MBCNSW March 2024 Night Drive – Club Library

This month’s night drive was a bit different.  Instead of meeting up and doing a drive for 60-90 minutes, we did a very short drive and then went to check out the club library.

I’ve been a member of the Mercedes Club for between 10 and 15 years.  I knew the club had a library, and I heard it was pretty good, but I had never seen it.   As the library was located in the club store room, this felt like a great night drive destination.

The night drives are normally attended by around five to ten cars.   This is the perfect number to go and check out something like the club library.   In addition, the storage facility the club library is located would be largely deserted that late at night.  The numbers would be too large to do a day run.

I picked a month were our normal time was close to a long weekend.   With double demerits on, it was a good time to do less driving.    We met up at a 7/11 in Macquarie park.   This was about a 20 minute drive from the club storage unit.   It also allowed us to drive the Comenarra Parkway, one of the better roads in this area of Sydney.

On the drive we had two 126s (my 560SEC and a 380SEC) two 123s (a 280CE and a 300D) plus a 108 280SE 3.5 and a 124 230E.   Quite a good mix for a drive like this.    On the night drives I try to avoid traffic lights and built up areas as its hard to keep the group together.   This group of six was about as big as its feasible to do so.

The drive was fairly uneventful, although we had an incredibly slow SUV in front of us the whole way along the Comenarra parkway.    When we got to the club storage facility, we were quite impressed by the Club Library.   The library is across four metal cabinets and its been arranged and catalogued at some point.     There was a whole cabinet of workshop manuals, another of motoring books, a third one of magazines and Mercedes-Benz Brochures and the final one of club magazine back issues.

The collection of workshop manuals and books was quite extensive.   I could have stayed for a few hours to read.   As we checked out the library,  it was quickly apparent that the tree I parked under at the 7/11 was a roosting spot for birds as my car was covered in droppings.    I had to do a makeshift cleaning job to ensure it didn’t ruin the paint.