posted 10-05-2003 06:06 PM            

I attended the exhibition .

It is set in a large modern 'hall' . It is predominantly large scale photos mounted on wall boards - with just one sectioned 'model' of the Rolls Royce RZ2 engine on display. (Its actually an apprentice's model they used for engineering practice and is not truly representative of the RZ2). There is one large cabinet that holds an original RZ2 engineering drawing and what appears to be an 'exhaust pipe' from
Blue Streak (I'll have to ID this properly later).

One or two photos I had not seen before - particularly the 'mission control' section.

There is a very odd ball "contemporary" video that has one or two scenes of Spadeadam
. It runs for 10-15 minutes,poor sound quality and does nothing to help explain Spadeadam or Blue Streak whatsoever. A lot of this video features "surveyors" holding tripods and measurement staffs on obscure bits of ironwork of Spadeadam. The 'surveyors' appear to be the artists who produced - no doubt with huge sums of Heritage Lottery Funding (?) - this video.

There are a couple of glass display cases holding some memorobilia from engineers who worked at Spadeadam.

The museum leaflet alludes to 'models' - but only the RZ2 cutaway section is on display.

If you are near to Calisle (operhaps on way to/from Scotland or even Lake District) then visit . Otherwise , a special trip is probably just not worth it. It will certainly eveoke memories for the local engineers in and around Carlisle who would have worked at Spadeadam but there is nothing 'new' or 'exciting' (apart from couple of photos) that is not seen elsewhere. Shame really.

Photography is not allowed either without prior permission. Publication of photos taken is not allowed either - so I can't show you the ones I had permission take :-(