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Thunderbolt, Bonneville, 27th August 1938, George E.T. Eyston


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#1 Fabienne

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Posted 18 August 2014 - 11:27

Dear members

 

Eyston had a timing failure on one of his rerun, probably because of the low contrast between the silver car and the blaring desert salt.. Eystons solution:

 

 

He painted a black arrow to both sides of Thunderbolt, in the mittle of the black arrow was a circle. Does anybody of you know the colour of this circle? No colour, also silver, or yellow?

 

Thank you very much in advance.

 

 

See please:   www.leylandsociety.co.uk/publications/torque/t046centre-large.jpg

 

 

Fabienne



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#2 Vitesse2

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Posted 18 August 2014 - 12:38

According to Leif Snellman's information - which I assume is sourced to Richard Holthusen's book The Fastest Men on Earth - it was yellow.

 

http://www.kolumbus....an/reco.htm#F27

 

I'm not sure he has the basic colour of the car right though. I believe it was silver in 1937, but bronze in 1938.

 

The hand-coloured postcards you can see on this page show both Thunderbolt and Cobb's Railton. Although the Railton picture is said to be 1939, Cobb didn't actually run with black sides in 1939 - only 1938. So, by extension, both cards must date from 1938 - although the original photograph of Thunderbolt was taken in 1937.

 

http://www.hotrodhot...9newsletter111/



#3 f1steveuk

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Posted 18 August 2014 - 14:41

I can safely say, as George Eyston told me himself, yellow. There has been some confusion over the years, some models have got it wrong, but 100% it was yellow.

 

Thunderbolt has never been any other colour than silver, if there's a picture of it in bronze, then it's artistic license!!



#4 Vitesse2

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Posted 18 August 2014 - 15:19

Steve - I of course wouldn't presume to contradict you since you've probably forgotten more about LSR cars than I've ever known. But there is this Meccano model ...

 

lot_b_73.jpg

 

http://www.bourneend...k/2010/12/toys/

 

However, I did find this colour film of 1938: it's mainly of Cobb but Thunderbolt does appear to be silver.

 



#5 Vitesse2

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Posted 18 August 2014 - 16:19

Oh, and Fabienne - thanks for the picture! I'm open to correction from Steve, but I think it was taken around Christmas 1938/New Year 1939, when Thunderbolt was exhibited at Selfridges in Oxford Street prior to going to New York for the World's Fair. I've found three addresses for Ashton & Mitchell's at that time: at 2 Bond Street, Mayfair Place on Piccadilly and 35 Sloane Street. The road looks to be too wide for Bond Street, but whether it's Sloane Street or Piccadilly I don't know! It doesn't seem to match any of the existing buildings on either, but the whole of Mayfair Place seems to have been demolished and rebuilt.



#6 f1steveuk

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Posted 19 August 2014 - 06:08

I've forgotten an awful lot!!  ;)

 

Toy manufacturers have caused a lot of confusion over the years with their own versions of history, for eample, I recently saw a model of a Shadow DN1, in Tyrrell ELF colours.

 

George Eyston was a lovely man, and he said that by not painting Thunderbolt they saved quite a chunk of weight. He himself had a toy, given to him by the maker, and it was gold, and I have seen models of Golden Arrow, that are chrome, and then yu get on to postcards, where someone who has never seen the subject, is asked to hand colour them. All adds to the fun!!

 

To be 100% accurate, Thunderbolt was whatever colour Birmabright Aluminium is after being hand rubbed with wirewool, it was this, as has been suggested, that caused the electric eye timing to fail registering the car as it passed, it being shiney silver.



#7 Steve L

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Posted 19 August 2014 - 12:17

Such a shame that the plans to rescue Thunderbolt's remains in NZ seem to have come to nought...



#8 ensign14

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Posted 19 August 2014 - 12:57

 

George Eyston was a lovely man, and he said that by not painting Thunderbolt they saved quite a chunk of weight.

 

He wasn't at the Eifelrennen in 1934, was he?



#9 f1steveuk

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Posted 20 August 2014 - 06:21

It does make you wonder where Mercedes got the idea, Cobb's Railton remained unpainted (apart from it's own incident with failing to set off the timing equipment and developing black sides), for silinlar reasons.

 

We rounded down the location of Thunderbolt to one of three places, only one of which is easily accesible, but as the years pass, you have to wonder what is left. and the two 'engines' have vanished as well.



#10 Roger Clark

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Posted 20 August 2014 - 07:28

A coat of paint must have made a big difference in a car weighing seven tons.

#11 Pullman99

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Posted 20 August 2014 - 12:48

We rounded down the location of Thunderbolt to one of three places, only one of which is easily accesible, but as the years pass, you have to wonder what is left. and the two 'engines' have vanished as well.

Hi Steve,

 

I have (but not for some time) seen colour footage shot on 16mm by Eyston's team at Bonneville and the colour of the circle / disc was yellow - and quite a strong yellow too if one allows for the vagaries of colour reproduction.

 

As for the current location of Thunderbolt - you never know what's there until you look!  I've just come back from Leicester where I visited the splendid new Richard III Visitor Centre which has been built on the site of the car park where the King had lain for 527 years.   Really excellent and there is the added bonus of a temporary exhibition featuring the medieval paintings of Graham Turner - makes quite a contract to his motorsport works..   The story of the search for Richard III, and the subsequent research, has been the  subject of three Channel 4 documentaries.    Not quite sure how they resolved the issue of over 500 years of unpaid parking fines, however... 



