I mentioned this picture yesterday, and scanned it before work this morning. This is the picture that made me fall madly in love with the L-1011 when I was a wee one. It was published in a book called Illustrated History of Aircraft edited by Brendan Gallagher, one of the dozen or so "general overview of aviation history" books I had when I was a kid. Most of them came off the "cheap books" table at K-Mart or Waldenbooks (this one still has remnants of the K-Mart price sticker on its cover), were written by British authors, and published by Chartwell or Cathay or similar imprints. They were cheaply bound, and didn't take long to start falling apart. But I sure got my mileage out of these books, and some of their images are still what I think of when I think of a given airplane. Just as those who grew up in the 1950s and 1960s thought the A6M Zero was bright yellow because the Aurora kit was molded in yellow plastic, you can name a given airplane and odds are I'll think of a picture from one of these books I had as a kid.
And so it is with the L-1011. This picture was my formative image of the TriStar, and making it even better was that, since I grew up on the East Coast, it was in the colors of the airline I knew best. (It was back in the day when if you needed to fly from anywhere in the South to anywhere far away, you had to fly Eastern or Delta to get there. And you were gonna have to connect in Atlanta, no matter where you were going. Hence the old joke about when you die, you have to go through Atlanta to get to Heaven.)
Anyhow, it's a lovely picture. If you look closely, you can see the "EXPERIMENTAL" titling above the cabin doors. And there's a mystery behind it, too. The registration N301EA was actually borne by two L-1011s, the second and third ones built, at different points. From what I can piece together, the above picture is of the third TriStar (1003), which was registered N301EA during the flight test program. The second L-1011 (1002) was registered N31001, then N1031L, and initially wore TWA colors. (TWA was one of the other launch customers for the TriStar, and its delivery scheme for the TriStar was the last TWA scheme I really found attractive.) These two later traded the N301EA registration; 1002 became Ship 301, and 1003 became Ship 302.
At least that's what I think, anyway. I've given myself a headache now...!
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