I’ve long meant to pay Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s maritime masterpiece a visit, and I wasn’t disappointed. The Potted History Brunel must have been a commandingly persuasive man because somehow he got the Great Western Steamship Company to approve two serious departures from normal shipbuilding techniques for their...
The Pacific Aviation Museum Pearl Harbor has started restoration work on one of the planes that attacked them on December 7, 1941. The Nakajima B5N Torpedo Bomber was the pride of the Imperial Japanese Navy and was considered the most effective aircraft of its kind at the...
Five minutes into our day long ‘Mountains and Mines’ trip*, Paul Harris delivered the bad news – we wouldn’t be able to go down the coal mine today. Dang! It was to have been the highlight (well, lowlight technically) of the trip. I’d tried once before. A...
The classic sail ship cruise line, Star Clippers, has a new square-rigger currently under construction at Brodosplit shipyard in Split, Croatia. Steel cutting for ‘Hull 483’ – whose name, announced this week, is to be: Flying Clipper – commenced in last September. When she is completed in...
A small 400 sq metre museum is being added to the Thiepval Memorial Visitor Centre in Picardy, France. The opening will be a prelude to the Centenary commemorations of the Battle of the Somme, the iconic battle on the 1st July 1916 which was the bloodiest day for...
Given Berlin’s Cold War role as the “capital of spies”, it seems only fitting that it should now host the only museum in Germany dedicated to the dark world of espionage. The surprise is that it has taken this long. The Spy Museum, located in Potsdamer Platz,...
BF110F-2 Werknummer 5052 is on display in the Deutsches Technikmuseum, Berlin. This aircraft served with 13./Zerstörergruppe JG5 at KemiJarvi, Finland during 1943. On January 11, it was damaged by train-mounted flak while flying a four plane mission against railway lines between Murmansk and Leningrad. Pilot Helmut Ziegenhagen...
75mm Airborne M1A1 Pack Howitzer (1942) designed to be dropped into battle with airborne troops. This one was used by 1st Airlanding Light Artillery Regiment, Royal Artillery, at Arnhem bridge September 1944 where it was damaged (see broken tow ring). It is now in the Royal Artillery...
Odd name. The Percival Pembroke was a British light transport aircraft built between 1953-1958 by the Percival Aircraft Company, which later became ‘Hunting Percival’. They are quite rare. Only 128 were built. This one, a C-54 variant built for the German Luftwaffe is at the Militärhistorisches Museum...
Truthfully? the Soane Museum is not somewhere I would have visited normally. Art history, or in this case, architecture history, is outside my core interest zone. To make matters worse, the visit did not start well, and I was irritated from the off. I don’t like queuing,...
A brand new railway museum is due to open this spring in Japan’s cultural capital, Kyoto. Kyoto Railway Museum will open on 29 April 2016, with a over 50 trains on display, telling the history of Japanese rail from the steam era to modern day Shinkansen bullet...
WW2 Estonian submarine, Lembit, is the main exhibit in the Estonian Maritime Museum's Seaplane Harbour hangers
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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