On 16 November a team of 17 from the boat squad managed to escape on a mission to Bristol. The mission was to visit the Bailey Caravan factory and take the opportunity to visit the new MShed Museum at the Bristol docks. Head of escape committee and organiser of this excellent day out was Mike Selwood. Transport for the day was minibus. Lack of GPS on board meant chartwork and Dead Reckoning. Navigating to the Bailey factory in the centre of Bristol proved to be quite interesting. The up-side was we had excellent views of the underside of Clifton Suspension Bridge, from all directions, many times ... many many times!
Our Grand Host at Bailey was Patrick Howard. Pat is a boat restoration volunteer and when not bailing the bilges of some museum exhibit he manages to find time to be Chairman of Bailey Caravans of Bristol. Patrick and his team gave us a full morning which included a presentation on the company, a detailed guided tour of the facilities and working lunch with his management team. The factory is in the heart of Bristol and employs around 400 people, mostly living locally, making Bailey an important part of the community.
Bailey have manufactured caravans in Bristol since 1948 but don’t get the impression that this is an old style company. This is a state of the art organisation and facility, a leader in their field and producer of some very impressive caravans and motorhomes. In recent years they have developed and patented new lightweight, high strength body panels and body construction methods. This, together with highly efficient, high quality production lines and support systems has given them a major product advantage in the market. They have also recently started a new business by developing motorhomes and successfully bringing these to the market achieving major sales at this year’s product launch at the NEC.
During the tour of the facility we saw :-
• Modern methods of handling and control of material into and throughout the factory
• The manufacture and machining of body panels using CAD/CAM and the latest machine tools
• The rolling assembly line where discrete teams assembled the chassis and body panels and the various equipment assemblies - testing the work as the line rolled on. (They had some clever, effective methods of maintaining the optimum production line speed).
• The finished caravans and motorhomes rolling off the production line. (The line can produce a caravan every ten minutes!)
As we went around Bailey, we were all impressed with the equipment and facilities but, without doubt, most impressive was the energy and motivation of the workforce at all levels and the way they were working as a team. There are not many companies of this size where the Chairman and MD are on first name terms with the lads on the production line. It was obviously a great working relationship. Patrick is quite rightly extremely proud of the people and their achievements at Bailey and we thank him and Nick Howard (MD) and the Bailey team for giving us their valuable time and wish them every success in the future.
In the afternoon we visited MShed. This new museum is part of Bristol Museums Galleries and Archives, run and funded by the city. It is in a great strategic location, right on the old dockside which has had major investment/development over the years. MShed is just down the wharf from the 'SS Great Britain' and the 'Matthew'.
The focus of our visit was to see how the volunteers and staff managed the various equipment and exhibits to support the museum and we were given an excellent tour led by their Curator Andy King. The main museum is a modern structure built around the M shed (an old transit shed). The storage and workshop areas are mainly in the adjoining L shed.
The stores hold a large wide variety of artefacts from Bristol’s industrial past. There were a lot of transport related items from horse-drawn carriages, bikes, motorbikes, bits of cars, buses, trucks, a vintage Bailey caravan, bits of planes. They had loads of beautiful models including the Concorde wind tunnel test model. They had engines and bits of engines from all types of transport (including marine). They had parts of cranes and various engineering structures including some Brunel bits. We could have spent hours! It is not surprising that the museum puts on successful regular guided tours of their stores for the public.
We then saw some of the workshop activities: A team were renovating a bus chassis to go on the road as a driving exhibit, various pumps and engines were being renovated. Quite a lot of work was being carried on switchgear motors and other electrical equipment. These workshops are supporting operating exhibits which include dockside cranes, steam locomotives (dockside trains), buses, steam and diesel tugs (afloat), fire tenders (ashore and afloat). These exhibits are accessed by the public in the form of rides and trips. To keep this lot operational demands skill and knowledge on old technology, e.g. they have to know how to strip down, repair and get operating an electrical switch made in 1950s.
They have to manufacture a lot of their own spare parts and have the knowledge of how parts can be safely repaired. Their team of volunteers therefore includes experienced mechanical, electrical, instrument engineers/technicians/craftsmen in addition to the traditional train drivers, crane drivers, firemen and boatmen to operate the exhibits.MShed allowed us a trip around the docks on the 1930s fire boat ‘Pyronaught’(blasting her fire hoses across the docks) plus a trip up one of the 1950s dockside cranes. This crane is fully rated, tested, certified and operational today. Very impressive. A credit to the MShed support team. We thank Andy King and his team of volunteers for this special behind-the-scenes look at MShed.
Return to Life/ Falmouth Having been given varied advice on the best pub on the way home, we ended up taking pot luck by diving into the village of Sticklepath and the Taw River Inn. An excellent end to a great day. We had good food and ale, good service and the landlady’s prices were very reasonable. Highly recommended.
Many thanks for being let out.
[NMMC Management please find attached capital requisition for one off Bailey Approach SE760 Motorhome. Urgently required for all future visits]
