[SEL] Portland Postscripts

[Listerdiesel]

Just a few thoughts and notes from our time at the show and some of
the other things we did that week:

1) South Bend, Studebaker Museum.
Great place, needs a bit of organisation and probably more funding to
bring the standard up, but well worth the visit and the displays were
good. Lighting for photographic purposes is not good at all.

2) Amish centers.
We visited two places on our trip, both were very interesting to us as
we had no preconceptions about the ways or beliefs of the Amish. We
bought some books back with us, but don't expect to see a sudden
conversion!

3) Auburn/Cord/Duesenberg Museum.
Next to the show, this was probably the highlight of the visit. The
museum and its displays exceeded our expectations by a huge amount.
Again, lighting was not good for photography purposes, but you
couldn't fault the standard of the displays. The Bugatti engine
upstairs is worth a look, plus the big in-line aircraft engine (not
Bugatti) in the same room. It doesn't get much better than this.

4) Portland.
Still the definitive show for our money, the revised show areas were a
little confusing at first, and we both suffered a bit from walking the
grounds more than once around. Quite a few hidden gems in the parts
sale areas, and the engine stuff was marvellous.

We took a LOT of pictures, then went back and took a lot more, so we
have a few weeks of work getting them all sorted and edited.

List folks went out of their way to make us feel at home, this being
our third visit we are at last starting to know people a little better
which helps when you are talking to them, but we also had a load of
unknown people coming up to us during the show and asking how we were
and what we thought of the show.

5) General Stuff.
The trip went well, we had no transport problems at all, the hire car
performed faultlessly, we managed to negotiate the petrol pumps this
time round (!) and people were really friendly wherever we went, so a
big thanks to all the people we met.

Dolly and Jim had problems with British Airways during the dispute at
Heathrow, but we flew American Airways again, and had excellent
service. We noticed that all our bags had been opened on our return
home, but as always nothing was missing and there was a note in each
case to indicate that they had been inspected. We thoroughly approve
of such measures and also the Sky Marshalls who ride the AA planes
these days.

6) Goodies we brung home :-))
Maytag spares for Kim Siddorn and Nick Highfield were the main haul at
the show, we could have spent a LOT of money on desirable engines,
especially the little Jaegers and the Bovard & Seyfang engine that we
saw on a trailer in the sale area. Shipping aside, we could have
bought two or three nice engines there and then, but as always we have
other things committed for the coming year which will take our savings
up, but there's always 2007...

American Bosch and Fairbanks-Morse magneto manuals made up a lot of
weight, the AB manual is nearly four inches thick! but contains a lot
of info for the website at a future date.

A few nice book selections from the USAF Museum will provide some
interesting reading; The B-70 Valkyrie, SR-71 Blackbird and a book of
wartime aircraft production pictures made it into the luggage, our
museum membership discount easing the pain a little.

The museum itself is expanding fast, and the Presidential Aircraft
section is due to be moved to the main museum soon, which will
eliminate the bus trip across the field which takes up so much trip
time.

Our Mavica FD-97 took a bit of a hammering this trip, but we didn't
have any problems, one battery lasted a day and we wrote a CD-full of
pictures to bring back.

One thing we would like to do, is to bring our Ruston & Hornsby diesel
over to the USA for a show tour. It's not easily done and would take
some arranging, but it is something we are actively considering. It
would need 3 months worth of travel time, so we would have to think on
how we could arrange that, but it is possible. Watch this space!

Peter 
-- 
Peter A Forbes
Email: listerdiesel at gmail.com
Web: www.oldengine.org/members/diesel