The National Army Museum has saved T E Lawrence’s dagger, robes and kaffiyah for the nation thanks to two grants from the National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF) totalling £113,400. Lawrence was given the dagger, known as a jambiya, by Sherif Nasir in 1917 after the victory of...
The Museum of Flight in Seattle, Washington, has been working with Microsoft to digitise the interiors of some of its aircraft. It means that visitors to the museum, and to the museum’s website, can wander through the cockpit and interiors on the Surface Pro tablets carried by...
The Air Museum at Duxford, one of the Imperial War Museum (IWM) sites, is probably the most important, ‘must-see’ aircraft museum in the UK. If you haven’t been, you really should, it is excellent. There are a number of things that set it apart. Firstly, its history....
This is pretty impressive. It’s the world’s largest ship elevator built onto the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River at Yichang City, Hubei Province, central China. It opened earlier this month (18 Sep) and it enables small passenger & cargo ships up to 3,000 DWT(deadweight ton)...
Deutsche Bahn’s new long-distance train, was presented to the public yesterday at Berlin Central Station. The new ICE 4 train, which according to Dr. Rüdiger Grube, Chairman of the Management Board and CEO of Deutsche Bahn, “ushers in a new era” comes with numerous technical innovations and...
This is a memorial I stumbled across outside a church in Nottinghamshire a year ago. There’s not a great deal of information on the memorial itself but thanks to the efforts of a number of people who have been diligently researching the loss of Lancaster W4270 with...
Two electric driverless buses started working on the streets of Lyon this week at the beginning of a year long trial. The keyword is “working”, though… not “earning”! The buses, manufactured by a Lyon-based company, Navya, have been road tested in other French cities but until now,...
If you are anywhere near the city of Chartres (SW of Paris) on 17 September, you should see the Festival of Lights (Fête de la Lumière) that night. It marks the climax of the 2016 season (16 Apr – 08 Oct) which sees many (27) of Chartres...
The Australians are celebrating a maritime milestone. To commemorate the landing in Western Australia of the Dutch Explorer Dirk Hartog, the Duyfken Replica – a reproduction of a typical 16th century Dutch trading vessel – has begun a ten-week, 1000-kilometre journey along the Western Australian coast. Dutchman...
For some nationalities, like us Brits, it’s a little hard to understand the role of France’s customs force, les Douanes. We have customs officers standing around at airports & ports, checking bags, opening shipping containers, and so on, but they are viewed as bureaucrats or government officials....
I’ve been trying to work out what this slightly rusty Self Propelled Gun (SPG) is, parked up at the back of the Musee de Blindes in Saumur, awaiting a little love and attention from their restoration teams. Now, thanks to TankNutDave.com, and some time I spent trawling...
These are pattern/template boots for the Swedish army. The one on the left was an approved design for a cavalry boot in the 1690s, when Sweden was still an autocracy, so the final approval comes from the king who puts his seal on it. The letters CRS...
The Fairburn steam crane, named after its designer William Fairbairn, is a masterpiece of engineering. It was built in Bristol docks in 1878 to lift heavy loads (up to 35 tons), which it did for 95 years. It has now been restored and is a Scheduled Ancient...
Ever wondered what a wind turbine looks like inside? And important questions like: How do you climb to the top? How much space is there up there? Why don’t the cables twist as it turns around? Here are the answers, and delivered in a really chirpy, no-nonsense...
This is a niche blog about technically-minded travel. It reflects my own interests in the mechanical, technical, historical, engineering, transport and military world.
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