Museums that disappeared, the Galaxie Museum in Brazil, created and only lasted as long as the creator, Arno Berwanger. Then they were sold off to collectors

If I understand the translation correctly, he gathered on of each color from 1967. He owned the Ford dealership in the area, and had actually sold most of them when new... he also collected special ones from 67 to the 1983 model. Photos and info from http://antigosverdeamarelo.blogspot.ca/2012/10/museu-do-galaxie.html

the Smithsonian gave away an immaculate and complete UH - 34 Sikorsky Seahorse, it wasn't shot up and battle scarred enough to represent the authentic US Marines that used such craft

Never saw combat, was a trainer, and even came with VIP steps
http://www.warbirdsnews.com/warbirds-news/smithsonian-air-space-giving-part-collection.html

A museum is gathering as many B 17 parts as they can to build a B17... from scraps!

Champaign Aviation Museum of Ohio volunteers are piecing together various plane parts to bring back to life a vintage aircraft from the World War II era. A piece was found under the porch of an elderly woman in the next town. Another part was bought from a bar owner who had it hanging in Colorado. Another piece was used as a prop in a TV show way back 1960. The tail section was from a wreck site in Alaska.

 The dozens of volunteers are piecing together the parts like a jigsaw puzzle at a small Ohio museum. Once the project is complete, a new and airworthy model of one of the world’s most famous military planes, the World War II bomber B-17.



The volunteers are working on a vintage plane based on a collection of 28,000 original Boeing Co. blueprints which the Smithsonian Institution provided generously. And they are making history.

a teacher at a local vocational school on aviation asks his students to help in the building of the Flying Fortress. The incomplete plane can be viewed by visitors when the museum is open.

The first five pieces were from five different sources. The other parts needed and cannot be found or restored had to be made from scratch. Randy Kemp, 56 years old, serves as the project manager who oversees the fabrication of new pieces. He also takes charge of around 100 volunteers who come and go. Some even come from as far as England to volunteer for the ambitious project.

Shiffer further said that the project will cost millions. Donations and fundraisers have contributed to the completion of the plane. The museum also plans to hold a benefit dinner in April at the museum. Amanda Wright Lane, a great grandniece of Orville and Wilbur Wright will be expected to appear in the dinner to give a talk.

http://www.warhistoryonline.com/war-articles/ohio-museum-volunteers-building-vintage-wwii-plane.html

I found a B-29 no one has mentioned yet, Raz'n Hell, at Castle Air Museum, Atwater California

made from the parts of 3 other B 29s, one was Raz'n Hell

The website is http://www.castleairmuseum.org/ondisplay

dWrenched George has posted his photos from his tour through the Dimitrie Leonida Technical Museum in Bucharest, Romania! Here are a couple of the most interesting to me

From his post at http://www.dwrenched.com/2014/03/dw-dimitrie-leonida-tech-museum-part-1.html

and from his Flikr page http://www.flickr.com/photos/dwrenched/sets/72157642058863545/

There is a National Museum of Funeral History in Houston Texas, and they have a Rolls Royce hearse, and other cars

All from the Facebook page they have at https://www.facebook.com/pages/National-Museum-of-Funeral-History/108616709236095?id=108616709236095&sk=photos_stream

I just posted a rail car / diner yesterday, is today too soon to post another? nah!

A vintage 1938 O’Mahony diner, the Reading Diner was originally open in Exeter, PA. In 1950 it was moved across route 422 to become the basis of Fegley’s Family restaurant.

As the restaurant grew in size, it grew around the diner, so that from the outside you could barely tell that there was a diner at the heart of the restaurant. Inside the diner offered counter and booth service. The restaurant closed in 2003 and the diner was removed before the restaurant demolished. First moved to another site, it was later donated to the Boyertown Auto Museum, where it was repaired and had its grand unveiling in the spring of 2011. They did a fantastic job!

Found on http://retroroadmap.com/spot/reading-diner-boyertown-auto-museum-great-diet/ and the museum website is http://boyertownmuseum.org/

Caister Castle Motor Museum no go for photographers is a poor show

THE museum was a treasure chest, stashed with motors beyond even the means of millionaires. On the calibre of classics alone this collection, ten minutes outside of the Norfolk Broads, should be the east of England's number one destination for car connoisseurs.

So why couldn't I recommend the Caister Castle Motor Museum?

It is, after all, a car museum in a beautiful corner of the English countryside, with the boats and the Broads on one side and the calm beaches of the North Sea coast on the other. The £10 admission price, while significantly more than you'd pay to get into, say, the Lakeland Motor Museum at Holker Hall, also gives you access to Britain's oldest brick-built castle, and a tranquil woodland trail.

