Museums

The Queen Mary

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The Queen Mary is one of the few pre world war 2 ocean liners to survive to this day. Originally used as an ocean liner from 1936 to 1967 the RMS Queen Mary was at one point the fastest way to cross the Atlantic Ocean. Ocean liner business was huge in those days but after the war when long distant faster aircraft developed numbers on the pre war ship dwindled and she was finally retired in  1967. Fortunately she was saved from the scrap heap like many grand ships before her. The city of Long Beach in California wanted to set up a maritime museum and what better building to do it in than a ship with such a grand history. Today much of the ship has been converted into museum, hotel or function facilities. The attraction has had a chequered past of financial success but its future looks bright with a new company recently taking over the lease with plans to refurbish. One interesting thing to note is that the new Queen Mary 2 has been fitted with one of her original horns.

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The de Havilland Comet

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Today’s video is a promo video of the de Havilland Comet. This one is one of those classic news real type footage of a real classic jet. Launched in 1949 the Comet was the first passenger jet plane and was tipped to be the next big thing, sadly today it is often forgotten about, thanks to the dominance of Boeing. What went wrong was a series of accidents caused by the planes tearing apart in mid flight, the stress fractures were traced back to the design of the large square windows and by the time de Havilland managed to get its aircraft back in the air with modified windows, Boeing had already gained a strong foothold in the jet airline business with it’s 707. Boeing had learned from the Comets mistakes while the Comet lost consumer confidence. The Military version known as the Hawker Siddeley Nimrod is still in use until 2020. Only a handful of Comets survive today a good example is at the RAF Museum in Cosford in the UK, it’s the only Comet 1 in existence. A Comet 4 is also under restoration for future display at the excellent Museum of flight in Washingtion.

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The Spruce Goose

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The H-4 Hercules was an aircraft built by Howard Hughes during world war 2, The idea behind it was to ship large amount of cargo across the Atlantic safely above German war ships. The whole project ran overtime and over budget and by the time the only prototype flew in 1947 the war was over and funding was cancelled. The media nicknamed the plane the Spruce Goose because of this and the fact that it was made of wood as there was no metal available because of the war. Howard Hughes hated the nickname and set it out on its only flight just to prove a point, amazingly for a prototype aircraft of its age and huge size it remain cared for and in hidden storage until 1980 where it spent some time next to the Queen Mary. Since 1995 its home has been the Evergreen Aviation Museum in McMinnville, Oregon which is an hour southwest of Portland. The museum has a good range of other aircraft that are well worth checking out too.

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Russia’s Konkordski

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The Concorde is often regarded as the pinnacle of aircraft design, its supersonic speed outstrips any passenger aircraft built today. There was also a Russian version that the media dubbed KonKordski, allegedly built from stolen plans the Russian TU-144 was very similar with a few changes like its mini wings known as canards near the front of the craft. In some respects it was better than the Concorde as it beat it to a maiden flight, was a tad faster and held a few more people. It suffered a bad reputation after crashing at the 1973 Paris airshow, a 1978 crash sealed the fate of the aircraft and permanent passenger service never resumed despite TU-144’s still being built up until 1984. Today a good example of the TU-144 can be found at the Auto & Technikmuseum at Sinsheim in Germany sitting next to a Concorde, hit the next page for a video of the plane being transported to the museum.

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Liberace’s car collection at the Liberace Museum

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Liberace was well known for collecting high priced toys like pianos, jewellery, fur coats and exotic cars. He generally liked to make a grand entrance on stage in one of his fancy cars with most of them modified to give it that Liberace touch. The one in the video above is a rare Rolls Royce featuring thousands of mirror tiles across its body. Today this car along with a hand-painted red, white and blue Rolls-Royce, a roadster covered in Austrian rhinestones as well as cars from a London cab to a heavily modified VW Beetle feature in the Liberace Museum in Las Vegas.

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The British Commercial Vehicle Museum

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The British Commercial Vehicle Museum is a museum celebrating the once great British motor industry. The museum is located in the town of Leyland, Lancashire, England, it is this town that gave its name to the bus and truck manufacturer that became the UK’s largest motor manufacturer after acquiring most of the British motor marques. At one point British Leyland enjoyed 40% of the British motor industry but those days are long over. One part of the Leyland group that did survive was the truck manufacturing operations, its no longer British owned and now builds trucks for the DAF brand so if you want to see Leyland or Foden buses and trucks from the glory years of British motor industry head to The British Commercial Vehicle Museum.

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JFK’s Lincoln Continental

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The first in our series of car of the dead stars is the SS-100x, it was the secret service name of the Presidential limo that JFK got shot in. Based on a 1961 4 door Lincoln Continental the car was modified to a convertible (probably not a great idea looking back) and also featured an array of high tech gadgets including a radio link back to the White House. The car featured a variety of tops that could be popped on when needed and by the time the car was finished being modified a 1962 grill and bumper assy was fitted to keep the car up to date. Following Kennedy’s assassination the car was modified again returning it to a closed in sedan, but this time with bulletproof armor. The car continued as a presidential limousine until 1967 and was finally retired from goverment service in 1978 to the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan.

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The AZLK Moskvich Museum

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Today’s video is of the AZLK Moskvich museum in Russia. The Moskvich was a popular car in Russia and were often regarded as sturdy and dependable transport, the company had most of its success during the 60’s and 70’s but actually dates back to 1929 with the first Moskvitch being produced in 1945, it was based on the Opel Kadett as the Soviets gained Opel’s production assets as part of war reparations. Today the company is no more as it went bankrupt in 2002, allegedly the companies factory was deserted with half finished cars on the production line for quite some time after the company folded. We think this video is from the factories museum so we are assuming it is no longer open as well. By the way if you are wondering what AZLK means, its short for Avtomobilny Zavod imeni Leninskogo Komsomola, which means in English Youth Communist League Car Factory, they dropped this acronym in the 90’s. 

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