Buses, Cars, Planes and Concorde

Well despite the miserable weather today, we have had a lovely family day out at Brooklands which is a Museum at an old Motor Course in Surrey.

The Museum consists of exhibits of different racing cars and memorabilia throughout the ages including a Formula 1 Simulator that Seb and David had a go on.  Seb did quite well but David kept getting distracted and crashing.

Also there is a London Transport exhibition of buses from back when they were horse-drawn bus carriages to the current day versions.

Nathaniel loves buses so it was great for him to look around and climb onboard a couple of vehicles.

A particular highlight for Nat was the model Tram set - he sat watching in fascination for quite a while.

We had to duck in and out of the various hangers and buildings to avoid the torrential rain and thunder and lightening.

There were also several planes in one hangar that we could look at, ranging from the first ever man made flying machines, through the old bi-planes and planes with the old wooden propellers to World War II Bomber planes including one plane which had ditched into the Loch ness in 1940 after engine failure.  It was not found again until 1976 and was not recovered and salvaged until 1985.

Outside there were some commercial aircraft including a cargo transportation plane which had even been used to fly race-horses.

 

The Sultan of Oman's private plane from the 1970s was really interesting as it was great to see the luxurious seating area and two double bedrooms at the front of the plane.

 

Nat and Seb were invited to sit in the cockpit and take hold of the controls!

There was also a British Air Ferry plane from 1938 with copies of the old dinner and drinks menus - much nicer food than you ever get served on a commercial flight these days!

However, the highlight of our visit was the Concorde experience which commenced with a talk on Concorde explaining all about the special features of Concorde - many of which I had never fully realised and about it's life, usage and decommissioning. Like apparently only 20 Concordes were ever made, ten in France and ten in the UK.  Most of all the concorde parts were manufactured at Brooklands - hence their having one of the ten UK planes in their museum.

Concorde was obviously capable of travelling at 60,000 feet just near space.  Usually anyone flying at this height would wear a spacesuit but concorde's passengers usually wore business suits.  Most of concordes passengers were business men not celebrities as they could travel at three times the speed of sound (Mach 3) and could travel between New York and London and do a days business before travelling back in the same day (taking into account the time difference of course)

The Concorde's iconic dipped nose was apparently developed to counter the fact that the plane had to tilt back to land to slow the plane down sufficiently from the fast speeds it could travel at.  Obviously when the plan tilted back the pilot could not see so they included a design feature whereby the nose would dip down for take-off and particularly landing.

There was a danger that the pilot might tilt the plane back too far and hence damage the tail of the plane - there was quite a small margin of error but the underside of the body of the plane is much higher off the ground than traditional planes and there is also a set of wheels that descend from the tail as a safety measure in case the pilot slightly misjudges his landing.

There was a problem which cause one plane to explode and which took the plane out of service for a while but that was fixed and resolved.  I hadn't realised that one of the main economic problems which led to Concorde's demise was that many of Concorde's regular flyers (about 60 of them) unfortunately were wiped out in the 2001 Terror attack on the Twin Towers in New York.

After the talk we were taken on board Concorde from the rear of the plane where we walked through what would have been the baggage hold.  On board we could see the tiny little windows that passengers would have had - this was interesting to compare to the 1938 plane which had huge oval windows big enough to act as individual escape routes for each passenger.

We watched a short film about Concorde and then went further forward on the plane to see the different types of seating that had been in service on Concorde in each decade from the 1970's, 1980's, 1990s and 2000's.

Then at the front of the plane we all took our seats for a further film showing what it would be like to fly on concorde together with loud speakers to simulate the sound that passengers would have experienced at different key stages of the journey.  We were really lucky to have secured front row seats.

We all had a great day out and learned lots too.

On the way back to the car Nat could not resist juming and splashing in a big puddle, drenching his trousers, socks, and shoes.

Fortunately I know my son very well so had brought an entire change of clothes and shoes out with us.