9 beautiful 'Heavies' land at Heathrow

[Belle]

I never grow tired of watching aircraft take-off and land and watching clips from cockpit/cabin interiors during flight. The marvel of flight never ceases to amaze me and I'll never take it for granted. I can't help thinking of the Wright Brothers when I watch these and how cruel life is that they never lived to see what would happen. I've travelled many times on the A380 'Heavy' (Emirates) and though I grow terribly bored with the long stretches of 14 hours, even in Business Class with its attendant extras, as soon as I get off I turn around in wonder at what's just happened.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjITBgpA1AI

[John F]

When we were kids my brother and I loved to watch trains and airplanes. Since then planes have lost their magic for me, but I still enjoy riding trains and watching them. Especially the named streamlined passenger trains of the Norfolk and Western railroad, with headquarters in my mother's home town of Roanoke, Virginia. I never got to ride the Cavalier, the Pocahontas, or the Powhatan Arrow, but I often saw them arrive and depart in Roanoke.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ABIgY9wCpc

As you can see, people still gather to watch trains, especially this one. Of course the steam engine is no longer in service but it still makes occasional excursion runs, and people come from all over to ride.

When it's practical, I still ride the rails instead of flying.

[Belle]

Adorable!! We both love trains too - looking at them and riding them. These magnificent giants of the steam era were the workhorses of the developed world. We have a railway festival here every year in April with lots of engines on display and an old style steam engine, restored, in a race with a tiger moth airplane. People turn out in their thousands!!

I take your point about riding the rails - of course you SEE the country you're in - but it's the miracle of flight which never stops amazing me.

Even something like this, as a reminder of living in Austria, we both waste our time watching!! Wunderbah. This is the high speed section of track between Vienna and Sankt Pölten.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4oj7jukVbM

My husband's biggest enthusiasm is ocean liners, though.

[jbuck919]

I've flown many times in my life, including on wide-bodied jets, but my first memory almost put me off it for life. Anyone ever flown on a Douglas DC-7 from California to Guam? I believe there is one in the Smithsonian now. I was hopelessly airsick at the age of seven for something like 13 hours, and in those days all servicemen (well, not my father, who years later said it was a nightmare for him too) smoked, and there was no control over it in the cabin. Then there was the frightening exhaust from a prop plane, which at nighttime looks as though the engine is on fire. All I can say, like Richard Nixon, is that my mother was a saint. Now don't get me started on the typhoons.

[Belle]

That journey and your airsickness sounded like an absolute horror. Is there anything worse than relentless travel sickness? My husband flew on the Super Constellation in 1953 and can remember the flames coming out of the back of the engines (Wright R-3350) upon landing. He said they were warned about this by the crew. Smoking on aircraft!!? Dreadful.

I have flown on the Douglas DC10 (BA, across the USA in 1971) and the Douglas DC-3 in regional Australia in the 1960s. You had to walk uphill to your seat as the plane sat on its 'haunches' on the tarmac!! The most unfamiliar modern aircraft I've flown on was with SAS in 2015; the Bombardier, from Hamburg to Copenhagen. It was literally a tube.

What luxury we have today compared to those times. And what about the hapless Comet?