My Visit To IWM Duxford and the Festival Of Railway Modelling

[dannyboy]

As some of you are aware, I have just returned from a couple of days back home visiting my brother and his wife. We went to Duxford Museum on the Friday and the Festival Of Railway Modelling on Saturday.

The holiday started with a visit to the Imperial War Museum Duxford. What a huge place.  . £16.00p each for two concession tickets which turned out to be good value. We arrived just after 11am and there was a talk and 'inspection' of the Avro Lancaster due to start very shortly which would last about one hour, so we paid extra for this. (This is not a regular feature). The talk was very interesting and then we were allowed into the fuselage. We were not allowed to go too far in due to the headroom but one did get the feeling of the size of the aircraft. One thing that surprised me was the thinness of the aircraft skin – it was probably thinner than the skin on my car door – no protection whatsoever for the crew.  The bomb bay is huge, able to carry all sorts of bombs, including of course, the 'Bouncing Bomb' as used by 617 Squadron.

We then went to see some of the other exhibition halls. There are eight in all – 'Air Space', 'Flying Aircraft', 'Air and Sea', 'Battle Of Britain', 'Conservation In Action', '1940 Operations Room', 'American Air Museum', (which has the C-47 version of my favourite aircraft of all time hanging from the roof - that sure is some strong string  ) and 'Land Warfare', plus an area called 'Historic Duxford'.  By 4pm we had just finished in the 'American' hall when it was announced that the place was shutting. On going outside, we could see why – it was getting dark and raining so we made our way back towards the café and shop near the entrance which did not close until 5pm. It took us 15 minutes to get there! As I said, the site is huge. For anyone interested in warfare and/or aviation history, I can thoroughly recommend a visit – but allow a good few hours to see everything, as we did not have time to see the 'Battle Of Britain' or 'Operations Room' exhibits in the five hours we were there. :'(. And it might be better going in Summer. 

I will add another post regarding the visit to the Festival Of Railway Modelling, probably tomorrow, but here is just a selection of the photographs I took at Duxford which, hopefully, will give you a flavour of what is on the site.









I did take other photographs of the B-17 'Flying Fortress'  shown above, but as this is a family forum, I thought I had better not show the photo's of the nose art. 

[guest311]

went there a few years ago ..

waiting for it to open and I think they closed the gates behind us as we left....

had to go back the next day to see the rest 

IIRC at that time they had a B-52  in the USAF hall, and as you walked around you could see the underneath and the top.

and as for the military kit outside up at the far end.....

[Railwaygun]

went there a few years ago ..

waiting for it to open and I think they closed the gates behind us as we left....

had to go back the next day to see the rest 

IIRC at that time they had a B-52  in the USAF hall, and as you walked around you could see the underneath and the top.

and as for the military kit outside up at the far end.....

the B-52 is so large, most of the collection is under its wings!

[chrism]

The bomb bay is huge, able to carry all sorts of bombs, including of course, the 'Bouncing Bomb' as used by 617 Squadron.

Huge the bomb bay may be, but the Upkeep Bomb and the gear to give it backspin before release wouldn't fit inside it.

The Tallboy six ton earthquake bombs IIRC did, just, but the Grand Slam ten tonners wouldn't quite - they had to take the bomb bay doors off to carry one of the latter because they wouldn't close around the bomb.

[chrism]

the B-52 is so large, most of the collection is under its wings!

It was similar when I visited Newark Air Museum quite a lot of years ago - except that then it was the Vulcan that sheltered most of the rest.

[guest311]

nit picking, or is it rivet counting 

the 'Bouncing Bomb' as used by 617 Squadron.

IIRC this required a fairing over the bomb bay, with the bomb actually outside it, together with the drive gear to rotate it...

https://uk.images.search.yahoo.com/search/images?p=dam+busters+lancaster+bomb+bay+photos&fr=mcafee&imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fc8.alamy.com%2Fcomp%2FPGDAHM%2Fnanton-canada-24th-august-2018-lancaster-bomber-with-a-full-size-steel-bouncing-bomb-spinning-in-the-bomb-bay-is-started-up-during-a-night-engine-run-at-the-bomber-command-museum-of-canada-the-event-is-part-of-a-75th-anniversary-commemoration-of-the-dambusters-raid-during-world-war-ii-rosanne-tackaberryalamy-live-news-PGDAHM.jpg#id=26&iurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.hobbysta.eu%2Fsklep_obrazki%2FTamiya%2Fta61111_3.jpg&action=click

https://uk.images.search.yahoo.com/search/images?p=dam+busters+lancaster+bomb+bay+photos&fr=mcafee&imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fc8.alamy.com%2Fcomp%2FPGDAHM%2Fnanton-canada-24th-august-2018-lancaster-bomber-with-a-full-size-steel-bouncing-bomb-spinning-in-the-bomb-bay-is-started-up-during-a-night-engine-run-at-the-bomber-command-museum-of-canada-the-event-is-part-of-a-75th-anniversary-commemoration-of-the-dambusters-raid-during-world-war-ii-rosanne-tackaberryalamy-live-news-PGDAHM.jpg#id=60&iurl=http%3A%2F%2Fs3.amazonaws.com%2Fmedias.photodeck.com%2Fc29b7c52-5b2a-11e2-9677-fd015059007e%2FDambuster_Lancaster_AJ-N_layers_mar16_xlarge.jpg&action=click

heavens knows what it did to the aerodynamics of the a/c, but perhaps that didn't matter in those days.

[guest311]

the B-52 is so large, most of the collection is under its wings!

It was similar when I visited Newark Air Museum quite a lot of years ago - except that then it was the Vulcan that sheltered most of the rest.

and many dog handlers and their furry friends, a 'delta' umbrella ...

mind you, it didn't half channel the wind under there 

[Steven B]

nit picking, or is it rivet counting 

heavens knows what it did to the aerodynamics of the a/c, but perhaps that didn't matter in those days.

The effects of aerodynamics were known about, even if the maths behind them wasn't fully developed (there's only so much you can do with a slide-rule!).

The Spitfire is a good example. The elliptical wings reduced drag compared to other single wing fighters at the time. When the first built in 1936 it was 100% flush riveted. Unfortunately, flush riveting wasn't practicle for the mass production of the aircraft; Domed headed ones were quicker and easier to fit.

A Vickers engineer went shopping and came back with a few bags of dried split peas. A few hours and a few tubes of cement later the aircraft was 100% simulated domed rivets. The effect was dramatic - the top speed of the aircraft was now 20mph slower.

By systematically scraping off peas from the wings and fuselage the engineers worked out which areas needed to be done with flush rivets and which could be done with time saving round-heads.



Steven B.

[dannyboy]

The second day of my little break was spent at The Festival Of Railway Modelling. It is only my second visit to a large show and my brother and I, (being posh there), enjoyed the day. There were enough layouts, in all scales, to satisfy me and some were in 'N'  The modelling skills on display were quite impressive. Lots of traders, both the large ones and a lot of smaller ones, and I got to talk with a couple of people from whom I have bought things over the net. Paul at P D Marsh is a very nice helpful bloke. Of course I bought some stock, a Kato locomotive, a couple of Burlington Northern wagons and four Pullman carriages. Plus I got myself some other bits for modelling. Not sure how, but I managed to not spend up! The food on offer was not too bad neither. All in all, a good day. Some photographs are on the following post -
https://www.ngaugeforum.co.uk/SMFN/index.php?topic=47395.msg606527#msg606527