February update

February has gone rather quickly for the Cataloguing Team. Our thoughts are very much with those everywhere who have suffered losses in the bushfires - both close to us and further away.

During February we kept adding items to the catalogue, although we have also been working towards having the Andrew Family Collection open again as soon as possible.

We now have 7093 entries in the catalogue, and Broni has begun work on the Narracan Mechanics' Institute catalogue. This has just over 2,300 entries for the individual books, which are being checked, and new books added as found.

However as part of the Collection Significance Study, Linda is working her way through the minutes to document the history of the collection. Much valuable detail is being found that is being added to the existing catalogue entries. This has been much assisted by information from Ollie Dobratz, an early Curator, who was involved with the establishment of the collection.

One of the items we now know a lot more about now is the Crossley Teaching Engine and Waern Generator.

Both parts are difficult to photograph as they are so large, and shed in which they are held is so small. This is part of the engine, above, and the generator, below.

Sometimes it is difficult to work out why we have items in the Collection. Possibly the best that can be said for this item is that many of the early SEC engineers, who attended the University of Melbourne, would have been trained on it.

The engine is shown, above, in the Melbourne University Mechanical Engineering Workshop. It was made about 1923-1924, and is the first engine on the left. One other engine is now in the National Steam Centre Museum, and another in Scienceworks.