#12 f1steveuk

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Posted 20 August 2014 - 15:46

Hi Ian,

 

posted this before

 

Thunderbolt-ssadend-Wellington-NZ-1.jpg

 

sadly nothing rusts faster than metal that has got hot, then been buried!  The sidescan I saw in the 90s, looked fairly complete, but no one would tell me where it was taken. I'm still puzzled where two R types can vanish to!



#13 Fabienne

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Posted 22 August 2014 - 11:06

Dear members

 

First, I thank you all for your great help!!!

 

Pullman99 wrote, that he had seen colour footage on 16 mm film made by Eastons team at Bonneville: The circle was yellow.

 

Does anybody know this 16mm colour footage? Can I see this film anywhere on the net?

 

Again, thank you very much in advance!

Best regards

 

Fabienne



#14 Pullman99

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Posted 22 August 2014 - 13:13

Does anybody know this 16mm colour footage? Can I see this film anywhere on the net?   Again, thank you very much in advance!

 

 

Fabienne

 

The footage is located at The National Motor Museum and is 16mm film shot in 1938 (not sure by whom) but came to the archives at Beaulieu as part of the Eyston archive material held by Castrol.  It had been one of several pieces of surviving footage used in a BBC South programme on then local resident and long-time George Eyston co-driver Bert Denley and was made by one of their Producers Jpohn Coleman, in about 1980.   The original film was marked (by the BBC) as "do not use" as it had suffered quite a lot of shrinkage and was (is?) only viewable using a specialist editing table such as a Steenbeck.    To my knowledge, it has never been transferred to a video format and I don't think it has ever appeared on You Tube (but I could be wrong).

 

If you want to pursue this, you would need to contact the museum directly.   A letter or email would be best.



#15 Doug Nye

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Posted 22 August 2014 - 13:35

On the question of Thunderbolt colours - yes the circle was most definitely yellow, as above - but the shade of bright metal or 'silver' will always be open to interpretation without a sample of the original material to polish up and study first hand. Pre-war colour film often rendered bright aluminium, steel or most 'neutral' tinged alloys anything from a pale blue or even light green to a kind of cooper or bronze hue.  It all depended upon reflection from their surroundings, plus the inadequacies of the film emulsions of the time. Then again, colour transparency deterioration adds a further spoke in the wheel, as doers faded colour printing from period.  It's all perfectly easy then.

 

DCN



#16 Pullman99

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Posted 22 August 2014 - 14:59

On the question of Thunderbolt colours - yes the circle was most definitely yellow, as above - but the shade of bright metal or 'silver' will always be open to interpretation without a sample of the original material to polish up and study first hand. DCN

Thanks Doug.    Getting back to the original material is a bit tricky at the moment!

 

Actually, I had always assumed that the bodywork's silver surface was painted - it certainly appears so given the constraints of period photography - but that the modifications made in the light of running experience during 1938 could very well have been left as unpainted and polished Birmabright.  By the time the car was exhibited at the New York World's Fair in 1939 it was in exhiition condition and - as Steve has alluded to - was fitted with incomplete / show engines.  The originals are in London - one at The Science Museum in South Kensington and the other at The RAF Museum at Hendon.

 

Closer to home - although a bit O/T- there have been sporadic attempts to locate Furness Railway locomotive 115 that was steaming away on a siding at Lindal-in-Furness (then in Lancashire, now Cumbria) in 1892 when sudden subsidence caused it to fall down into what were probably old mine workings.  The crew leapt off in a hurry, by the way.   It's still there.    Most recently there was a fairly serious look at finding and raising it about 20 years ago led by Nigel Harris of Steam Railway magazine.



#17 Vitesse2

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Posted 22 August 2014 - 15:17

Just a thought - I wonder if there might be colour pictures of Thunderbolt taken in the British Pavilion at the World's Fair? Colour film - both still and movie - was far more plentiful in America in 1939 than in Britain and there are lots of colour shots on The 1939 New York World's Fair. It's a continual work in progress, so they might have something which isn't yet online.

 

[Warning: I will not be held responsible for the many hours you might spend perusing that site. Especially not the NTG Congress of Beauty & Sun Worshipers Colony  ;) ]



#18 GMiranda

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Posted 23 August 2014 - 18:02

Mr. Doug Nye, I tried to pm you but it didn't allow me. May I send you an email?



#19 Doug Nye

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Posted 23 August 2014 - 19:32

By all means.  Never a problem.

 

DCN



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#20 275 GTB-4

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Posted 23 August 2014 - 23:55

Hi Ian,
 
posted this before
 
Thunderbolt-ssadend-Wellington-NZ-1.jpg
 
sadly nothing rusts faster than metal that has got hot, then been buried!  The sidescan I saw in the 90s, looked fairly complete, but no one would tell me where it was taken. I'm still puzzled where two R types can vanish to!


If anyone knows, it is probably someone associated with Southwards Museum...try asking the question?

http://www.southward...o.nz/index.html

#21 Lee Nicolle

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Posted 24 August 2014 - 00:00

Hi Ian,

 

posted this before

 

Thunderbolt-ssadend-Wellington-NZ-1.jpg

 

sadly nothing rusts faster than metal that has got hot, then been buried!  The sidescan I saw in the 90s, looked fairly complete, but no one would tell me where it was taken. I'm still puzzled where two R types can vanish to!

Whatever the research I bet the engines were not buried with the car.



#22 GMiranda

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Posted 24 August 2014 - 01:50

By all means.  Never a problem.

 

DCN

 

Sorry, I wasn't questioning if it was w problem with you, but with the inbox only



#23 f1steveuk

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Posted 24 August 2014 - 05:00

It was Ron I was originally dealing with, I believe it was his side scan.

 

 

The "dummy" engines were still on display as late at the 1980s, but haven't been seen since, and not one museum in New Zealand says it has them.