oscarsmate

It may be of interest to know that all 6 surviving A4s will be re-united at York next year, they are bringing Dominion of Canada and Dwight D Eisenhower over the Atlantic for a 1-off re-union. That should prove a heck of a sight! A bit of a challenge for a (rich) modeller. A few years ago I'm sure I saw a display of A4 models at somewhere like warley, they had every one of the class first in original livery, then in war time black and then in post war livery. There was a lot of them!

My understanding was that BA wouldn't sell it as Mr Branson wanted to fly charter/scheduled to the US. However the premium market, which Concorde commanded, BA wanted to transfer to their normal 747/777 fleet. If they had sold the aircraft to him that would have put that revenue stream at risk. Which is why the remaining BA concordes were given away and /or allowed to rot by removing fluids from the aircaft. I understand the Air France is the best preserved example as in theorey has had hydraulic/electric power supplied on a regular basis which preserves the seals on the systems. There is a thread on another avaiation forum about the possibility of getting concorde flying again, the consensus (by BA/AF concorde engineers) was that it was doable but not on any BA fleet remnants without a major financial input to the point of rebuilding the aircraft. Spares etc are a problem now. But (a big but) the business case is very weak and inevitably corners would be cut. I would point you at the accident report for the Thunder City EE Lightning which crashed in South Africa killing the pilot, the cause was maintenance not being done to a sufficent standard. No single thing but a build up of causes which by themselves didn't seem to matter, a chilling read if you have an hour to spare. http://www.caa.co.za/resource%20center/accidents%20&%20incid/reports/2009/8706.pdf An accident waiting to happen............

Looking very good. i've got one in my stache but don't think I can do it as well as you have. I'm well past middle age , so i'm in to 1/500 or greater nowadays due to eye sight. My next project is an eastern express tiger, hasewaga vanguard and a brace of frog undine/ torquay builds. Wish me luck coming back to kit building after 20n years....

There was a program on the discovery channel a few weeks ago where they discovered the Uboat that first had this technology, U480. It was very successful on it's first mission but fell prey to mines on it's second. There was some film of the tiles being made and the concept of how they worked. There was also a crewman interviewed who tranferred off after the first voyage and could describe how effective the technology was.

I didn't see any signs saying photography wasn't permitted, certainly other people were taking photoes as well. Perhaps they are wary of commercial photography? It certainly is worth a visit as I found it fascinating, I wish I had more time there or lived closer.

there's a considerable amount of information about the makers, apparently there was a dedicated section of the yard to make them not just apprentices because as you say they were showing the yards talents. The quality of the work was outstanding. I was fascinated by them, unfortunately I was with family and my wife had to literally drag me away. Think this is the Mikasa, base of the mast detail and Port side centre

Has anyone been to the dock museum at barrow in furness, it's small but free. There are a number of builders models ships which have been built in Barrow over the years. Among them were HMS Erin (1915), HMS Invincible and a Japanese battle cruiser Kongo 1916. These things are about 6 feet long and fantastically detailed a real testimony to the modelmakers art, they are housed in glass cases which hinders the quality of my photos. here's a taster, let me know if you are interested in seeing more

I saw one of the monitors when I was younger at Portsmouth in the early 60's. For anyone who is interested in Monitors the definitive book is Ian Buxton's Big Gun Monitors.

Perfectly thank you , I was curious as Rapid had no obvious 'fame' to make it a choice to model.

I'm curious why HMS Rapid? I was on it for a while back in 1971 when it was a training ship at Rosyth.