Air, Feature, Freight News, Road

Bringing it all back home to Bristol

[ January 4, 2018   //   Chris ]

Bristol-based Kings Heavy Haulage is helping to bring a piece of aviation and freight history back to its home city. The outsized load specialist loaded an old Bristol Type 170 Freighter in Portbury Dock for delivery to the Aerospace Bristol museum in Filton.

The aircraft originated in New Zealand and has not flown for 40 years, but will be fully restored by the museum, which is already home to the last flying Concorde and other aviation artefacts.

The Bristol Freighter, with its bulbous nose-loading door, was the forerunner not only of aircraft such as the Antonov 124 or the Boeing 747F, but also the roll-on, roll-off ferry. It offered motorists the only drive-on, drive-off means of crossing the Channel in the days when the only means of getting vehicles on and off ships was to hoist them up using the vessel’s derricks.

According to a BBC report, an Aerospace Bristol spokesman described the plane as “not museum ready” – something of an understatement, as the picture shows.

Tags: Kings Heavy Haulage