Following the success of last year’s TV series ‘Secrets of the Transport Museum’, the sec-ond series of 10 episodes will be aired on Tuesday evenings, starting on 1st February at 8pm.
Filming started as soon as lockdown ended last summer and continued until October, featuring the cars, planes, cycles and motor-cycles that were designed, built, raced and flown at Brooklands, from its opening in 1907 until its closure in the 1980s.
The Museum is heavily dependent upon its team of several hundred volunteers, who sup-port the staff and maintain the old track, the buildings, grounds and collections.
Several of the volunteers are local to Shepper-ton and Sunbury and one such volunteer is Chris Bound (pictured), a former chartered surveyor who has always had a passion for classic cars. As soon as he retired a few years ago, he made enquiries about joining the Mu-seum as a volunteer and, after a couple of months of familiarisation, he was invited to join the ‘Motoring Team’. This group of around 15 like-minded enthusiasts looks after the vehicles and keeps as many as possible in running condition. Their work ranges from routine maintenance work, such as oil chang-es and general servicing, to complete engine rebuilds. Chris appears in Episode 5 of the new series, attempting to being an old airfield fire engine back to life.
Other volunteer groups attend to the aircraft and motorbikes. The Car Rides team pro-vides visitors with blasts up the famous Test Hill and around the Museum grounds in an eclectic variety of vehicles.
Brooklands Museum is probably unique in having such a varied collection of cars, not just on display but regularly “exercised” on the legendary track. The Motoring Team likes nothing more than being able to show the cars in action to the visiting public. Fea-tured marques include household names such as Aston Martin, Austin, Bentley, Bugatti, Cooper, Lagonda, MG and Riley. Less well known are Alvis, Delahaye, Delage, Napier and Siddeley, to name just a few.
For aircraft enthusiasts, the collection in-cludes planes from the very earliest pioneer-ing days, a Vickers Wellington bomber, a Hawker Hurricane and a Hawker Siddeley Harrier, together with numerous Vickers and BAC airliners, originally manufactured at Brooklands.
Also to be seen is the extensive collections of bicycles and motorbikes, most dating from the pre-war heyday of the Brooklands Motor Rac-ing Circuit.
The “crown jewels” of the Museum’s collec-tion are undoubtedly Delta Golf, one of the original Concorde aircraft (much of which was designed and built at Brooklands), and the mighty Napier-Railton, a huge racing car powered by a 24-litre aero engine and holder of the record for the fastest lap of the old Brooklands outer circuit.
Do please watch the TV series and, if you feel like a day out exploring the history and exhib-its of Brooklands, do come and visit.
Tune in to ‘Yesterday’ channel on Freeview 26, Sky 155, Virgin 129, FreeSat 159 or BT 26 to watch the fascinating stories of the peo-ple and their machines that played such a ma-jor role in the development of Britain’s mo-toring and aircraft industries.