On planes and trains

It was raining when I left North Berwick. The town has been a holiday haunt for many years. I passed one symbol of this in the form of a roofless stone church. It had been the local parish church for the Church of Scotland. However, the congregation had outgrown it, so they built a new one, recycling some of the materials from the old one. However, they left the shell because they thought it would be a nice romantic ruin for the tourists! This was circa 1880!

I was heading for Edinburgh, but as it was a short day, I decided to take in the Museum of Flight which was slightly off my route but well worth the detour. Among other things, it has G-BOAA, one of British Airways Concordes on display and their pride and joy. One of the guides was able to answer a question that had been in my mind since seeing another Concorde in Seattle: why didn’t they replace the big and heavy 1960s electronics with modern ones and then add a row or two of seats when they had to refurbish the planes after the Air France crash? It seems that the idea was explored but deemed too expensive. The museum has two other jetliners that I wasn’t allowed into. A BAC-111 and a Comet 4C. The Comet was parked next to one of the two Avro Vulcan bombers which actually used weapons in anger. During the Falklands War, it had made Black Buck raids. These involved an intricate series of inflight refuelings in which mandated tankers having to refuel other tankers in order to refuel tankers to refuel the bomber. On its last mission, this bomber damaged its refueling probe on the way back. This resulted in an emergency landing in Brazil. As Brazil was a neutral with Argentinian sympathies, the plane was interned for about a week, then released on the promise that it wouldn’t be used in the conflict again.

There were a number of other interesting exhibits including a real-time video about Loganair flying Islanders from Westray in the Orkneys to Papa Westray. This flight is the record books as the shortest scheduled flight at two minutes! In the Concorde Hangar, there was the forward fuselage of a Boeing 707 with an exhibit about the "glory days" of jet travel, particularly from the crews’ perspective. I was very surprised that in those days, in first class you not only got free drinks but also free cigarettes! I think I should have expected that one, particularly as I flew over in business class this time. Combined with the presentation of the elite clientele of the Concorde, it gave me a view of wealthy travellers. There was also a Panavia Tornado F3 on display. I was able to look under its fuselage and examine the recesses where it had carried air-to-air missiles semi-conformally. I had long been curious where the top fins went when missiles were carried like that. It turns out that there is a deeper bit of the recess to accommodate the fins.

Anyway, I enjoyed the museum longer than I expected. Consequently, I was behind schedule to get to cousin Lady Mary’s flat in Edinburgh and as more rain was threatening (it had cleared), I opted to take the train from Prestonpans into Edinburgh. Mary made me welcome and after supper, urged me to partake of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. I took in a stand-up routine nominally about sport by James Nokise, a Kiwi of Samoan extraction. The jokes were good but the venue was overly hot. I am currently in the Cumberland Bar from which I have previously blogged. That time, the UK was temporarily without a Prime Minister.