Posts Tagged ‘Queen Mary’
Glasgow’s Queens prepare for final voyage to Riverside
The three largest ship models in Glasgow Museums’ collection – the Queen Mary, the Queen Elizabeth and the QE2 – are preparing to make their final voyage. In the next few weeks, they’ll make the last leg of their epic journey from the Clyde Room at the Museum of Transport to the new Riverside Museum.
Like all of the ship models in the collection, these three ships are incredibly fragile. Unlike the others, however, they are huge! These are hefty models that weigh up to 258kgs each, and took a team of six people to carefully move them out from their display case in the Clyde Room and onto maneuverable skates.
Specialist contractors from Constantine carefully lifted them into custom-built wooden crates using fabric straps. The models were then covered in protective sheeting, the crates built up around them, and the interiors filled with packing to prevent the models moving. Soon they’ll be forklifted down into the main hall then loaded onto a lorry and taken to the Riverside Museum.
Conservation update from the Clyde Room
There’s been an awful lot of activity in the Clyde Room recently, highlighted in Iona’s slideshow and Picture of the Week. Among all the packing and moving, the last of the ship models are being conserved. All the ship models for the “big” displays have been conserved; what’s left are the largest models.
The three Queens, the biggest ship models in our collection, have been left until last to conserve. The logistics involved in moving them and then storing them once conserved meant it was easier to leave them and work on the smaller models first.
It took eight people to move Queen Mary out of her case and on to a work table!
I’ve spent the past four days swabbing the decks and checking Queen Mary’s condition. The key to working on such a large ship model is not to be put off by the size: she’s made of the same materials as many of the other ship models and due to her size it’s sometimes easier to access areas that are hard to reach on other, smaller models. That said, when you’re sat at the bow with a cotton bud it does seem an awful long way to the stern!
Queen Elizabeth is next on the list followed by Queen Elizabeth II. Once conserved, they’ll be installed at Riverside along with many of the other ship models from Glasgow Museums’ collection.
Riverside Museum 