Week ending 11th March

Has been a busy week on the road and in the barn/workshop.

On the rental side we had two days with Red Bull's film crew in London and two days with Sainbury's finance 

Day 1 

Red bull Central London film studios 

Day 2

Red Bull filming around london

Tower Bridge -

London Eye -

Day 3 

Sainsbury's Finance St Albans

Day 4

Sainsbury's finance - Teddington 

hollywood glamour - east london style

Photo shoot location : MC Motors -

Inside : Rooms filled with props run by Castle Gibson   -

Outside storage -

Shoot with News International (The Sun) gets under way with my Airstream Caravanner 

-

I take the opportunity to look around Dalston -

 Turkish cake shop -

Italian  -

The Rio Cinema below, a gem, I watched Schindler's list here many years ago -

Back inside I notice a prop that I had seen out on location last year -

Feb 12 London

Oct 11 Kent

carroll county md........

I purchased this Overlander from the original owners up in Ohio where it had peacefully spent the last 55 years. 

Above : The Jones family with their trailer in mid fifties. 

Sadly the transportation to the port went wrong. The transport guy turned out to be operating unlicensed and uninsured, and the trailer got stranded in Carroll county MD.

Above : Trailer in Carroll county MD, awaiting transport to port by a bonafide company

I was having difficulty getting possession of the trailer from the transport guy and had to call in the help of the chief of police in Tanneytown. They sent a couple of officers down and within a 24 hours the trailer was safely moved to opposite the Carroll county Sheriffs office  for safe keeping (see below).

At first I thought the best thing would be to sell the trailer in the states. But  decided to fly over and personally arrange for safe transport to port

Carroll county turns to be have been founded by an Irish guy  Charles (O') Carroll and I was given the VIP treatment -

A

Above : Dated mattress tag, Sept 1955. 

 Above : nice single bunk layout

By the end of day  one I had trailer loaded on the way to Howard County for an overnight stay before going to port the next morning - 

Below trailer heading out of Carroll and into Howard county -

It happened to be groundhog day, was six more weeks of winter -

So with trailer at port I jumped on the the next flight home to the UK, via a seat at Harrys bar with a very cool Washington Duluth airport terminal -

All in a days work.......

departing to arrive or arriving to depart.........

the long and the short of it.....

Work on the 56 Sovereign / Trailer 1234 is coming along very well. 

There has been a slight change of plan, our client has decided to downsize to a mid 50's tandem Overlander and I have inherited the Sovereign again which will need to be put back together.

We have been in talks with Bob Heist from the  Nebraska WBCCI unit. It turns out that this actual trailer was used  for unit formation meeting back in the late 50's early 60's and many of older members can remember the trailer. With a little luck Bob has managed to get Airstream to agree to allocate 1234 to me and I am now a member of their unit!

If and when I sell the trailer I will transfer the number with the trailer.

We have replaced the front section of the chassis and carried out extensive repairs. Note the extended front frame to allow for better turning clearance and also make room for a custom gas box -

\

Chassis flipped and prepaired, we've bolted on a marine ply that will have an undercoating of bitumen to insure a long and heathy life on the road -

28ft ft of belly pan prepaired and ready to be riveted into place -

 Package arrived from Airstream Inc -

Full size drawings

A friend mentioned to me that back in the 50's Airstream could provide full size drawings for the customer to walk around and mark out changes on to create a custom Airstream interior.

Not sure how true this is but I thought it sounded like a great idea and decided to do the same -