W F Holdsworth Cyclone - 1947

Personally I think you can get away with modern tubs on a vintage build,

I'd certainly agree with this, if only because actual vintage tubs are unlikely to hold any air at all.

I think all old tubs (with the possible exception of a few cheap 'training' tubs ) had latex inner tubes which will have perished years ago.

Somewhere I have a Dunlop No. 2, which I have kept, not because it could be used, but as a memento mori for the English bike tyre business. Dunlop tubs were excellent quality, but they were too expensive for what they were. Old copies of Cycling will show this to be true.
By chance I had a conversation today with an ancient pro rider, and I asked hm what he remembered about Dunlop tubs, he said: 'Oh yes, they were good - no. 5's for road racing, no.2's for TT's.' I said: 'Yes, but they were expensive', he replied 'I dunno, all the ones I had were given to me by Dunlops'.

I had some too, and also they were given to me, but by senior clubmates who couldn't be bothered to mend them. I can confirm they were excellent quality, but that was 60 years ago!

The whole subject of tubs merits a small book - and that's just my puny knowledge.
I'll make three points now:

1. If, by some miracle, these no. 2's do pump up, remember that the rim cement which should be holding them to the rims will by now be just crystalline dust - if the tyres deflates it will come straight off the rim and probably cause you to crash.

2. A general point about tubs (which I learnt from Ken Ryall, an acknowledged expert). Do not fit a new tub the night before a race - if you do it will probably puncture. His opinion was that the rubber needed a few days to 'settle'. It was a very common experience to puncture brand new tubs in this way, too common just to be explained by Sod's law.

3. I gave up using tubs for non racing purposes in the '80's because everyone else had gone over to wired on 700's, which meant no one else had spare tubs, which meant that if you ran out of spares (quite possible) you'd be walking home.