RC Tank Warfare community hobby forum

I was chatting to a guy yesterday who is one of those super clever engineering types, who is into 1/6 scale tanks. He told me the following:

A few years ago a well known 1/6 scale manufacturer was contacted by Bovington Tank Museum. They had 7ft long Churchill Bridgelayer that has been donated to them many, many decades ago. It had been sat on a shelf for all of those years but they understood that it was RC, and wondered if it could be renovated to full working condition. It was eventually handed over to the guy that I was talking to.

He took a look, and found that it was all hand built back in 1950. Machined brass roadhweels, bakelight switches, huge old motors etc etc. He set about figuring out how it all worked, and after much poking about realised that whoever built it way back then had created their own RC system. It was simple, but it worked. The ingenuity that had gone into the model in an age when the only technology that existed was pretty much a knife and fork was mind boggling. Stepper switches to emulate channels, an on/off switch that was activated by inserting the machine gun, the pressure vessel that acted as a pneumatic driver etc. Everything was hand built, including the one channel rc setup.

He could have pulled all of the old electrics out and installed new kit, but the brief was to get it running as its creator had intended. The original battery was still in there?

He posted a few messages on their forum about the project, and low and behold, a guy in Sweden then reveals that he has old copies of Model Engineering magazine from 1951 that have a feature on the same model? He now knew who built it, a guy in Chichester apparently.

Then a guy from the States comes up with pics of it as well.

To cut a long story short, the Bridgelayer was returned to full working order, he showed me a video of it...it's huge and perfectly detailed. It runs, the bridge all works etc, and it is all nice and smooth. He was understandably very proud of what he had achieved, and had restored something that is part of modelling history.

It was handed back to Bovington, who stuck it on a shelf in the archive storeroom...apparently they get hundreds of models donated to them in wills, and can't display them all, so they go into storage. Some are sold and the proceeds donated to the museum funds.

Perhaps someone should start an RC tank museum??

Museum yes, and the history of RC itself would make for a worthy attraction. My ex-wife's grandfather use to build scale model trains; the sort you can ride on. He served his time as a motor engineering apprentice, before emerging as a fully fledged motor engineer. These days, they'd call him 'mechanic' but, in reality, his training; including the use of lathes, milling machines, the forge and so on was infinitely more advanced than that of the modern greasemonkey, and equipped in to move into other fields of engineering. Sadly, we won't see the likes of 30s 40s and 50s
apprenticeships again..nor the exceptional craftsmanship (or is it 'craftspersonship' these days?) ever again. Apprentice burger flippers are not part of our industrial heritage; but will be all too present in our 'service driven' future..
The three trains he built (ex-G-father-in-law,), out of brass copper and steel, were all functional replicas of famous steam trains, and are worth a fortune these days.

I think if we all sent Bovy a letter saying we would like to see the model working and on display it mite push them to do if especialy if it gets them extra visitors

I'd like to clap eyes on this 1/6 Churchill engineering marvel myself. I saw some wonderful scale model tanks (shelf queens) in the Swiss Military Museum at Full..., but nothing like that.
The example I gave of model trains, was to highlight the hard earned skills of that generation of precision engineers; skills being dumbed out of existence, by digital alternatives, and by 'outsourcing'. I also saw an interesting feature recently, about the WW2 radio control device used to control the 'drone' bomber being tested by Joseph kennedy, brother to John F Kennedy. Joseph was atomised when a safety switch went rogue, but it made me wonder just how long we have had remotely controlled radio devices.
Pressure on Bovy would be one approach, in relation to the tank; but I must check out whether there is any museum dedicated to RC models and if not- why not.

Hi If you want to see some great models take a look here https://www.youtube.com/user/flammethrower/videos
Flamme has built LCT ,LCM, DD Sherman ,Sherman Crab, Churchill Crocodile, Churchill bridgelayer plus other models . He makes loads of scratch built stuff all of them work , yes the Crocodile shoots flames out and the DD swims.

regards pete