Review: Arsenalen – the Swedish National Tank Museum
With innovative companies like Saab, Bofors, Volvo and Scania, the Swedes have come at engineering & design from a different angle to everybody else.
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Review: Fortified Mill at Cougnaguet
What's not to like about the pure application of turbines, gears and cogs?
Review: Swedish Army Museum, Stockholm
Armémuseum , the Swedish Army Museum, is a traditional capital city style museum in an impressive historic building in the centre of Stockholm, but although there’s lots of interesting exhibits & displays, I found it a little disappointing. It’s a shame, because they really have gone to some...
Review: Saumur Tank Museum
With over 200 armoured vehicles on permanent display, and another 680 in its inventory, the Musée des Blindés Saumur, has the largest collection of armoured vehicles in the world*. It’s been on my list of museums to visit for some time and I wasn’t disappointed. Its roots...
Hickory Aviation Museum have themselves a Prowler
On 14 May, a Grumman EA-6B Prowler was delivered to the Hickory Aviation Museum in North Carolina from the US Marines Tactical Electronic Warfare Squadron 1 (VMAQ-1). The Prowler is an amazing aircraft, but not perhaps the prettiest (!) and not one seen often exhibited in aviation...
360-degree Video Tour of HMAS Onslow
This is a rather technically impressive 360-degree AR tour of submarine HMAS Onslow, moored at the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney’s Darling Harbour. Onslow was one of six Oberon-class submarines operated by the Royal Australian Navy. She was built in Scotland and commissioned in 1968. The...
Fokker DR.1 Dreidecker
This Dreidecker (“triplane”) is a reproduction at the Luftwaffe Museum in Gatow. According to Wikipedia, 320 of these machines were built, but only three are thought to have survived WW1. Serial 528/17 was retained as a testbed by the Deutschen Versuchsanstalt für Luftfahrt (German Aviation Research Institute)...
Aerial cable car proposal for Chicago
The designers of the London Eye and Brighton i360 are involved in a spectacular new project for Chicago. The Chicago Skyline project – a new aerial cable car tourist attraction – was launched earlier this month by local businessmen, Lou Raizin and Laurence Geller, with plans from...
Review: SS Great Britain, Bristol
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...
Japanese Torpedo Bomber returns to Pearl Harbor
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...
Review: Big Pit National Coal Museum
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...
World’s Largest Sailing Ship to Launch in 2017
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...
WW1 Museum opening in Northern France this summer
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...
Review: The Spy Museum, Berlin
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,...
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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