Already we are into February – where has January disappeared to!? After last week’s AGM it was decided that the volunteers would have a different day from the normal Saturday museum shenanigans as the lack of personnel meant that it would be risky to be working at two separate locations in case of an emergency.
A small handful of volunteers and the boss met for a social working breakfast at a local, well-known, coffee shop instead of travelling all the way to the storage facility at Scunthorpe. As you might expect, after the coffee and bacon flowed, the group put the world to rights and covered alot of ground on various topics and scopes of work that the volunteers are about to face in the not so distant future should Scampton Holdings Ltd’s bid to buy the former RAF Base at Scampton prove to be successful.
The work taken away by museum staff in previous weeks was also collated back into a single place including a cluster of vehicle batteries which had been charged at home after being removed from the vehicles. This has seen a boost of much needed power for the historic fleet which will come in useful when we come to wake the fleet to move them later in the year. A positive outcome after we thought they were beyond revival after the spate of cold weather fronts that have moved across the UK lately. There was also an addition of a new pair of batteries for the RB44. All of these will be fitted in the coming week.
One of the volunteers also brought over a recent online auction purchase for the boss to review – an original British Air Forces of Occupation (Germany) Command Fire Service Bulletin No.6, which proved to be a very interesting read. This details the operation and disposition of vehicles across Germany in the immediate aftermath of World War Two which includes operational references of the Fordson ’45 Monitors and the K-6 Gas Trucks. We also received another pair of gloves to the museum collection and a colourful pin depicting a Mk-7 in Gibraltar.
With the majority of artifacts packed away awaiting a permanent home. The museum does not very often report on such items, so we thought a change away from the vehicles would be welcome. The collecting never stops!
