Mike Manning will be your guide.  He has been involved with the Collings Foundation for nearly a decade – first as a guest and now as a docent.  Mike is familiar with all three collections and his specialty is the World War II armored fighting vehicle and artillery gallery. The tour will start at 10:00am, but it asked that guests arrive 9:45am to organize ourselves. 

Here’s the tour he has put together:

• We will tour all three collections: Our Car Barn with antique automobiles, the Aircraft Hangar with vintage aircraft, and our newest collection, which is on display at the American Heritage Museum (AHM).  
• We’ll begin at the Car Barn where we have a collection of antique automobiles and the Classic Car Collection.  The automobiles date from the early 1900s through the 1930s. We have a 1906 electric vehicle (EV) called a Pope-Waverly and a Stanley Steamer (built in Newton, MA).  We’ll tour the collection for approximately one hour.
• The next stop will be the Aircraft Hangar.  We have a collection of vintage aircraft from 1901 to the 1950s.  Of note, is a 1909 Bleriot Type XI.  This particular Bleriot is a later version of the famed Bleriot flown by Louis Bleriot on July 25th, 1909 across the English Channel.  We’ll tour the collection for approximately one hour.
• We have one of the largest privately-held collections of armored fighting vehicles in the world, and we will end our tour by viewing them in our American Heritage Museum. The collection begins with an artillery piece from the Revolutionary War, to a tank from World War I, to an entire gallery devoted to World War II.  Other galleries include the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, and the War on Terror.
• We also have a section of the Berlin Wall and a piece of structural steel from World Trade Center II.  The first hour of the tour will be guided.  After the first hour, guests may view the collection at their own pace.

Things to Note: This is a 3-hour tour. 

History Camp is a project of the non-profit organization The Pursuit of History.  We hope you’ll join us in the pursuit of history.