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Contents Listing - Articles & Features in this issue
News of the month
Steam 150 at Shildon
Shildon Sidelights
Some impressions of George Stephenson
Stone from Somerset quarries
Midland locomotive performance - 1
The Mawddwy Railway
Touring with the Wirral
Broad Gauge farewell at Paddington
150 years on
The Cadeby Light Railway
Forecast for the next 150 years
Rhaetian miscellany
In orbit round London
The last years of the LNER - 3
New books
Letters
Motive power miscellany
Club notes
Article Snippets
WALSCHAERTS achieved in his valve gear a pattern of rhythmic motion which a modernist sculptor tinkering with a "mobile" might well envy. The drawback to its enjoyment by a spectator was that it usually flashed past at high speed, but this inconvenience is removed by the full-size sectional model of a rebuilt Merchant Navy locomotive at the new National Railway Museum in York. Here the action can be studied at leisure, and the mysteries of lap, lead and dwell contemplated in serenity. Serenity is, indeed, the keynote of the large displays in the new building, opened by the Duke of Edinburgh on September 27. Viewed from the gallery, the locomotives and coaches grouped round the two turntables in the well-lit hall are seen in repose in surroundings fitted to the dignity which they owe to the genius of their designers and with which our imagination endows in their well-earned rest. The smaller exhibits, no less, benefit from their setting and in particular from the logical sequence in which they are displayed and the explanatory notes which accompany them. The aim of the museum is to inform as well as to please. Here the most blinkered enthusiast will be encouraged to broaden his horizons. Perhaps we shall hear less of phrases like "it wouldn't interest the enthusiast". The enthusiast should be interested in everything from a locomotive to a facing point lock.
York aims to be a "living" museum, with exhibits changing from time to time. A number of the locomotives can be steamed and it is hoped to have some of them on the outside tracks in the future although it is too early to announce details at this stage. A library is being established and will be available for consultation by arrangement. Cataloguing will be on a similar system to that of the library at the Science Museum, of which York is an outstation, so that students can be referred from one to the other as appropriate. Perhaps the most formidable task now being undertaken is the cataloguing and filing of something like 100,000 drawings. Microfilm and an information retrieval system seem the best ways of making such a wealth of data available. Mr W. 0. Reynolds, General Manager of BR Eastern Region, considers that York, with its new museum and its more venerable monuments, is on the way to becoming one of the major tourist centres of the country, aided by its situation at almost the same distance from London, Edinburgh and Stratford-upon-Avon. The city now has the first national museum in England outside London, with an estimated potential bf half-a-million visitors a year. Controversy over its location has subsided, and all will applaud the ambition of Miss Margaret Weston, Director of the Science Museum, that the National Railway Museum may become one of the finest museums not only in this country but in the world.
York aims to be a "living" museum, with exhibits changing from time to time. A number of the locomotives can be steamed and it is hoped to have some of them on the outside tracks in the future although it is too early to announce details at this stage. A library is being established and will be available for consultation by arrangement. Cataloguing will be on a similar system to that of the library at the Science Museum, of which York is an outstation, so that students can be referred from one to the other as appropriate. Perhaps the most formidable task now being undertaken is the cataloguing and filing of something like 100,000 drawings. Microfilm and an information retrieval system seem the best ways of making such a wealth of data available. Mr W. 0. Reynolds, General Manager of BR Eastern Region, considers that York, with its new museum and its more venerable monuments, is on the way to becoming one of the major tourist centres of the country, aided by its situation at almost the same distance from London, Edinburgh and Stratford-upon-Avon. The city now has the first national museum in England outside London, with an estimated potential bf half-a-million visitors a year. Controversy over its location has subsided, and all will applaud the ambition of Miss Margaret Weston, Director of the Science Museum, that the National Railway Museum may become one of the finest museums not only in this country but in the world.
