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Awards and Loans

The Trust offers financial assistance to individuals or groups to carry through restoration or improvement projects to completion. The Trust also invites enquiries about sponsoring one or more Awards.

Tony Agar

Our Preservationist of the Year became involved, or captivated, by the de Havilland Mosquito while a member of the Air Cadets. 

The Mosquito is an unusual aircraft in that it was made largely of wood, from components created in furniture factories and glued together in aircraft factories in England, Canada and Australia.  It was designed in 1938 and entered service in 1941; the last retired from service in 1963.  Fitted with 2 Rolls Royce Merlin engines, on introduction it was one of the fastest operational aircraft in the world with a top speed of more than 400 mph.  It served many purposes - fighter, bomber, pathfinder, anti-submarine, reconnaissance; and British Overseas Airways Corporation used Mosquitoes in civilian markings to bring ball bearings - and the physicist Neils Bohr - from neutral Sweden.  7781 were produced.

The Mosquito was designed at Salisbury Hall, now the de Havilland Aircraft Museum, which National Transport Trust members have visited on several occasions.

Tony Agar began collecting Mosquito parts in 1970, though not, at that time, with the intention of building a complete aircraft.  Small components to begin with, but then an undercarriage here, a cockpit section there, and later a fuselage which had sat out in the weather for many years at MGM Studios in Borehamwood after use in the film 633 Squadron. 

POY Collage 

Other components kept turning up in Scotland, South Wales, Blackpool, Worksop, Chorley, Kidderminster, Wigan, Kings Lynn, Warrington and then later Canada, Australia, New Zealand.  One engine nacelle section is from one of the BOAC ball-bearing runners which crashed in August 1943 in Scotland.  By the time Tony moved the project to the Yorkshire Air Museum at Elvington in 1986, it was definitely a restoration effort rather than a collection of parts.  He had re-spliced the cockpit to the fuselage, and rebuilt the centre fuselage section with spruce, Douglas fir, plywood and balsa wood laminate.  From one good wing he was able to recreate another less good wing.  This involved 40 lengths of 4 x 2 Douglas fir and 10,000 brass screws. 

It was during 2017 that Tony decided to move the Mosquito from Elvington to the Lincolnshire Aviation Heritage Centre where there was the  specialist support needed to get the engines running.  Tony ended up with two matching engines as a result of a complicated international three-way engine swap/ purchase, but the set-backs on the port engine were numerous and inevitably expensive.  In September 2019 the two engines were run up together for the first time and the aircraft now bearing the identification NJ711 was taxied for the first time.

By any standard, even by those of previous Preservationist of the Year winners, this is an amazing 50 year achievement.

 

 

The National Transport Trust makes loans to groups, associations and individuals at advantageous rates for the restoration of artefacts - whether mobile or part of the infrastructure.  Applications must be supported by a simple business plan which demonstrates the financial viability of the project. A sample business plan is available on request from the Treasurer.

 

The Trust does occasionaly make Awards for schemes which further the preservation movement. Again if you wish further information please contact the Treasurer.

 

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National Transport Trust, Old Bank House, 26 Station Approach, Hinchley Wood, Esher, Surrey KT10 0SR