joe.

Fred was a Meccano nut (as it were) from eight to 20 but never again put a construction on it until his retirement, and a visit to an exhibition in Skegness.

Skeggy, in truth, appears the Meccano capital of Britain.

In 1980 he'd sold all his equipment, including two top-of-the-range No 10 sets in custom-made oak drawers, in order to buy a car. "I very soon regretted it," he says.

Though Meccano has had many different colour periods - most famously red and green - these days he models only in yellow, blue and zinc.

"I'm not particularly advanced, just play with it really, but when you get back into it, which can be quite expensive, you just can't stop," he says. "The main quality you need is patience."

Also enthusiastically in attendance are father and son Harry and Barry Harker, the ingenious Punch and Judy men, the lad having reluctantly attended his first Meccano exhibition as a nine-year-old.

"To be honest I was dragged there kicking and screaming and at the end I had to be dragged kicking and screaming out again, because I wanted some to take home with me," says 29-year-old Barry, from Trimdon.

Though often away all week driving his lorry, he also edits the NEMS magazine, runs a Meccano website, makes manifold models but finds it a bit difficult to keep girlfriends.

"I've had a couple and taken them to exhibitions, but they didn't seem quite as keen as me. I blame my dad," says Barry.

"Funnily enough," says Harry, "I blame him."

Someone else has made an "inter-active"

Meccano shield - the coat of arms, it's said, of Sir Frank of Hornby - and a crest with the Latin motto "Meccano vivat semper".

Roughly translated, it means "Meccano endures forever". On last weekend's evidence, it probably will.

Ten things you never knew about Meccano

* Devised for his children by Frank Hornby, a Liverpool book keeper, Meccano made its commercial debut in 1901 as Mechanics Made Easy. The name Meccano - Make and Know - appeared in 1907.

* Hornby had to borrow £5 from his employer, a meat importer, in order to afford a patent.

* By 1951, a French factory was manufacturing 500,000 Meccano sets annually, despite steel shortages.

* Sets over the years had various numbers, from 00 to 10. Number ten, the Meccano man's Mecca, cost up to four times more than number nine.

* Though frowned upon by some Meccano purists, electronic parts were introduced for the first time in 1970.

* The biggest Meccano model ever built - 21ft high, weighing 1,200lbs, with 19,507 parts and 50,560 nuts and bolts - was of the original Ferris wheel.

It took 1,239 hours to make.

* A website user claims the smallest model - half a nut. "It's a bridge," he says.

* A "model library" includes instructions for a candlelit dinner for two, Nutty and his Pachyderm - "with howdah, maharajah and mahout" - the BT Tower and a dinosaur.

* Frank Hornby also invented Hornby Railways and Dinky Toys, becoming both a millionaire and Conservative MP for Everton. He died, aged 73, in 1936.

* The North East Meccano Society meets quarterly, usually in Bedale or Newton Aycliffe. Its annual exhibition is in St Cuthbert's church hall, Darlington, on Saturday November 8 (10am- 4.30pm.) Further details on www.northeastmeccanosociety.co.uk

Made to be matron

THE splendid Sylvia Snowdon, known almost universally as Matron Snowdon because an old-school matron is what very proudly she had been, has died. She was 98.

"Being a good nurse, she knew she was dying, called everyone around her and received the last rites of the Church. She passed away the following day," says Father Robert McTeer, vicar of St Helen, Auckland.

Even Fr McTeer called her Matron. "I couldn't do anything else," he says. "She said it was the style of address she liked.

She was a very remarkable lady."

Her funeral is at St Helen's church at 1.30pm tomorrow.

Born in Sunderland, Miss Snowdon had nursed all over the country - particularly enjoying work in children's hospitals - before becoming matron of Tindale Crescent Hospital, near Bishop Auckland, in 1955.

She retired in 1970, gave up driving on her 90th birthday, remained a strong supporter of St Helen's church and of Sunderland FC, for whom her father had played.

"You had to be very quiet if you went round to her house at five o'clock on Saturdays.

She'd always be glued to Sports Report," recalls Neville Davison, a family friend.

A twinkling disciplinarian - "The nurses thought I didn't know they were going outside for a smoke," she would say - she loved patients and staff equally.

Ray Eckersley, a niece, recalls that her aunt was unhappy at the trend for nurses to go home in uniform. "She believed there was a danger in spreading bugs that way, the uniforms should have stayed in the hospital.

"She was very opinionated. As children we'd always be told to be on our best behaviour when we visited, but she was always lovely."

Matron Snowdon was also renowned for her memory, both for former patients - "She could look at photographs of children from the 1930s and still remember what had been wrong with them" - and for general knowledge.

"It was like Chris Tarrant," says Ray.

"If you didn't know something, you didn't phone a friend, you phoned Aunty."

Perhaps inevitably, she had also advocated the return of "proper" matrons to take charge of hospitals. "They might call them modern matrons but it's starting to happen," says Neville Davison.

"Miss Snowdon would have been happy."

JUST a month after we reported her 100th birthday, dancing queen Lily Fagan has also died. Lily and her husband ran dancing schools in Darlington, Bishop Auckland and Shildon - her home town. She moved ten years ago, to be nearer her son Derek, in Blackpool.

"Only last year she was teaching the staff in the care home how to do the cha-cha," said Derek. Her funeral's at Lytham St Anne's tomorrow.

KEITH Walshaw and others, properly aghast, draw attention to the misspelling of the name of the great actress Dame Anna Neagle in last week's column.

Born Florence Marjorie Robertson in 1904 - Neagle was her mother's maiden name - she became one of the 20th Century's most enduring stars, her 2,047 stage performances in Charlie Girl earning an entry in the Guinness Book of Records.

It may well have been in that that Keith saw her at Darlington Hippodrome, because he certainly remembers meeting her - "petite and very pleasant" - when she stayed with the late Connie Todd.

Connie's husband Alan was a chiropodist and one of precious few Darlington goalkeepers never to have been on a losing side.

After just three Football League matches in 1939-40, two wins and a draw, the League programme was abandoned.

Keith's still upset. "Just as we're going well," he says, "and Adolf comes and puts a stop to it."

IT'S a matter of regret that, because of a dinner elsewhere, the column is unable to address tomorrow night's annual gathering of the Weardale Society for the Prevention and Prosecution of Felons - one of just two remaining "Felons" societies in the North-East.

The other's in Coundon. Only in January, however, Durham chief constable Jon Stoddart made a high-profile appearance up that way to reassure locals over the dale's low crime figures. Clearly the Felons are doing their job.

ISHALL, however, be turning out tonight to open the "Jewel in the Town" exhibition at the 12th Century St Cuthbert's church in Darlington Market Place and to launch the Friends of St Cuthbert's.

The exhibition will include paintings, etchings, maps and photographs portraying St Cuthbert's down the centuries, plus many other treasures belonging to the church and others.

"Together they illustrate the pride and affection that many generations have felt for this architectural gem in the centre of Darlington," says Robert Williamson, the vicar.

Preceded by wine and nibbles, the exhibition preview is at 7.30pm tonight. It runs from tomorrow until Monday, 10am-4pm except on Sunday, when it opens at noon.