As every schoolboy knew at the time, BEA's Vanguard was killed off on the LON-EDI and LON-GLA by BUA's pocket rocket, the BAC 1-11/200. (Only joking,
finncapt!) First saw an artist's impression of the Vanguard with one of those great
Flight cutaways circa-1958, and fell in love with it.
FWIW, I posted
this in 2008 in a thread I called "Competent - but too big?"
As a cadet at Perth, I sometimes used the midnight EDI-LHR service to head home for the weekend (£3/10/- ?). With the boring flight being almost empty (and virtually no interruptions from the cabin crew...), what sticks in my mind is the wave of noise coming slowly along the cabin as the fuselage resonated from the slight de-synchronisation of the props.
Must look in the cockpit at Brooklands sometime, to see if the cockpit shares as much with the VC10 internally as externally.