January 23, 2015

The National Railway Museum

George Stephenson - the Father of Railways. 
Time flies and if I don´t hurry up, I will be on my way to England again before I have blogged all about last year´s trip! There are still some things I want to show you, and perhaps no time is better than the cold, dark months of winter.

As we came walking from our tour of the Cold War Bunker in York, we more or less happened to come across the next museum. I was aware of it, but we didn´t have it on our itinerary; standing in front of the doors, we simply couldn´t pass it over, and lucky we didn´t.

This is one of the best museums in York, and everyone we met mentioned visiting it several times, so it really is very popular: the National Railway Museum. You go in for free (though there is some pressure to make a donation, in a very nice and polite manner), there are all these amazing machines, a lot of Explainers who can tell you all kinds of things you may wonder about, and - naturally - a tearoom, no, better: a luncheon café with all kinds of tasty sausage rolls and what not. And you get to sit in the middle of the enormous engine shed, with all these legendary train engines on display: the Mallard, the Flying Scotsman, the Rocket, the Evening Star, and so on. Great fun!

These old railroad cars are so beautiful, and so wonderfully restored, they look spanking new!

Demonstration of the gigantic turntable for the engines.

From the days of real horse power. 

The Bauxite from 1875.

The Agenoria from 1829.

The largest engine in the museum: The Chinese Engine. (Built in the UK, though.)



2 comments:

  1. Wow! I tend to like museums, and I think I'd like this one. It must be a huge space to fit all those big machines!

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    1. I´m sure you´d love it. Also, there are the shops (too dark in there to get a very good photo), and some other historical exhibition spaces. Considering the free entrance and the good lunch/café place, it´s no wonder people return here!

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