Obituary ; Henry Porter August 2022
We farewell Henry Porter, a longtime member of the Auckland meccano Guild who passed away recently.
Henry was one of those people who could look at any picture of machinery and could then re-create it in meccano with all the appropriate parts working as they should in the real machine.
He used any system parts in his creations which were often a mixture of meccano, marklin, trix, erector etc plus any other suitable parts collected at the time.
He grew up in the town of Berwick in the Scottish borders, a sickly lad who was often off school because of illness (scarlet fever) and was alone in a large old house. He had his Hornby train set to play with but at about age 7 he sold it and bought a meccano set. Meccano was to become a lifelong hobby.
He used to bring many and varied models along to the club meetings ( there are 2856 on flickr ) many of which just had balls, belts ,chains and cogs whizzing about to no particular purpose, these creations Henry called his contraptions and he delighted in making them.
I recall him using rare aero parts to create some of these much to the surprise of Aero collector Richard Sealey who threw up his arms in horror when seeing how some of these parts were used!
I learnt a great deal from Henry over the years and always admired his ability to get stuck in and create new models. He had little time for model plans preferring to go it alone and encouraging others to do the same.
He would often work on his models long into the night on his creations, some of which such as the large German rail gun Gustav, were too large to move outside the model room.
His Herman the German floating crane took 3 people to move it.
A dedicated modeler and a genius in his own right, we will miss you Henry Rest in peace.
Further photos and videos of Henrys creations can be found here.. https://www.flickr.com/photos/meccanohig/albums/72157617191989900
Further photos of Gustav the railgun can be found here…. https://www.flickr.com/photos/meccanohig/albums/72157617168937764
Gary Higgins
AMG secretary