Saturday 21 July 2018

310. Overload

Swiss Museum of Transport - Lucerne

Obviously, I was very keen but the Giantavaners are not known for prompt starts. The result was that we only got a couple of hours at the museum and it was absolutely fantastic. Sited in old railway workshops there was a huge amount of space and it is well laid out and extensive. The railway section alone could have occupied me all day. There were even driving simulators that could be used.

Jacqueline left us to it and walked into town.

Being an old workshop you could go underneath to see the inner pistons and drive

Origional cog engine
Vertical boiler to keep steam tubes immersed on changing gradient
 Cut away, an engineer operated it while a voice over in english described the process
In this video the wheels are being driven, not the cog
Once the younger three say this manual metal processing plant
they did not want to venture further.
Iris and I ran around the rest independently.

Starfighter, fast but not manoeuvrable
How did it fly? 
The pitot hole is actually about 5mm in diameter
Aviation hall was overwhelming

Convair 990 - Coronado
Narrow body - fast, 1,000kph
No overhead lockers, just room for your hat
First class 
Lounge 
Navigator, Captain, Co, Engineer
Navigator had a remote sextant through the roof


There was a mock auction and the robot would collect and deliver the car
Iris took me through this amazing maze
(not my snap)

Old tourism display was fascinating
Early steam punk
Tunnel boring cutting head - very impressive

Then the museum closed Roman was absolutely gutted that he had missed seeing everything. Felt really sorry for him.

4 comments:

  1. I like this line from the Wikipedia, regarding the Convair:
    "In 1963, the 990A was reported to burn 13,750 pounds per hour of fuel ... In contrast, a modern Boeing 737 MAX carries up to 200 passengers and burns around 5,000 pounds per hour".

    ReplyDelete
  2. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Memories flooding back for me I had forgotten about this museum (it was 1981 when we visited). The only exhibit I remember was a ride, where after strapping you in, two old minis were smashed head on, with large dampers to take the impact. I suppose it was so the unsuspecting participants could experience whiplash. For some reason my Dad (physics teacher) would not let anyone go on on it..

    ReplyDelete
  4. As if the normal F104 wasn't bad enough, why not strap a rocket on the tail and fly it to the edge of space. What could possibly go wrong? http://www.chuckyeager.org/nf-104-crash/

    ReplyDelete

Please feel free to comment as I often feel like I am writing in a vacuum.