In 1997 I was looking for a manual that showed the models I had built from my 1947 Meccano set. I tried libraries and friends but could only locate one book on Meccano. I had no further luck and did not try again till 2002 when I picked up some photo copies at a Meccano exhibition. Until 2003 I only had a slow internet connection so was not able to do much research there. When I finally got ADSL I found some sites on the internet that had downloads of many manual pages and covers. I was able to make a reasonable replica of the original 1947 manual.
During the next years up to now I have been collecting and scanning manuals from whatever source I could find, repairing the damaged pages using graphics programs, till I have built up a large collection of manual scans. Some of these manuals had missing pages mainly from the front and back. Where possible synthesised pages have been generated from various sources The manuals are a mixture of scans from my holdings and Malcolm Bookers vast archives, with additions from "Anthony's Meccano Website", Remi Lanne's site, and Ian Arbery who supplied most of the post 1950 manuals, Contents have been checked against Tony Knowles "Listing of Meccano manual Models." These scans have been assembled into PDF forms of the manuals suitable for printing on a colour laser printer and placed onto DVD's grouped into the various periods. Each DVD has a text file listing anomalies. In general the PDF manuals are scanned at 200 dpi and saved in DVD data format to reduce the number of disks.
At present I have about 312 manuals prepared on 3 DVD's arranged into 3 groups- Early 1906-37, 1937-69 and 1970-Onwards. More are being added as they become available. With the co-operation of Charles I have now placed these on the nzmeccano.com site. These manuals can be downloaded by members as required. If anyone is interested I can supply the DVD's to order for the cost of materials which works out at about $A20 each. I can also make printouts on a colour laser printer bound with plastic combs but the cost of supplies is such that it costs 12.5 cents per page. This is OK for smaller manuals up to 50 pages but some of the manuals have 200+ pages which makes over $A25 for these replicas.
