Thanks for the photo update, Peter. It looks like a good job was done on the repairs and repaint of the exterior. Hopefully the issues on the interior were dealt with as well. Sitting out in the open for nearly fifty years had resulted in a lot of damage, especially to the floor and engine bay.
Looking back at these photos brings back a lot of memories of what was once the most extensive armor museum here in the states. Working with Jack Atwater, who was director of the Ordnance Museum at the time, there was a private effort made to raise funds for the construction of a number of sheet-metal buildings, attempting to get as many of the vehicles out of the weather and inside as possible. The Department of the Army had declined to fund it, so we turned to private sponsors. This was long before the internet-based fund-raising tools of today, so it involved a lot of face-to-face appeals and legwork, nearly all of which were unsuccessful. Even the fraternal veterans organizations, who we thought might be willing to help out, declined to participate. It seemed the rationale was that the stuff belonged to the government, so the government should take care of it. When BRAC came along, most of the collection was moved to Fort Lee in Virginia, but a few pieces went to Knox, then subsequently were transferred to Benning. I suspect there's still some stuff at Aberdeen, but it's been a long time since I've been over there to have a look around.
Here's a shot of the controls on the right-hand side of the Elephant's driver position taken some 25-30 years ago, which gives a sense of the scale of deterioration of the internals:
The driver position was on the left-front of the vehicle, separated from the radio-operator's position on the opposite side by a raised box which houses the air tanks for the hydro-pneumatic steering. No. 102 was one of the survivors from Kursk, rebuilt at Nibelungenwerk in December, 1943, then shipped to Italy in February, 1944 as part of I.Kompanie/schwere Panzerjager-Abteilung 653, which was comprised of eleven Ferdinands (Elephants) and one Berge-Ferdinand (recovery version). It participated in the attack on the Allied beachhead at Nettuno. The vehicle was subsequently captured in Italy during the Allied offensive that began on 24 May 1944.
Interestingly, I've never seen a photo of a Berge-Ferdinand. That would make for an interesting vehicle conversion.