One of these days I'll have some pics or video from the interior. It's opened to the public, sadly by the time I got there today it was closed for the day. Video For some reason this time her rudder is in the hard-over to port position. Kinda spooky, this was the last control action famously taken by the Titanic in her vain effort to miss the iceberg. She is of course still missing her top deck, funnel, masts et al. They do plan to fully restore her, complete with engines (her original engines were removed and sold off in the 60's when she was turned into a floating resteraunt in Paris). They hope to have it complete before 2012, which will be the centenary of the Titanic disaster. Where the ship will actually go when fully restored is another question. I suppose she may do tourist outings around the Belfast Lough area, maybe even trips up around the north coast. She may visit other parts of the UK periodically.. she'll be pretty much a travelling Titanic museum. I don't see her ever visiting America, unless taken on a transport barge. She was never designed for oceanic crossings and it'd be too much of a risk to try sailing her all the way over on her own.
Yes, this is the last surviving ship of the once vast White Star Line fleet. Wonder what kind of engines they'll put in her now.
Dunno. If they can track down the originals, and if they were still in good condition, they might use those. If they fabricate new engines, I don't know whether they'd make exact copies of the original (made easier by the fact that H&W still has the blueprints and technical drawings of every ship they ever built) or whether they'd just slap a couple of off-the-shelf Cat marine diesels down in there
Her engines and bulkheads were scrapped, so it would be hard to put them together again. She originally built with a 4 cylinder compound steam engine. Don't think they would go to the expense of replicating ancient steam engines. They might buy a more recent compound steam engine and install it though. For historical reasons, I doubt they slap in a modern marine diesel. She is now residing at H&W AFAIK.
