Eccleston/ Tennant Console at Doctor Who Experience

[wayne venomous]

Car wheel spacers should also look a little familiar too:



Hmm.... Vauxhall Corsa handbrakes and now wheel spacers. I suspect that an auto breakers that specialises in boy racer cars may have been used here! 

[davidnagel]

Aha! Well spotted Wayne!!

[galacticprobe]

Those wheel spacers did seem to be all over the plethora of hoses and cables dangling around that console, didn't they? I always wondered what they were - actual bits taken from somewhere or custom bits stamped out for the prop. Now we know. (I'll try the web site again, but I'm not counting on finding anything.)

Junkyard, ho!

Dino.

[davidnagel]

Dino - they are all over ebay!

[galacticprobe]

Duh... I should have known that! Maybe ebay slipped my mind because I've been having trouble locating other bits of the 9th/10th Doctor console there, like those plastic/acrylic pointy things on some of the control panels.

Ebay first. (Better than any junkyard down the plughole of the universe!)

Dino.
(I think I need a nap.)

[davidnagel]

Glad to be of reminding service!

The pointy things I think are just acrylic cones from EMA that have had acrylicy plasticy goo stuck over the top while the rest of the panels have been formed.

Could be wrong though!

[wayne venomous]

The TARDIS console is the best place for wheel spacers. They're bloody dangerous on a car!

Oh yeah, I've had quite a bit of difficulty finding Chevrolet Chevy parking brakes listed on the US Ebay. Just trying to find a good picture of one really to see if it's the same.

[Kingpin]

The pointy things I think are just acrylic cones from EMA that have had acrylicy plasticy goo stuck over the top while the rest of the panels have been formed.

I think it might actually be a glass Deck Prism, there's one like it used as set dressing on Warehouse 13:



Whilst on the subject of the picture of that very panel, see that brass-coloured rectangle with the four push buttons mounted to it?



Although not quite identical in design, they're pretty close to a set of "Square D" pneumatic industrial buttons:




This is all a painful reminder that I really need to get my photos of this console from the experience uploaded.

[Kingpin]

As promised, the photos I took of the Tennant Console whilst on display at the Experience:

[Kingpin]

I will also be uploading the full-resolution photos to Megaupload, so you can peruse those at your pleasure... I'll probably be doing this tomorrow as I need to break the collection down into parts, as if I uploaded it all in one file, it'd take several hours to complete.

[Kingpin]

The specific reason as to why I took this photo is that when I peered through the hole between the grille and the coral, I could see the metal grating of the circular dais:

[davidnagel]

Wowsers - nice work Ben!

What detail! Looking forward to the full res ones.

I'm surprised at the amount of car parts on this console - I never realised before! I've spotted tonnes!!

[galacticprobe]

I also recognize a few more parts...

On the framework around the metal grille panel that has the gyrocompass repeater on it, at the top (left side) is an old vacuum tube (a.k.a. valve - I've got a few of those in a storage box in the back room, which my wife just tolerates), and to the right is what looks like the hilt of a dagger or small sword, complete with hand-guard.

On the panel with the red bubble globe (a.k.a. bubble glass paperweight), just below the globe is another vacuum tube. Also on that panel is the last remaining pointy thing. (The console seems to have lost two other points between the Eccleston and Tennant eras.)

On the panel with the two silver keypads, near the bottom, that copper wire funnel-looking thing is a CRT deflection yoke. You can find those on the back of any picture tube, which is a CRT (as in Cathode Ray Tube for the non-electronics types). I've adjusted many of those in my career so I know them well. In that one nice close-up you can even see the alignment magnets in their slots on the sides of the white plastic frame.

A few places have that flat braided ground strap that's found in many electronic equipment cases and cabinets. In fact one photo has a strap connected to the grey thumb-screw terminals on the framework (above one of the metal grille panels).

Then there is that bell. It says "Blue Bell" on its base, but where can one find a bell like that? Ebay isn't helping there because I don't know what I'm looking for. Blue Bell (even with combinations of desk, table, call, etc.) doesn't yield anything useful, and just "bell" gives me sensory overload!

And what model is that other hand-brake - the one with the yellow markings on it? If I didn't know better, I'd say it came from a 1970s era VW Beetle. (I had to repair my mother's enough times, so it looks really familiar.)

Hopefully this ID's a few more parts of this console for some people, and hopefully someone knows something about that bell that enjoys perplexing me.

And I also can't wait to get the full-res photos from megaupload. Fabulous job once again, Kingpin! Absolutely fabulous!

Dino.

[Kingpin]

A more complete inscription from the bell appears to be "Blue Bell tobacco", which was a vintage brand.  No search results for desk bells, sadly.

[wayne venomous]

And what model is that other hand-brake - the one with the yellow markings on it? If I didn't know better, I'd say it came from a 1970s era VW Beetle. (I had to repair my mother's enough times, so it looks really familiar.)

Close! It's from a German car but not a VW or from the 1970's.
Look at the photo again but upside down:


The writing says "190 Merc" meaning Mercedes 190 (note the Mercedes Benz logo on it) and it appears to have the date stamp of 1982 (which would've been for the 1983 model year, the first year of the Mercedes 190). So, not only do we know the model of car, but we know the year too!  

As for the clear cylidrical things in this picture:

Another car part! They're known as "AGU" fuse holders:

Often used for fusing power amplifiers in cars. They're available from pretty much any auto accessory shop that sells in car stereo stuff, usually branded with a Boy racer/ricer name like "Noize" or "Shark" or "ICE" or similar.