This summer, hundreds of thousands of people saw Stephenson’s Rocket, one of the earliest steam locomotives in the world, on display at the Discovery Museum in Newcastle as part of the Great Exhibition of the North.
The Rocket, which was built in Newcastle in 1829 and tested on the Liverpool to Manchester railway line during the Rain- hill Trials, tells the story of how northern England led the transformation of Britain’s railway system and changed the way we live our lives, not just in the UK but all over the world.
After a stint at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester (until 28 April 2019), part of the Science Museum Group (SMG), the Rocket will find a long- term home as a focal point of the redeveloped National Railway Museum (NRM) in York, another SMG venue.
Railway museums are enduringly popular and can attract crowds to see an iconic object in a special exhibition, but they also have to tell new stories to entice younger audiences to replace the dwindling number of traditional enthusiasts. There are many challenges in doing this, especially for small, often volunteer-run museums in remote locations at the ends of lines, that struggle to find funds and new volunteers.
Some have closed, including the Electric Railway Museum in Coventry in 2017 and the North Woolwich Old Station Museum in east London in 2009. But far more are looking to the long term and reinventing them- selves for the digital age.
Maintaining relevance with audiences means museums are starting to focus more on telling the story of the railways of today and tomorrow as well as those of the past. The NRM’s latest exhibition, Testing (until 28 April 2019), for example, is about the modern rail industry.
“Historically, we have been good at telling the stories of the railways, but we are also perfectly placed to address the UK’s engineering shortage by looking at the skillsets needed in the digital age,” says Judith McNicol, the director of the NRM.
The venue is pressing on with a £50m redevelopment, despite having a £13.4m Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) grant application turned down. “There are compelling reasons for the redevelopment, not least because we sit within the York Central residential scheme,” says McNicol. “It’s an ideal opportunity for us to consider the next 50 years. The museum and surrounding area will benefit from new galleries and landscaping, and one of the chief aims is to attract non- traditional audiences.”
The work will build on established initiatives such as Future Engineers, which, over the October half-term holidays, gave around 40,000 families the chance to explore research and innovation in a hands-on way. Half of the contributing scientists and engineers were women.
“It’s important that we encourage parents to come along so they can see that engineering attracts people from diverse back- grounds,” says McNicol. “We can show how engineering has changed and what it has to offer new generations comfortable in the digital world. We are exploding the myth that it’s dirty, dangerous work on the track-side in hi-vis jackets.
“A new element will be a hands-on children’s gallery, based on the Science Museum’s Wonderlab, with lots of physics and maths-centred interactives about the trial and error of engineering – the testing, failing and relearning,” says McNicol.
“It moves the story on from steam through diesel and electricity to maglev [magnetic-levitation, where one magnet repels the other to make the train levitate above the track while being propelled for- ward] and future rail transport. The aim is to fire imaginations and suggest career opportunities, while linking to our collections and stories such as that of Timothy Hackworth, a lesser-known engineer than Stephenson but who nevertheless competed at the Rainhill Trials.”
Remaining relevant
There has been a slow decline in visitors over the past two decades at the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum in Belfast, but new ways to connect to audiences are refreshing the experience. The museum comprises two sections, one outdoors that looks at Irish rural life and traditions, and the other housing the Irish railway collection as part of the covered transport museum.
“The sheer size and age of these machines means the eye is drawn to them, but they are static objects that we want to animate,” says Aaron Ward, the head of creative engagement at National Museums Northern Ireland.
“We want people to see them in working order and, though we are restricted in conservation terms, there will be a gradual animation of the site and a more rhythmic style of programming so that there’s always something going on.
“The aim is to accentuate the ingenuity, innovation and tenacity of Irish people through the story of rail transport,” Ward says. “We especially want to use our schools programme to inspire future generations with these engineering marvels, and use the collections to engage with more stem [science, technology, engineering and maths] events.”
