Amy and I ended up in York recently, a planned overnight stop before catching a steam special to Carlisle in the morning as a joint birthday/anniversary celebration... which got cancelled a few days before, because West Coast Railway Company can't organise a railtour for toffee, broke several of their steam engines, and couldn't/wouldn't hire a replacement loco. Rather than spend a day and a considerable amount of money on the excursion, we had a day shopping and walking about in York instead, and because we're railway enthusiasts, we ended up ambling over to the National Railway Museum for a brew and a sit-down in the afternoon, because we're middle aged now.
Well, I say the National Railway Museum, because that's what it was most of my life. But some advertising agency got paid a presumably obscene amount of Government money a few years ago to rebrand it, and they dropped the 'national' as being too old fashioned/right wing/some other reason, delete as appropriate.
You know, it takes some real confidence to have this be the first thing visitors see. An overgrown, empty yard, rusting and severed tracks, and a single weather-beaten and neglected crane.
Look, I'm going to have a rant here. It's Rail 200 year! A celebration of railway heritage, technology, and future, and this is the nations main railway museum, in one of the busiest Northern tourist cities, in the middle of the school holidays.
It takes some wonderful planning to have two thirds of the 'premier' railway museum shut for refurbishment, with the only access from the city being a long, lonnnnng walk around a building site, with a marvellous view of the ex-museum outdoor spaces which have been cynically sold to become a massive new housing estate instead. But it's ok, because there's a lot of isolated infrastructure for cyclists, and a level crossing to nowhere for, some day, some demonstration trains to run.
Given the amount of cyclists who complain about the dangers of the level crossing/street running in Porthmadog, I can only imagine there'll be some interesting complaints in years to come. And the homeowners with the new houses backing onto the museum will have a thing or two to say as well, I'm sure.
Finished with the slightly bitter attitude? No, not quite. Because I've started openly calling this place the National Cafe and Softplay Museum. Going inside the one remaining hall, slightly tatty as it now looks (all those nets on the roof to catch any falling glass), there are two large spaces given over to cafes. Within 30 feet of each other. And two shops, within 100. Oh and a few trains, several of which were surrounded with hoardings to stop you seeing them, and most of which were covered in dust.
There's no 'narrative' (urgh, buzz words), just a few random trains. And you definitely get the impression that the museum are a bit annoyed they have to have a load of inconveniently large lumps of metal getting in the way of the important business of selling two small mugs of tea for £5.20.
The old workshops and engineering space is now a kids 'push button and make things spin/glow/move' play space, with paid entry. I get the importance of encouraging S.T.E.A.M, I really do (Scout Leader and ex-School DT Tech hats on), but was there really nowhere else on this massive site they could have built it? Oh right, they've sold a big chunk of the site to be housing land, whoops. There's a certain irony in obliterating your heavy engineering space to create an area for getting kids interested in technology and engineering.
Anything positive to say? Thank goodness the archive is still there; one of the best things they ever did here was turn the museum stores, all those models and smaller artefacts, into an exhibition space.
Then there's stuff like this. The Freightliner brakevan/pod. This spent years out in the yard rusting and falling to bits, so it's lovely to see it brought indoors and tarted up.
And nice to see things like the Class 84 on prominent display, given the museum has a few celebrities that hog the limelight. I suppose when you have fewer trains, just doing everything about the likes of "Mallard" is the easy option than celebrating the lesser exhibits.
So yeah, I was very disappointed. I get it, I've worked in the heritage sector- the country has no money, and suddenly all those commercial stuff like gift shops and hideously expensive coffee are the only ways to keep the lights on. And selling off the yard outside to be housing land? Well, this is technically a national museum in the Science Museum Group, and exists outside of London, so selling the museum spaces off (yes, also looking at you, Science Museum Manchester) is a fact of life.
And yes, the museum did need a bit of tarting up and building work clearly needed doing. But could it not have been done before, or after, the Rail 200 celebrations?
York Railway Museum left a bitter taste in the mouth... but it was very much washed away (spoiler alert!) by an unplanned trip to their out-station facility at Shildon the day after, of which, more in another post.
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