We sort of know this, but a report published today by the Avis Budget Group, suggests that while car use remains as popular as it ever was, private car ownership looks set to decline over the next decade as consumers move to an access-driven, on-demand model for...
I came across this little ‘factoid’ in the latest edition of the National Museum of the Royal Navy’s in-house magazine, Scuttlebutt*, which is a fascinating publication, well worth the annual museum membership fee on its own! It’s one of those ‘unknown unknowns’ as Donald Rumsfeld would say....
Miniatur Wunderland in Hamburg is the world's largest model railway, and its most popular too.
The museum ship SS John W. Brown, one of only two World War II ‘Liberty’ ships preserved and still operational*, is looking for a new home. The Liberty ships were the cargo-carrying workhorses of the Allied war effort. They were produced with conveyor belt efficiency in huge...
Hertz are offering a spectacular car rental option at some of its airport locations in the USA. Auto racing fans and car enthusiasts can rev up their ride with the 2020 Hertz-Hendrick Motorsports Camaro ZL1 and 2020 Hertz-Hendrick Motorsports Camaro SS in the signature Hertz yellow and...
The UK Space Agency confirmed last week that it will award £7.35 million to Virgin Orbit UK Limited, the UK branch of US launch operator Virgin Orbit, to enable horizontal launch of small satellites from Spaceport Cornwall at Newquay Airport. ‘Horizontal launching’ means taking a rocket to...
(This article was written by Duncan Walker, Senior Lecturer in Applied Aerodynamics at Loughborough University and first published in The Conversation.com. It is reproduced here under a Creative Commons Licence CC-BY-ND) The UK government plans to ban the sale of new conventional petrol and diesel cars by...
Aurora Expeditions, who specialise in expeditions to the polar regions, yesterday named their new ship, the Greg Mortimer, in a ceremony set against the snow-capped mountains of Ushuaia, Argentina. The new ship has a striking profile because she is the first passenger vessel in the world to...
The coastal artillery battery at Longues-sur-Mer is one of the key Normandy D-Day battlefield sites to visit, for a number of reasons – it’s in the midst of the landing beaches (between Omaha and Gold); it’s an open site, free to visit; and it still has its...
From tomorrow there’s a new way to travel to the Grand Canyon in style. The Rail Baron Charter, a private luxury train comprised of three 1940s and 1950s railcars, will be operating on the Grand Canyon Railway. The train set comprises The Kansas – a rear open-aired...
You’ve gotta love it! What a spectacular piece of engineering the Napier Sabre is! At least, what a spectacular engineering concept. Sadly its early iterations at the start of WW2 weren’t always the finest examples of engineering quality control when they went into production. So they weren’t...
The Hillman bunkers, on a hill 3.7 kms inland from Sword beach, were German command bunkers. Now they are a memorial and battlefield site. The site was the regimental headquarters for Colonel Ludwig Krug, commander of the 736th Grenadier Regiment. From here he controlled all the infantry...
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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