Driggsby the whale set to make a big splash

The outbreak will have nothing to do with the cold weather or some strange virus.

The cause will be Driggsby, the giant new star of the show at Carlisle's Tu l lie House M useum.

The spectacular skeleton suspended from the ceiling like a giant puppet will greet visitors as they walk into the main entrance from next weekend .

Everything about it is big - the skull is three metres long and weighs 100kg, some of the verterbrae are as big as your head and the entire frame is almost 40feet long from nose to tail bone.

The bones have been skilfully prepared and pieced back together with a mix of ancient and modern methods, involving burying them in horse manure and using a 3D printer to reproduce a missing fin arm.

Transforming Driggsby into such an extraordinary exhibit has been a labour of love by curator Dr Simon Jackson and his team.

He has worked into the wee small hours all week alongside conservator Nigel Larkin to hoist, lift, edge and bolt the exhibit into place; slotting together a giant whale-shaped jigsaw where all the pieces are actual bones.

When we meet, he's back at the museum after five hours sleep after finishing at 2am the night before.

The work on Driggsby can't be done whiile the museum is open and visitors are milling about.

The whale is o ur own version of the iconic Dippy the dinosaur who welcomed visitors to London's Natural History museum for so many years before being replaced by Hope, the Blue Whale skeleton.

"It is our centrepiece, a bold statement," said a weary but delighted Simon.

"In the future there could be a sign at Carlisle train station that reads: 'Carlisle: home of Driggsby'!"

Details about the life and death of Driggsby are scarce.

Believed to be just a year old, Driggsby is believed to have been female, 12 metres long and weighed 14 tonnes, though Fin whales can mature to 17 metres and weigh upto 50 tonnes.

It is not known how she died, but Simon reckons it was probably connected with pollution poisoning through plastics. One reason c ould have been toxins ingested by the mother and then passed onto her infant through her milk.

Named after where it was discovered (Drigg Point beach , near Ravenglass), the body of the juvenile Fin whale was found by a dog walker on the beach in February 2014.

A campaign was launched for the museum to acquire the remains, but it wasn't until August that they were recovered, by which time, it had decomposed and a third of its bones were missing.

The carcass had to be buried away from the beach for safe keeping, then reburied to make sure it was stripped back to its bones.

Simon joined the Tullie House team just six months after the discovery of Driggsby and his arrival was perfectly timed.

He took his phd in dinosaur footprints and taught vertebrate zoology at Cambridge and although he had studied bone structure and skeletons for years, this was the biggest project he had worked on.

"I remember going to Birkmere wood (near Penrith) wearing a blue protective suit and digging bones up. It was like a scene from Jurassic Park,” he recalled .

"There were four of us digging a trench round the skull, then trying to find all the fragile parts and it took four or five of us to lift it onto the truck.”

The carcass was handed over to conservator Nigel Larkin who immediately buried it in horse manure. He then soaked it in ammonium to clean it thoroughly .

Simon explained : "It is a uniquley fresh specimen, the freshest in the UK for more than a century.

"Nigel had to be rebury the bones in two tonnes of horse manure to create a high temperature of around 70 degrees that would draw out the oils and allow microbes to strip as much as possible from the skeleton.”

Once the bones were cleaned, Nigel then had to bolt the vertebrae together and thread them along internal rods to hold them in position.

After a year's work, the skeleton was ready and was delivered to the museum on Monday .

For Simon, Christmas came a little late.

Although he has been battling a cold for a week, his excitement and enthusiasm shines through the weariness and sniffles as he says: "When I opened the wooden crates it was Wow!'

"Seeing it like this for the first time is just wow. You see the elegance of the back bone and how it will really look in place.

"Just looking at the head now sends tingles down your spine with excitement.

"When it is fully finished, it is going to look incredible.

"It will all be worth the pain and the late nights!"

"It is proving to be a monster in more than one way.

"I have learned a lot about scaffolding - or learned that I don't know a lot about scaffolding..."

Driggsby was delivered fixed together in sections, these are then winched up to hang from a ceiling girder, 40ft above the floor.

T oo big to fit into the space horizontally, Simon is hanging h er in the position of a dive, a gentle 's' shape, which makes the sight all the more striking and dramatic.

The bones look like wood, but they're real, apart from 13 missing ribs which had to be made from casts and a fin arm which was created using a 3D printer in Cambridge.

While visitors to the museum will be able to see its newest and most exciting display from reception, the best view will be from a first floor gallery.

This will be kitted out with special displays and information panels explaining how Driggsby came to be found and 'adopted' by the museum, the evolution of a whale, a four metre-long whale image explaining how it moves and how it

It will also include the skull of a Minke whale and a skull cast of the extinct Dorudon, which lived 40 million years ago which are being loaned from Mancehster Museum .

There is already a buzz of anticipation and a wave of expectation growing as visitors see the painstaking construction work underway.

Whale-themed merchandise is already on sale, including key rings, mugs, coasters, wooden models a Christmas bauble and a reusable nylon bag.

The scaffolding which is shrouding the reception desk will be taken down next week, the chains and block and tackle equipment removed for the official launch of Driggsby on Thursday evening.

Driggsby may not have had a long life, but she's sure to give many thousands of people a long-lived memory, not least Simon .

He added: "It is a pretty unique project. I don't know if we will have anything like this again.

"It has been an amazing experience.

“ I woke up early today and could not get back to sleep, it is just like Christmas every day – a tiring Christmas, but but it is great to see it coming together bone by bone.”

Dr Simon Jackson will be retelling the story of Driggsby from discovery to display on February 8 at the museum.

There will be special Driggsby-themed family days where youngsters can create their own versions of the whale on January 28 and March 25.

For more information, v isit www.tulliehouse.co.uk for further details.