HE worked as a scaffolder in Huddersfield for 40 years.
And one of the toughest jobs Len Sandford faced was helping to build the huge giant cooling towers at the former Huddersfield Power Station off St Andrew’s Road.
Now – 50 years after working on the real thing – Mr Sandford has completed an amazing model replica.
He has built the four-foot high model of the cooling tower out of matches – hundreds of thousands of them.
The model, along with a model of one of Huddersfield’s old mill chimneys, now take pride of place in the garage of his Lepton home.
The task has taken him approximately five years to complete.
His hobby of model building started after he suffered a serious fall, and he then began making models out of small stones for his grandchildren.
But he moved to matchsticks because they were easier to buy in bulk and simpler for construction.
Not surprisingly, he has lost count of how many he used to create his two models.
“I picked the chimney and the tower because they were two features of the former Huddersfield skyline and because I worked on the towers.
“I remember replying to an advert in the Huddersfield Examiner in the 1950s for scaffolders to work on the cooling towers going up at the former power station and at Calder Hall in Thornhill.
“They have long since gone and the mill chimneys are now few and far between.”
He has captured the cooling tower in the construction stage, complete with scaffolding, while the chimney also features ladders and scaffolding, as used by the Huddersfield steeplejacks John Tinker and Sons, of Longroyd Bridge.