Ward adds that the Troubles in Northern Ireland masked a lot of the stories at the museum, yet daily life went on as industry and transport evolved.
“We are now at the point where we can rediscover some of these stories, such as that of the linen industry,” he says. “This was on an industrial scale, but also spawned handmade artisan skills and crafts that were passed down through generations and link to today’s creative industries and thriving IT sector.”
Despite the benefits of looking forward to the growth of creative industries, nostalgia still plays a huge part in the appeal of many railway heritage sites. It’s 50 years since the last commercial steam train puffed its way down the rail tracks and the romance of steam endures.
“People love tiny trains,” says David Rounce, the director of Ravenglass Railway Museum, which preserves the artefacts of the Ravenglass & Eskdale Railway in the Lake District. “Being attached to a commercial heritage railway means we can attract up to half of the railway’s 100,000 annual visitors to the museum. One popular initiative is “driver for a fiver”, where anyone with a driving licence can drive the train a little way down the track.”
While Ravenglass Railway Museum is some distance from the main tourist spots on the West Cumbria coast, a recent redevelopment enabled by a £500,000 HLF grant and £300,000 from local bodies has doubled the size of the museum with a new shed and exhibition space.
“It’s just a shed, but it’s a nice shed,” says Rounce. “It has meant more rolling stock can be put on display, so our aim is to make it safe to clamber on and have dressing-up costumes and props for families. “We punch above our weight but we want to make our museum more available to the public, and volunteers are difficult to attract,” says Rounce, who is looking for- ward to Ravenglass securing full museum Accreditation.
“People want to drive trains, but they don’t want to commit to archiving. But two of our train drivers are women and we have university students during the holidays who also help dig tracks and do some of the heavier work.
“The line was called La’al Ratty and we use this Cumbrian dialect to talk about what a certain engine felt like to drive, and how trains are connected to our daily lives. There are a dwindling number of people interested in the diameter of wheels. It’s about future-proofing so we try to tease out the human stories of how trains brought huge social changes. For example, how they changed our diet with fish from the coast and milk from the farms, which was brought fresh into the city.”
Rounce says train travel even infiltrates contemporary conversations around Brexit, such as when people discuss the future of Eurostar.
“Public transport is ever changing and political events have shown that it is as relevant a topic as ever,” he says, but he warns that museums must be careful not to dwell on a nostalgia that distorts the past.
“In 1968, when the last steam train travelled, rail workers couldn’t wait to switch to diesel. It was filthy, back-breaking work running steam locomotives and our displays reflect that reality.”
Heritage connection
St Seraphim’s Icon and Railway Heritage Museum is on the former platform of Walsingham station in Norfolk. It houses a unique collection of orthodox Christian icons from the days when it was still a painting studio, as well as railway artefacts.
Walsingham station was on the Great Eastern Railway line and was instrumental in the revival of religious pilgrimage in the 1930s, because it was close to the Walsingham shrine, arguably one of the holiest places in England and a pilgrimage spot since 1061. It is these intertwined stories that the museum wants to bring to the fore, alongside its small railway collection, which it wants to display more effectively.
“We have found out a lot about the railway through our research and one of our volunteers is about to publish a book on it,” says Sylvia Batchelor, the manager of St Seraphim’s Icon and Railway Heritage Museum.
“We have had photographs donated to us and we dug up signs and other railway paraphernalia when we were making our quiet garden [a space for contemplation opened in 2015].
“We are keen to put more of our collection on display, but it’s a work in progress,” Batchelor adds. The museum was awarded a small HLF Our Heritage Grant for the refurbishment of the platform and to pay a volunteer co- ordinator for three years.
Batchelor says the museum has found it difficult to get funding because it is not a working railway. The icon collection gives the venue a rare cachet, but Batchelor recognises the need to attract more young people.
