Meccano Ltd. produced engineering drawings of virtually everything that they produced. These included detailed drawings of all Meccano parts. These enabled the manufacture and assembly of items to be done correctly and to a consistent repeatable standard.

Most of these drawings were believed to have been lost when the Liverpool factory closed in 1980. However many drawings of Meccano parts were discovered by John Beugels. He recognised the importance of these historical documents and wanted them to be available to all Meccano enthusiasts. Scans (at 300dpi) of them are shown on this website.

There are now on this website a total of 377 Liverpool factory drawings covering 303 Meccano parts together with a few other items. This covers the vast majority of post-war Meccano parts, with only a relatively small number of omissions.

Every Meccano part or other item together with any component of a part was given a 'Job No.' (Liverpool drawings only). Some of the more complex Meccano parts could consist of many drawings (i.e. Job No.s). The Job No.s are mainly (with a few exceptions) in order of introduction of the item and most bear no relation to the Meccano part number.

Most of the Liverpool drawings are larger than an A4 page, so you will need to select "Fit to printable page" in the PDF print options pop-up, unless you have a large format printer. Most drawings are approx. 9.5" x 12" although some are even larger.

A PDF file (v2) of all 377 Liverpool drawings can be downloaded from here.

There are also 79 drawings of parts (in French with metric measurements) nearly all dated 1991 from the French Meccano factory. A few of these are for parts which were not included in the Liverpool drawings above. There is no Job Number for the French Drawings and they are just known by the Meccano Part Number prefixed by 'Fr'.

The French drawings are all A4 size so should pose no problem when printing.

A PDF file of all 79 French drawings can be downloaded from here.

From around 1967 to 1981, Niels Gottlob produced drawings of virtually every Meccano Part including obsolete ones. There are a total 530 drawings. Whilst these do not have the same historical value as the original factory drawings, they are nevertheless very useful as they cover many parts for which factory drawings are not yet available.

A few comments about the drawing measurements by Niels Gottlob -
"The dimensions and measurements are not carried out to the minutest details, and several measurements are pure conjecture. It is extremely difficult to be quite sure of the centres of curvature and corresponding radii for several parts, e.g. F12-2 and N2-5.
In some cases the drawings are idealised, e.g. C2-55 and J3-4. Some standard measurements are not always given, like hole diameter, rod diameter and standard strip width (½")."

These drawings were mainly drawn at the unusual scale of 1" to 24mm (instead of 1:1), which Niel later regretted. The drawings on this website have now had their scaling modified (which has increased their size slightly), so that if the PDFs are now printed at 'Actual Scale' (100%), then they should be at a true 1:1 scale. As most of the resultant drawings are slightly larger than A5 the majority will print fine on an A4 printer. There are some drawings larger than A4 (with a few over A2), and if you wish to print these at 1:1 scale you will need to tile them when printing (unless you have access to a large format printer).

A PDF file of all 530 Niels Gottlob's drawings with the scaling corrected can be downloaded from here.

A PDF file of all Niels Gottlob's drawings as originally produced on A4 pages, can be downloaded from here.

For convenience the list of drawings on this website are split into three parts:-

1. Listed by Job No. This shows all the drawings in Job No. order.
2. Listed by Meccano Part No. This shows all Meccano parts (and their components) in Part No. order.
3. Other items This shows all the other drawings that are not Meccano Parts.

On the pages showing small images of the drawings, click on the small image to bring up a larger image that fills the width of the webpage. Clicking on this larger picture will bring up a full page size image.

For easy printing of the drawings, each drawing can also be downloaded as a PDF file. See the comments regarding printing against each section above.

If anyone else has any other drawings of Meccano parts or other Meccano products (e.g. Hornby Trains or Dinky Toys etc.), I would be very interested in adding them to this site. I would like to make this site as comprehensive as possible. I am particularly interested in parts or items not presently included together with earlier or later revisions of parts. I would also like to include drawings of other Meccano products.

These drawings/scans may be freely copied and printed out for personal research use. However any other reproduction/publishing must acknowledge www.meccanoindex.co.uk.

Thanks to John Beugels for most of the Liverpool factory drawings.

UPDATES

26 March 2023
1. 530 part drawings by Niels Gottlob added. With thanks to John Hornsby, Richard Payne and Ken Ratcliff.
2. Liverpool jobs 243 and 245 (Geared Roller Bearing Plate and associated Pinion) added. With thanks to Greg Rahn.

5 July 2020 : 79 part drawings from the French factory nearly all dated 1991 have been added. A few of these are for parts for which were not already on the website. With thanks to Clive Weston.

17 July 2019 : A combined download file of all the drawings has now been included.

Meccano is a registered trademark of Meccano / Spinmaster and cannot be used without permission. Many models and component parts incorporate original designs which are protected by copyrights, trademarks or design legislation.