Nine-year-old builds dalek out of rubbish for fundraising event

A nine-year-old pupil at Romanby Primary School near Northallerton will share his love of trains, engineering, and making things with the local community at an event this January.

From the steam powered origins of Stevenson’s Rocket made from lolly sticks and a Pringles tube to space ships seen in science fiction films recreated in cardboard and cereal boxes, Thomas Jennings is hopeful that visitors will be impressed.

Thomas has gone all out with his latest creation, a one-metre high model of a dalek from the Dr Who TV series, which is made from cardboard sheets, tubes, and domed coffee cup lids.

After construction the model was covered in papier-mâché before painting, which took weeks of patient work.

The model also features repurposed fairy lights, rewired to flash in time with the famous dalek phrase ‘exterminate’.

Thomas wrote a programming code on a small computer called a micro:bit which he placed in the head of the dalek to achieve the desired flashing of the lights.

Thomas said: “I love to make things because it’s a nice break from everything else, I think it’s really relaxing.

“It kept me busy during lockdown, I like looking at the details in the things I make and learning about them.

“Like how pistons and wheels work.

“I am really proud of my models and I wanted to show them to people and show them they can make things too.

“Lots of people save me tubes, cardboard and unusual bits of plastic so I wanted to show everyone what I’ve done with the bits. I like making something from junk that would just go into the bin otherwise.”

Thomas plans to share his creations with the public at an exhibition of his junk models on Sunday, January 8 at Romanby WI Hall, from 1pm to 3pm.

Tea and cakes will be on sale, and a junk modelling workshop area will be manned by Thomas as he teaches friends how to turn tubes into trains, rockets, monsters and more.

The money he raises at the event will be donated to Romanby Primary School to be used towards the cost of travel for the Year 5 trip to an outdoor centre later in the year.