That's before you get to the 170-strong collection of classic cars, which aside from being worth in excess of many millions of pounds features some of the fastest, rarest and agonisingly beautiful machines ever made. I would love to be able to give you a taster, for instance, of the museum's Mercedes 300SL Gullwing. Or let you weigh up whether you'd save up for the lovingly-preserved 1959 Mini or the Cooper S rally competitor parked next to it. Or consider which of the Rolls Royces and Bentleys you'd like parked outside your imaginary mansion, but I can't.

Unlike just about every classic car museum, show, parade and club gathering I've ever been to, Caister Castle is absolutely insistent that there is no photography of the collection.

This single shot of a Lotus 33 F1 car is all I've got to show you, because as soon as my smartphone had taken the first shot I was asked in rather stern terms to stop. To be fair to the museum staff, there was a sign at the entrance advising of the photography ban, but it was a blink-and-you'll-miss-it job and I know I wasn't the only petrolhead there frustrated by it.

"Put yourself in the perspective of some of the cars' owners", a restaurateur I got talking to long after I'd left the museum, suggested. "If you'd put your pride and joy in there and left it with somebody else to look after, would you want people taking pictures of it?"

My answer, as someone who not only likes to look at classic cars, but actually owns one too? Yes, I would, and if I didn't the last place I'd stash my automotive antique away is in a museum, right in the public eye. I can understand restrictions on flash photography in art museums, because of the damage done to the paintings. I'd even understand, from a media man's point of view, if Caister weren't too keen on commercial photography, but a total ban on all photography defeats the point of it being a museum (and one of the more expensive ones at that).

Part of the pride of owning a classic is knowing that it keeps a bit of the world's cultural and industrial heritage alive, and the least I can do in return for all the tax and insurance breaks I get is to let enthusiasts take a picture of it. To ban them is to alienate an audience interested in keeping these beautiful old cars on the road, where they belong.

Caister, to be fair, is a very diverse collection of stunning cars, looked after by proper car enthusiasts who deserve a lot of credit. Until the ban on photography - something which goes against the principle of showing off classic cars - is lifted, however, I really couldn't recommend it.

Czech out these stunning classic cars from the Prague Technical Museum

TODAY'S Life On Cars treat comes all the way from Prague, which is fascinating for all sorts of reasons if you're into car culture.

There are all sorts of reasons why you'd enjoy the Czech capital if you enjoy things with wheels and engines - some of which I'll go into tomorrow - but above all I'd reccomend a trip to the city's Technical Museum, which is a bit off the beaten tourist track but is off the petrolhead scale in terms of exhibits.

Not only do you get all the automotive oddities you'd expect to find in a distinctly Czech museum, including plenty of Skodas and Tatras, but all sorts of stunning machines produced long before the Iron Curtain went up. I'm not sure how a Jaguar SS1, an unrestored Mercedes W154 Grand Prix car and a Bugatti Type 51 ended up in Prague, but I'm glad they did. However, even they couldn't play fiddle to what, for me, was their most prized possession of all - a MKIX Spitfire, which was flown by Czechoslovak fighter pilots who served with the RAF in the Second World War.

Here are just some of the cars offering a handy distraction for any car nuts who fancy giving the Charles Bridge a miss...

Read more of Life On Cars writer David Simister's motoring reflections on Prague tomorrow (June 24).

Why the Lakeland Motor Museum is well worth the visit

ONE of the great things about the TVR Car Club's gathering in Cumbria last weekend was that I could pay another visit to the cracking Lakeland Motor Museum.

I've been before to the Newby Bridge site but not with a camera good enough to show off the cornucopia of classics they've got stashed away in there, which prove a mouthwatering draw for any motoring enthusiast, no matter what their marque of preference is.

The museum's laid out logically enough, going chronologically from the dawn of motoring right through to the Eighties and Nineties, with the treasured exhibits including the world's oldest TVR, the Cumbrian-engineered Ford Focus rally car campaigned by the late, great Colin McCrae and a delivery-mileage, and a Bentley owned by speed record ace Donald Campbell, fittingly finished off in Bluebird colours.

In fact, speaking of the Bluebird legacy the site has an entire section dedicated to the machines of Malcolm and Donald Campbell, which is worth the admission price on its own. Seeing some of the Bluebirds boats and cars brought together in the same place for the first time, if you've got a passion for speed and machines, is a stirring sight.

The museum, as my emphatically non-petrolhead girlfriend told me afterwards, something you don't even have to be into cars to enjoy...

 

More information about the museum can be found by visiting the website or by calling 015395 30400. The postcode for your satnav, if you're thinking of going, is LA12 8TA.