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Das Verkehrshaus in Luzern - 10Feb07

A trip to Switzerland brought the opportunity to visit the famous Verkehrshaus in Luzern. That was the good part... The bad part: I had only an hour!
So for now I concentrated on my main interest; vintage planes.
The other exhibits got a glimpse: trains, race cars, boats (something I wouldn't have expected in this landlocked country) and deserve a revisit at some future date.

Following directions to the City Centre of Luzern (Lucerne), we quickly picked up signs directing us to this museum, which is located in a build up area on the border of the Vierwaldstätter See.
I quickly went for the Douglas DC-3 here on display, registered HB-IRN. It has construction number 16645, which was corrected to 33393 when duplication of construction numbers was found to have been made (confusing times, WW2..). It is a C-53B.
It should not be confused with the DC-3 on display in Munich,Germany: a fake HB-IRN but also in Swiss Air Lines livery.
C/n 33393 joined the USAAF as 44-77061 upon delivery on 28May45, but was soon transferred to the RAF as KN683 on 20Jun45.
It became HB-IRN for Swissair on 28Mar47 and has been preserved here since 01Jul72.

This DC-3 (C-53B) has been preserved rather well, though the climate must be hard on this vintage propliner.

Both the DC-3 and the Convair Coronado were moved during March 2007 to a different location with the museum, to make place for a special exhibition, celebrating 125 year Gotthardbahn.
Here is HB-IRN on Airliners.net, in the new setting.

This big jetliner is a Convair CV990 Coronado, registration HB-ICC.

Convair developed the CV880 and CV990 but found the airliner market preferring the Boeing 707 and Douglas DC-8 aircraft. These Convair jets were capable of a high cruising speed but against a price: carrying less passengers and payload. Only 48 CV880s (designed for the domestic market) were built.
The CV990 was an improved design, for international routes (with higher capacity but still capable of high performance), but only 31 ran off the production line.
More on Wikipedia.org

The Fokker F.VIIa, registration HB-LBO.
It must be one of Swiss Air Lines earliest aircraft as this aircrafttype stems from the 1920s and 1930s.
By googling I found the serial quoted as c/n 5005. Since I only knew about the DC-3 and the CV990, this find was certainly a bonus and adds much to my appreciation of this transportation museum.
The Fokker F.VII was a small airliner produced by Anthony Fokker's Atlantic Aircraft Company, and later by other companies under licence. The original experimental design of 1924 was a single-engined high-winged monoplane, but Fokker modified it with two additional engines. The 8- to 12-passenger F.VII was the aircraft of choice for many early airlines, both in Europe and the Americas. More...

Lockheed L.9C Orion, registration CH-167.
It looks more like a fighter aircraft than an airliner!
The Lockheed Orion Model 9 was a single engine passenger aircraft built in 1931 for commercial airlines. It was the first airliner to have retractable landing gear and was faster than any military aircraft of that time. More....

More photos of my visit on my Flickr.com account

External links:
Das Verkehrshaus (english)
Paul Nann's visit to the Transportation Museum

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