NARC

Collections at Peterborough

10am saw members arriving at the Motorcycle Museum in Kitchener Street. The collection is housed in the hall at the rear of the former Baptist Church which is now the residence. The collection is mostly European bikes and ranged from 50cc up to 1000cc including old and new.
For those not interested in bikes there was also a varied collection of household items in several rooms.
Morning tea was served in the courtyard and consisted of some very nice cakes and cream. We also had a chance to look at the Bed & Breakfast room that the owners have just created in a small hall adjacent to the church. Very posh!
From here we proceeded to Lloyd Street where Meldonfield is located. Eldon Zimmerman has been making 1/8th and 1/12th scale model wagons and Mary has been making scale figures for them. Eldon manufactures the wheels in the correct manner as they were originally built and this attention to detail is carried through to the full reproduction of the wagons, carriages sulkies etc.
Just for a change Eldon decided to build a 1/12th scale reproduction of the former Petersburg (Peterborough) railway station which was demolished about 40 years ago. He tracked down where the materials had been dumped and has cut scale bricks and stone blocks from the originals. Timberwork has also been scaled using original timber. Fortunately he was able to obtain the original plans. As the Jamestown station was designed by the same architect and is still in original condition further details were copied from there. The bricks and stone were then all laid one by one to mimic full size practice. Quite a task that has taken several years.
Eldon also has a fine collection of woodworking tools.
Some of the members had lunch here and we then moved onto Steamtown. Their collection of trains and carriages is housed in the former SAR roundhouse. There is also a collection of memorabilia and information on several serious train accidents that occurred in SA. Of particular interest to members was a Morris car which had been converted to run on the rails and had been used as a pay car. In its later years of use it was fitted with a Holden grey motor as this was more reliable and easier to obtain parts.
The weather was warm and sunny and meant a very pleasant day was had by those who attended.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 23rd, 2010 at 10:33 pm and is filed under Events/Runs . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.