Turkey’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism has officially declared 2018 to be the Year of Troia (Troy). The archaeological remains of Troy are to be found on the outskirts of the town of Hisarlik in the Anatolian province of Çanakkale close to the Dardanelles. The site, excavated...
Triumph Motorcycles has just opened (yesterday) its new £4 million Triumph visitor experience and factory tour. The new facility at the Triumph Motorcycles HQ and factory site in Hinckley, Leicestershire will enable fans to get up close to the most iconic and rare Triumph motorbikes in the...
Stow Maries Great War Aerodrome, near Maldon in Essex, has won £4.3m of National Lottery funding that will enable it to be transformed into a major visitor attraction. The near-complete example of a First World War aerodrome, untouched and largely forgotten for 60 years, was built in...
It seems almost inconceivable that the United States Army doesn’t have a national museum! Everyone else has one. The Marines have one, the Air Force has one, the Navy has one… hell, even Navy Aviation and US Army Aviation have them! Most countries have one. I’ve been...
A new, specially designed, luxury tourist train was launched yesterday in Japan. The Royal Express will operate from Yokohama station in Yokohama and Itokyu Shimoda station in Shimoda City at the southern tip of the Izu Peninsula with its full of hot springs and picturesque coastlines. Around...
On Thursday this week, an amazing piece of space history goes on sale at Sotheby’s Auction house in New York – the original flight plan from the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission. It’s one item in a ‘Space Exploration’ auction of space memorabilia and artifacts, some of which...
Yesterday, Disney Parks & Resorts unveiled a detailed model of Star Wars Land, scheduled to open at Walt Disney World and Disneyland in 2019. Star Wars Land is not based on a specific location in the Star Wars canon, but instead recreates a remote trading port on...
Foulridge Tunnel, on the Leeds & Liverpool Canal, is to become the longest canal tunnel in the UK to open to canoes. The mile-long, the 200 year old tunnel, looked after by the Canal & River Trust, is regularly used by canal boats, but from Saturday 03...
This weekend, Virgin Trains set up a photo-opportunity event for rail enthusiasts – four generations of trains travelling side by side on the East Coast Line. Of course, it was also a marketing opportunity to show off Virgin Trains’ new Azuma, alongside two present-day trains, and the...
The National Army Museum will be opening its doors to the public on Thursday (30 March) after a £23.75m redevelopment that sees the building transformed from what the Director General, Janice Murray, described to me as a gloomy warren “rather like a car park”, to a bright...
A brand new museum focused on D-Day and its connections to the American servicemen that left Britain in 1944 for the Normandy beaches, has just opened in Portland, Dorset. The Castletown D-Day Centre has been in the planning for several years and it is perfectly placed within...
Norwegian Cruise Line (NCL) have announced an agreement with the Italian shipbuilder, Fincantieri S.p.A., to build their next generation ships. Four 140,000 gross ton cruise ships, each carrying around 3,300 guests, are on order for delivery in 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025, with an option for two...
This looks like an interesting project, if it ever gets off the ground – see what I did there? This is a new concept ducted-fan vertical take-off (VTOL) aircraft that could be commonplace if it works as billed. The six-seat XTI TriFan 600, say the designers, “will...
The build-up to the 100th anniversary of the end of The Great War continues to grow and so do the associated memorials, museums and interpretation centres in Belgium & France. In the French Ardennes, the War & Peace Museum is due to re-open on 11th November 2017...
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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