Storyline: 50 years later
April 23, 2018
Our luck with the sun has expired. After a rainy and dull day in Durham, today wasn’t looking promising either. It was museum time! By now we have learned to take shortcuts using the city walls. The moody skies were perfect for a few more snapshots, before we reached the museum just behind the train station.
York’s National Railway Museum is the largest railway museum in the world.
For those who even remotely like trains, this is definitely a place to visit while in the UK. We spent most of a day there and barely scratched the surface of what’s available in this fascinating place. Oh, and it’s free (donations are accepted though).
The Museum occupies a huge three-hall complex on about 20 acres (8 ha) that was previously the York North Locomotive Depot, and is just a short walk from the city’s railway station.
It’s a bit overwhelming when one enters the Great Hall. It’s hard to know where to start. But we eventually got our bearings and started to enjoy ourselves.
There are locomotives from the earliest days of steam, including a reproduction of Stephenson’s famous “Rocket”
and an early “0” version of the Japanese “Shinkansen”. There is lots of background information on the exhibits and one gets a great sense of the history of rail technology and some of the specialized uses of trains.
And it’s not just locomotives: there are carriages from the earliest days of passenger travel – many in unrestored condition,
a military hospital on rails,
Channel Tunnel construction equipment,
stationary engines,
and – back to locomotives – a cutaway 1949 Merchant Navy Class 4-6-2 providing a great window into the internal workings of a steam locomotive.
The most physically imposing exhibit is the Chinese Government Railways Steam Locomotive 4-8-4 KF Class No 7. Built in the UK in 1935 and shipped to China, it saw service there until 1979 when it was given to the Museum by the Chinese Government. It’s a whopping 93 ft (~28 m) total length and weighs in at 429,615 lb (194 870 kg).
Compare that to another historically significant locomotive, built only three years later – that holds the world speed record for a steam engine: the London & North Eastern Railway steam locomotive ‘Mallard’ 4-6-2 A4 Pacific class, No 4468. It’s a mere 71 ft (~22m) long and 230,610 lb (104 603 kg).
Only about 90 years earlier, the UK’s most famous early locomotive – Stephenson’s Rocket – weighed in at 6,614 lb (3 000 kg) and stretched a minuscule 13 ½ ft (411 cm) – shorter than a North American spec. Honda Civic sedan.
One of the locomotives is stationed over a maintenance pit, so you can descend and walk under the behemoth and see some of the workings from below.
The North Shed is an operational workshop,
and the Station Hall is set up as…wait for it…a station! Here among other things are preserved royal trains of several monarchs.
You can peer in to see the royal bathtub and toilet (it’s a safe assumption that the curtains would have been closed when they were in use).
There’s also a Royal Mail carriage here. For many years, trains criss-crossed the country overnight while mail was sorted en route.
The above is just a sampling of the contents of the museum. Train enthusiasts can access thousands of documents and other artifacts, and much of the collection is available online. You can find out more at: https://www.railwaymuseum.org.uk
This is one of few places we wouldn’t miss, and we’ll return to it next time we’re in York.
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