THE buildings and farm machinery at the Beenleigh Historical Village are really old and of huge interest to everyone who visits the site.
What’s not so common at the village is machinery that actually works, where visitors can see items being produced from scratch.
For some time the village print shop has used old letterpress machinery – gear that hasn’t been used for up to 180 years – to produce pamphlets for the village, for school groups and for members of the public on open days.
Great news lately is that a 100-year-old Linotype machine is now up and running as well as ever.
It produces complete lines of type, instead of printers having to laboriously assemble lines one tiny letter at a time.
Reconditioned and refurbished by a team of three local Linotype mechanics who previously worked on Australia’s leading newspapers, the machine, affectionately known as Lennie the Lino, is a hit with everyone who sees him.
With three typefaces in three different sizes Lennie has 3000 moving parts, a pot of molten lead at 400 degrees and a 90-part keyboard with 30 for lower case, 30 for capitals and 30 for everything else that could possibly be needed – numbers, spaces, punctuation marks and symbols.
Lennie came to the Historical Village after a full working life at the South Burnett Times where he was used for many years to produce type for newspapers and for commercial printing work.
The machine is manned every Saturday morning, when anyone can have their name set on a hot-metal slug.
Village operation s manager Jaye Rose said she is amazed every time she sees Lennie operating.
“It’s amazing, 3000 large and tiny parts working in unison to produce someone’s name on a lead slug, it’s no wonder Lennie is so popular,” she said.
CAPTION
Beenleigh Historical Village operations manager Jaye Rose gives Lennie the Lino’s keyboard a workout.
