Yesterday's Airlines: Back and Better than Ever

If you had a 3 car garage why the hell would you waste it by parking cars in it? I am thrilled to say that the big house move went smoothly and Yesterday's Airlines finds itself operating from a new hangar space in West Auckland. And what a space it is. One of the reasons for purchasing the previous house was the space afforded by the hobby room but that pales into comparison with the new setup. It's taken a few weeks to unpack everything but now the space is ready to be unveiled.

The new house is a substantial improvement on the old one both in terms of size, useable space and finish. Attached to the downstairs is a drive through 3 car garage with garage doors at both ends and internal access to the house. Best of all it has plenty of space and excellent lighting. The previous room, which had a low ceiling, always suffered from dreadful light and it was something I was never fully able to overcome. It was also split into separate partitioned areas. The wide open spaces of the new garage also gives the opportunity to show off the collection in a more unified way.

It came with a set of very useful built in cupboards, which not only are a godsend for storing the huge number of boxes, but also act as a great base from which to start the shelving. The roughly 5 metre long shelved area is split into 5 portions with a 2:1:1:1 ratio split. The lowest level is 60cm deep, the next up 40cm deep, the next up 30cm deep and the topmost level varies from 20-30cm deep.

You can see the layout in the below diagram. You can see the massive expansion in my Chinese fleet in the past few years!

The new space has also finally given me the opportunity to display some of the wonderful stickers and posters David Williamson (aka Kitty Hawk 1903 on DAC) sent me. Thanks David - they look awesome on my son's old chest of drawers (now used for box storage) and on the walls. Sadly even in this space there isn't any room for the huge Canadian poster - which will have to ba part of a future blog post instead.

I have been lucky to be able to acquire bits of orphan furniture as they have become surplus to requirements in the main house, so the new space is well furnished with rugs, tables and sofas plus 3 chests (again used for box storage). The new space is dry and damp free and well aired. Hopefully dust won't be too much of a problem but it's a small price to pay for the opportunity.

I have also taken most of the old shelving modules used for housing the large USA component of my collection, which has been recreated almost as it was before albeit with the addition of an extra unit. This has allowed some of the models to be moved up away from the floor (and replaced by books) as it was these models that always got the most dusty. Below you can see the airline layout and how it has panned out in practice:

To the right of these units is the rest of the US collection organised as follows:

Behind the model display area there are three old tables which I can now use as bases for my model airport dioramas. This area is still a work in progress but I'll have much better capability to move around the models and with much better lighting. Xin Long and Wright Field can be recreated much as they were before but Dowse National will get a complete rebuild in time.

This new space will hopefully keep me going for years to come and provide an able base from which to continue the Yesterday's Airlines journey. If you find yourself down here in Auckland give me a shout and I'm sure I can provide a personal tour! In the next few months I'll endeavour to do some videos of the different areas of the collection and refocus on the different fleets.