Welcome!

I have created this blog to provide a record of the progress of the museum at Menzies Creek, on the Puffing Billy Railway, for the group of younger (teens/20's) guys on Wednesday work nights. Or more, the blog is focused mainly on the restoration project for our Aveling & Porter Ltd Steam Road Roller. However, I will also include updates on various other projects at times. I hope to update this weekly, for each work night.
As the main focus is the Aveling and Porter roller, some history of this would be appropriate. The Steam Road Roller was built by Aveling & Porter Ltd., in Richester, Kent, England in 1923, and has the Builders Number 11629. The roller weighs approximately 14 Tons (14.3 Tonnes approx) and was used by the South Melbourne City Council for construction works.

The Aveling and Porter was donated to the Menzies Creek Museum by the South Melbourne City Council in 1963.
This project is being worked on mainly by the younger volunteers at the Menzies Creek Museum, with most of the group being in their teens or 20s.

On the last weekend of February, we worked on dismantling the roller so as to be able to remove the boiler for some works, which will be performed at the Belgrave Workshops. Further details on this weekend will appear in the next blog post, as well as some more up to date details. However, to show some of the work done, I have included a photo of the roller in the shed at Belgrave, whilst work was progressing to remove the bunker.

Over the coming weeks, I will also obtain further history on the roller, including some historic photos of it, which will also be posted up.

Until next time.