“We worked with the National Probation Service on the garden, which was where railway workers used to grow soft fruit and vegetables, and our icon-painting classes should also attract a new generation,” she says. “We have enough interest from researchers and graduates who use the archives to study iconography.
“Once we have the icons better interpreted it will help people read them, and we will have talks and events to complement the activities.”
Most of the museum’s visitors are pilgrims to the Our Lady at Walsingham shrine, but it also attracts tourists and holidaymakers from the nearby coast.
“We pick up a lot of Walsingham’s 250,000 annual visitors,” says Batchelor. “Eventually, we hope to become a sustainable entity as a visitor attraction.”
In a world of media and movement, railway museums have to find ways to animate their static collections to keep people coming back, whether it’s capitalising on the other stories that fuel the railway’s histories or those that could power the future of train travel. And with high-speed lines being built from London to Manchester, and the renationalisation of the railways being discussed again, rail travel is as relevant as ever.
When the railways were first introduced in the 1830s, many people were terrified to travel on the unstable carriages that sped along narrow gauges.
The engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel was determined to introduce a smoother ride on broad-gauge rails. The rocking railway carriage at the new Being Brunel museum, which sits on the dockside alongside the steamship he designed, the SS Great Britain, in Bristol, is one of its most popular exhibits.
“It’s a re-creation of a typical carriage on the Great Western Railway at a time when Brunel was developing his ideas,” says Kate Rambridge, the head of education at the SS Great Britain Trust.
“We have moved on from specialist interest groups to family and friendship groups and their needs and learning strategies during their visit. We are trying to find ways into their imaginations by bringing Brunel and his thinking in as close as possible.”
Visitors sit in the carriage and compete to draw a circle as neatly as possible on the tablets provided.
“The carriage is a fun way to create a welcoming and engaging space for those who don’t have confidence in a museum environment,” Rambridge says. “You don’t have to work hard to get a lot out of it and it illustrates how Brunel saw the potential of the technology he was working with.
The Rocket, which was built in Newcastle in 1829 and tested on the Liverpool to Manchester railway line during the Rain- hill Trials, tells the story of how northern England led the transformation of Britain’s railway system and changed the way we live our lives, not just in the UK but all over the world.
After a stint at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester (until 28 April 2019), part of the Science Museum Group (SMG), the Rocket will find a long- term home as a focal point of the redeveloped National Railway Museum (NRM) in York, another SMG venue.
Railway museums are enduringly popular and can attract crowds to see an iconic object in a special exhibition, but they also have to tell new stories to entice younger audiences to replace the dwindling number of traditional enthusiasts. There are many challenges in doing this, especially for small, often volunteer-run museums in remote locations at the ends of lines, that struggle to find funds and new volunteers.
Some have closed, including the Electric Railway Museum in Coventry in 2017 and the North Woolwich Old Station Museum in east London in 2009. But far more are looking to the long term and reinventing them- selves for the digital age.
Maintaining relevance with audiences means museums are starting to focus more on telling the story of the railways of today and tomorrow as well as those of the past. The NRM’s latest exhibition, Testing (until 28 April 2019), for example, is about the modern rail industry.
“Historically, we have been good at telling the stories of the railways, but we are also perfectly placed to address the UK’s engineering shortage by looking at the skillsets needed in the digital age,” says Judith McNicol, the director of the NRM.
The venue is pressing on with a £50m redevelopment, despite having a £13.4m Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) grant application turned down. “There are compelling reasons for the redevelopment, not least because we sit within the York Central residential scheme,” says McNicol. “It’s an ideal opportunity for us to consider the next 50 years. The museum and surrounding area will benefit from new galleries and landscaping, and one of the chief aims is to attract non- traditional audiences.”
The work will build on established initiatives such as Future Engineers, which, over the October half-term holidays, gave around 40,000 families the chance to explore research and innovation in a hands-on way. Half of the contributing scientists and engineers were women.
