Speaking of old planes and maintenance, a buddy of mine was the chief AME at Port Alberni keeping the old Mars flying. He invited me over for a weekend and he took me through the shop including the sheet metal portion where they used English Wheels and such to manufacture cowlings etc. because you couldn't buy them anywhere anymore. And man there's a lot of guages at the engineers station in the aft portion of the wheelhouse.
Lucky you. I worked as a learner for a short time at the old Port Alberni airport along the river. The tankers were the only outfit that had a B engineer and the local operator used to get him to come over and sign out any major structural jobs. The closest I ever got to a Mars was when Fairy Aviation was converting the last one at YYJ in 64. Never did get inside it though. I went through the Viking shop in YYJ back in the eighties and they did a lot of that kid of work as well. Those sheet metal men are a rare bunch.
Back in the days before autothrottles, the flight engineer was basically the only person to touch the power levers in cruise.
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