My grandfather started working as an aircraft inspector in the late 50's at the Vickers Armstrong Weybridge factory ( Now Brooklands Museum ).  He worked on a large array of famous aircraft, most notably the Concorde, and during his time, he managed to collect many artefacts, prints and other memorabilia, some of which today, very little is known of.

One of those pieces is this rare 1/100 prototype aircraft model of a VC11 which was an aircraft that never came to fruition.

This model was a prototype on the engineering and management desks at Vickers for a project dubbed the baby VC10 or Type 1400.

During the years of the successful VC10 mid size long range airliner, the company made plans to produce a smaller version for shorter destinations such as Athens and Beirut. It was to be made with 4 rolls Royce RB163/1s engines, a T tail, high lift wings and would cater up to 138 passengers in various layouts with a 1500nm range at maximum payload. Design work began in 1959 and for the next two years, it became the main focus of a new era to revitalise the company and keep them at the forefront of aviation. Vickers was already under financial strain and the British aircraft industry was going through a reshaping phase with the government, competing for jobs, growth and technological advancement in a fiercely competitive industry which was important for the country as a whole.

The VC11 project ended up competing against the De Havilland Trident and although many discussions were held with various airlines of interest such as TCA, New Zealands Tasman Empire Airlines and Pan AM, Vickers knew they needed to land letters of intent to produce the minimum amount to break even and ignite the VC11 project into its next phase - Testing & manufacture. It did indeed manage to secure orders of intent but it faced still competition from even further afield in the form of boeings 727. After two years of various changes and negotiations the VC11 project came to a halt amid BAC's intent to change tact. Many of the workings of VC11 went into the BAC's sister project the BAC one eleven.