JESADA TECHNIK MUSEUM #1

Part 1: Planes, Trains . . .

By Grant Cameron

May 9^th, 2018

A gem of a museum

"Planes, Trains and Automobiles" was a 1987 movie starring the late, great, John Candy and Steve Martin. It is also the theme of a museum on the western outskirts of Bangkok, about an hour's drive from the centre of the city.

This is the "Planes, Trains . . " part, the ". . and Automobiles" part can be found here.

Trains . .

Heading towards the museum, one must first pass over the main railway tracks of the Bangkok - Southern Thailand route, also famous, for it is the route taken by the Eastern & Oriental Orient Express, Singapore to Bangkok.

And immediately you see the first two items on display and belonging to the museum, a 1928 SRT (State Railway of Thailand) 4-6-2 Hanomag steam locomotive and a 1912 0-4-0T standard gauge Hanomag (which many might first take as a Krauss).

The 4-6-2 has been "sectioned" for display purposes, and has a dummy half-boiler. You will notice the extra track on which the 0-4-0T sits as it is a standard gauge locomotive. It never worked in Thailand, and is the country's only standard gauge locomotive, purchased from a German museum in 2011.

Planes . .

Several hundred metres further on, one reaches the major part of the museum. On the left hand side is a large field with planes, large and small, in good condition and "wrecked", helicopters, buses and steam tractors. This aerial view gives a feel for the layout.

The museum houses over 500 different types of aeroplanes, helicopters, buses, sedans, bubble cars, motorcycles and bicycles, boats and barges from around the world, and continuing our initial movie reference, we also go "Back to the Future" with the time machine itself, a DeLorean DMC-12 . . but for that, we have to visit Part #2.

The above external and below cockpit and interior photos are of an Aeritalia G-222, twin turbo-prop, short take-off and landing, military transport aircraft.

The cargo deck could carry up to 9,000 kg (19,840 lb) of cargo. This configuration is of a troop carrier, which could alternatively carry about 50 soldiers, or 32 paratroopers, or if in a medevac capacity, a maximum of 36 stretchers with six attending medics.

There are other aircraft here, including helicopters, light aircraft, military aircraft (spotters and fighters) and a NAMC YS-11, the only Japanese airliner to enter production since WW2.

Getting there

There are just way too many items of interest to photograph and display in a brief photo-essay, but I hope these few images whet your appetite to visit the museum for yourself.

In Part #2 I have shown the " . . Automobiles" of the title, and, coupled with the images, here, I hope you are primed to head over to Jesada Technik Museum without delay.