“It’s important that we encourage parents to come along so they can see that engineering attracts people from diverse back- grounds,” says McNicol. “We can show how engineering has changed and what it has to offer new generations comfortable in the digital world. We are exploding the myth that it’s dirty, dangerous work on the track-side in hi-vis jackets.
“A new element will be a hands-on children’s gallery, based on the Science Museum’s Wonderlab, with lots of physics and maths-centred interactives about the trial and error of engineering – the testing, failing and relearning,” says McNicol.
“It moves the story on from steam through diesel and electricity to maglev [magnetic-levitation, where one magnet repels the other to make the train levitate above the track while being propelled for- ward] and future rail transport. The aim is to fire imaginations and suggest career opportunities, while linking to our collections and stories such as that of Timothy Hackworth, a lesser-known engineer than Stephenson but who nevertheless competed at the Rainhill Trials.”
Remaining relevant
There has been a slow decline in visitors over the past two decades at the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum in Belfast, but new ways to connect to audiences are refreshing the experience. The museum comprises two sections, one outdoors that looks at Irish rural life and traditions, and the other housing the Irish railway collection as part of the covered transport museum.
“The sheer size and age of these machines means the eye is drawn to them, but they are static objects that we want to animate,” says Aaron Ward, the head of creative engagement at National Museums Northern Ireland.
“We want people to see them in working order and, though we are restricted in conservation terms, there will be a gradual animation of the site and a more rhythmic style of programming so that there’s always something going on.
“The aim is to accentuate the ingenuity, innovation and tenacity of Irish people through the story of rail transport,” Ward says. “We especially want to use our schools programme to inspire future generations with these engineering marvels, and use the collections to engage with more stem [science, technology, engineering and maths] events.”
Ward adds that the Troubles in Northern Ireland masked a lot of the stories at the museum, yet daily life went on as industry and transport evolved.
“We are now at the point where we can rediscover some of these stories, such as that of the linen industry,” he says. “This was on an industrial scale, but also spawned handmade artisan skills and crafts that were passed down through generations and link to today’s creative industries and thriving IT sector.”
Despite the benefits of looking forward to the growth of creative industries, nostalgia still plays a huge part in the appeal of many railway heritage sites. It’s 50 years since the last commercial steam train puffed its way down the rail tracks and the romance of steam endures.
“People love tiny trains,” says David Rounce, the director of Ravenglass Railway Museum, which preserves the artefacts of the Ravenglass & Eskdale Railway in the Lake District. “Being attached to a commercial heritage railway means we can attract up to half of the railway’s 100,000 annual visitors to the museum. One popular initiative is “driver for a fiver”, where anyone with a driving licence can drive the train a little way down the track.”
While Ravenglass Railway Museum is some distance from the main tourist spots on the West Cumbria coast, a recent redevelopment enabled by a £500,000 HLF grant and £300,000 from local bodies has doubled the size of the museum with a new shed and exhibition space.
“It’s just a shed, but it’s a nice shed,” says Rounce. “It has meant more rolling stock can be put on display, so our aim is to make it safe to clamber on and have dressing-up costumes and props for families. “We punch above our weight but we want to make our museum more available to the public, and volunteers are difficult to attract,” says Rounce, who is looking for- ward to Ravenglass securing full museum Accreditation.
“People want to drive trains, but they don’t want to commit to archiving. But two of our train drivers are women and we have university students during the holidays who also help dig tracks and do some of the heavier work.
“The line was called La’al Ratty and we use this Cumbrian dialect to talk about what a certain engine felt like to drive, and how trains are connected to our daily lives. There are a dwindling number of people interested in the diameter of wheels. It’s about future-proofing so we try to tease out the human stories of how trains brought huge social changes. For example, how they changed our diet with fish from the coast and milk from the farms, which was brought fresh into the city.”
Rounce says train travel even infiltrates contemporary conversations around Brexit, such as when people discuss the future of Eurostar.
