Hello and bonjour.
We are back in Versailles at the UNIVEM living museum of historic military vehicles,
because as you have just read in the title of the video,
there is some slightly dramatic news.
Unfortunately the old warehouse building here has been scheduled for demolition
and the museum have been given six months to try and find a new home
for their collection of rare and lovingly preserved combat vehicles
mostly from WWII.
But wait Tim... isn’t that where the Aerotrains are?
Yes, exactly!
Last time I came here, just over a year ago,
it was because I was trying to track down the legendary French Aerotrains,
the experimental jet-propelled hovertrains from the 1960s
that smashed the world speed record for rail-guided vehicles at the time
and I discovered that the two original test vehicles survive,
and they’ve been kept in the back of this warehouse for the last 25 years.
The only reason they’re here is because UNIVEM kindly offered to host them
after they were thrown out of their previous home.
But now UNIVEM are being chucked out too.
So what’s going on?
And who are UNIVEM anyway?
So we’ll get to the Aerotrains in a moment,
but the whole collection of historic military vehicles is being thrown out too,
and there is some serious history here.
This half-track, for example, was involved in the Spanish resistance against General Franco,
and then, perhaps more importantly for the French,
it was one of the first friendly vehicles to arrive in Paris during the liberation in 1944.
And the best thing is, everything you see here still works!
The volunteers constantly take these things out for test drives around the local area.
They don’t just preserve vehicles here, they’re keeping them alive.
And this really is the problem, because the warehouse does not belong to UNIVEM.
We’re actually on an active military site here,
and the building ultimately belongs to the French Army.
Which was fine,
until the French government decided it wanted to free up some of the land around here
as part of an enormous redevelopment project going on in the Paris region at the moment,
called “Grand Paris”.
But if UNIVEM are being thrown out, what does that mean for the Aerotrains?
They belong to another voluntary group called "les Amis de Jean Bertin",
who don’t have a building of their own to put them in.
So where are they going to go?
So the dream is to find a permanent home
somewhere near where they are now, on the west side of Paris
– symbolically, on the same historic route that some of these vehicles took
when they were on their way to liberate the city in 1944.
But right now, really, anything will do.
UNIVEM have been given until June to try and find at least a temporary solution.
Which is not much time when you’re looking for somewhere to put 50 historic military vehicles
and a couple of aerotrains.
Now obviously part of the reason I’m making this video
is because I want to try and help them,
so I’ll be donating half of my YouTube ad revenue from this episode to the search for a new place.
And I know there’s a lot going on in the world right now,
so please support the causes that you need to support first,
but if you’d like to give them an extra little boost,
here are three other ways you can help.
Firstly, there’s an official petition you can sign over on change.org,
and the more people who sign that, the more visibility the story gets.
But if you’d like to help financially, it’s best to use this link,
and that makes sure your donation goes straight to UNIVEM.
And thirdly, it’s a long shot,
but if any of you watching this happen to own a big empty French building,
or you know a person or a business who might be able to help,
please do get in touch with UNIVEM directly.
I’ll put all of these links in the description below.
And don’t worry if you don’t have a spare warehouse lying around,
I’ll try and keep you updated with the story anyway,
and hopefully I’ll be able to bring you some good news in the future.
But for now,
from this incredible collection of vehicles,
thank you all for watching
and I’ll see you soon.