Well I think Footless snr. was at Chadderton. I should add that he didn't finish his apprenticeship at AV Roe.
I asked about the Astro-Compass and his reaction was the same as mine: "what is an Astro-Compass?" Although at least I know what a Garmin 430 is. But I don't think they were fitted to Lancastrians either.
Another source of interesting info is a book my wife got me called 'Challenging Horizons, QUANTAS 1939-1954' by John Gunn. Not suprisingly, this is QUANTAS' postwar company history and has a lot of information about the problems they had trying to run an airline using British aircraft. At one stage they were running a 'two speed' service with Hythe flying-boats for luxury and Lancastrians for speed (but discomfort). London to Sydney by Lancastrian took 67 hours, with the Hythe taking 5 1/2 days.