“Public transport is ever changing and political events have shown that it is as relevant a topic as ever,” he says, but he warns that museums must be careful not to dwell on a nostalgia that distorts the past.
“In 1968, when the last steam train travelled, rail workers couldn’t wait to switch to diesel. It was filthy, back-breaking work running steam locomotives and our displays reflect that reality.”
Heritage connection
St Seraphim’s Icon and Railway Heritage Museum is on the former platform of Walsingham station in Norfolk. It houses a unique collection of orthodox Christian icons from the days when it was still a painting studio, as well as railway artefacts.
Walsingham station was on the Great Eastern Railway line and was instrumental in the revival of religious pilgrimage in the 1930s, because it was close to the Walsingham shrine, arguably one of the holiest places in England and a pilgrimage spot since 1061. It is these intertwined stories that the museum wants to bring to the fore, alongside its small railway collection, which it wants to display more effectively.
“We have found out a lot about the railway through our research and one of our volunteers is about to publish a book on it,” says Sylvia Batchelor, the manager of St Seraphim’s Icon and Railway Heritage Museum.
“We have had photographs donated to us and we dug up signs and other railway paraphernalia when we were making our quiet garden [a space for contemplation opened in 2015].
“We are keen to put more of our collection on display, but it’s a work in progress,” Batchelor adds. The museum was awarded a small HLF Our Heritage Grant for the refurbishment of the platform and to pay a volunteer co- ordinator for three years.
Batchelor says the museum has found it difficult to get funding because it is not a working railway. The icon collection gives the venue a rare cachet, but Batchelor recognises the need to attract more young people.
“We worked with the National Probation Service on the garden, which was where railway workers used to grow soft fruit and vegetables, and our icon-painting classes should also attract a new generation,” she says. “We have enough interest from researchers and graduates who use the archives to study iconography.
“Once we have the icons better interpreted it will help people read them, and we will have talks and events to complement the activities.”
Most of the museum’s visitors are pilgrims to the Our Lady at Walsingham shrine, but it also attracts tourists and holidaymakers from the nearby coast.
“We pick up a lot of Walsingham’s 250,000 annual visitors,” says Batchelor. “Eventually, we hope to become a sustainable entity as a visitor attraction.”
In a world of media and movement, railway museums have to find ways to animate their static collections to keep people coming back, whether it’s capitalising on the other stories that fuel the railway’s histories or those that could power the future of train travel. And with high-speed lines being built from London to Manchester, and the renationalisation of the railways being discussed again, rail travel is as relevant as ever.
Deborah Mulhearn is a freelance writer
Shake, rattle and roll
When the railways were first introduced in the 1830s, many people were terrified to travel on the unstable carriages that sped along narrow gauges.
The engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel was determined to introduce a smoother ride on broad-gauge rails. The rocking railway carriage at the new Being Brunel museum, which sits on the dockside alongside the steamship he designed, the SS Great Britain, in Bristol, is one of its most popular exhibits.
“It’s a re-creation of a typical carriage on the Great Western Railway at a time when Brunel was developing his ideas,” says Kate Rambridge, the head of education at the SS Great Britain Trust.
“We have moved on from specialist interest groups to family and friendship groups and their needs and learning strategies during their visit. We are trying to find ways into their imaginations by bringing Brunel and his thinking in as close as possible.”
Visitors sit in the carriage and compete to draw a circle as neatly as possible on the tablets provided.
“The carriage is a fun way to create a welcoming and engaging space for those who don’t have confidence in a museum environment,” Rambridge says. “You don’t have to work hard to get a lot out of it and it illustrates how Brunel saw the potential of the technology he was working with.
“The rocking carriage encapsulates our approach, which is meant to be less a retrospective of the extraordinary phenomenon of 19th-century rail travel and more about the cutting-edge possibilities of new ways of travel, and how Brunel tested it to achieve a better outcome. It’s so popular the bearings have already had to be replaced.”
