In my opinion Cosford should be the Main RAF Museum site. It’s accessible by Rail, (it has it’s own station) and Motorways, and it has a runway. It hosts airshows and model orientated events already. Should the operational RAF move out, then the runway could offer fly-in visitor facilities as Duxford already does. Cosford is far enough removed for any increased air traffic not to be a problem. As Moggy in a later post reinforces, any future exhibits can be flown in intact or even air freighted.
The New Town at Telford and other smaller centers of population offers hotels and other accommodation. Cosford despite that ridiculous Cold War hangar has room for expansion and the Hendon hangars could even be relocated. The RAFM reserve store (a wonderful place) at Stafford, is only a short distance away.
Parts of the existing RAF Cosford would serve as administration and archive records depository and if the RAFM reserve collection were to be moved to Cosford, keeping everything under one roof, so to speak.
Hendon could revert to being a smaller visitor centre just based around the the core Graham White buildings and thus act as a taster for the larger northern Museum. The rest of the site being sold off.
I would also see the Conservation centre at Cosford becoming the world wide centre of excellence in Aircraft conservation.
I feel that this way the RAFM would go back to it’s roots but in a much more pro-active way and back to the dream of the first stalwarts such as Gp Capt Bill Randle.
It would be advisable to leave the Bean Counters and Museum trained funfair specialists in the bits of Hendon to be sold off.
In addition the area around Cosford has a wealth of other important visitor attractions.
John
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