Added: 12/25/2005 |
THE NATIONAL MUSEUM HAS IT ALLThere are millions of various museums in the world. Each of them is extremely interesting and has a lot of nice things to see. Each of them is dedicated to some particular branch of science or art. So, there are museums for all people and all tastes.
Those fond of various trains and locomotives, their history and mechanisms should visit the National Railway Museum.
The famous railroading collection of this National Museum contains one hundred and three locomotives and one hundred and seventy-seven other items of rolling stock. The National Museum tells the railway story from Rocket to Eurostar, going under the English Channel.
The museum offers to your attention and appreciation numerous wonderful exhibitions. One of them is Locomotives and Rolling Stocks, comprising over a hundred locomotives dating from 1813 up to the present day. Wagons chart the transport of goods by rail and carriages represent passenger transport of every class.
Railway Timepieces is another exhibition, which attracts visitors by a unique collection of station platform clocks, office clocks, guard watches and presentation watches, which form the greatest part of this exhibition's collection and which are exceptionally vital for smooth running of the railway. No doubt, timetabling and timekeeping are very important to both the railway and its passengers.
It has been like this for ever: you cannot travel by rail unless you buy a ticket. It's a gold rule- any journey requires payment for it.
The National Museum collection Tickets, Passes and Labels covers different types of passes used when on a train, from gold passes to simple card tickets. Luggage and wagon labels plotting movement of goods are also included.
The Museum collects significant historic and high quality engineering models and holds an extensive collection of commercially built toy trains, exhibited in the museum collection Railroad Models.
Signalling and Telecommunications is another exciting exhibition, popular with visitors thanks to a magnificent collection of signalling equipment such as lever frames, telegraph instruments, signal posts and gantries telling you the entire enigmatic history of railway signalling.
Young boys and girls, as well as their parents are usually very interested in the history of a vehicle, andrailway vehicles are not an exception. There are plenty of them in the National Museum collection, which includes horse-drawn drays, delivery vans and omnibuses as well as early motorised lorries.
Numismatists from all over the world would appreciate the National Museum collection of Railway Coins and Medals. This collection boasts various kinds of coins, from Roman coins found during the construction of the railways to early trade tokens used by the railway navvies. This collection also fascinates its viewers by commemorative, first aid and long service medals.
Almost 6,000 items of cutlery, crockery and silver can be viewed in the museum's exhibition of Hotel and Catering Wares.
The collection of Railway Shipping and the one of Tools of the Trade exhibit all kinds of tools and equipment used in shipbuilding and hundreds of models of ships, from very small and old ones to modern and huge.
To some extent, the National Museum can be considered as a museum of arts, as it displays a great number of railway posters and bills, paintings, prints, engravings and photographs, covering different times and epochs. All these can be observed in the Poster, Notice and Handbill collection, as well as the Photographic and Pictorial Collections.
The Archive and the Engineering Drawings collections contain over a million engineering drawings of locomotives, carriages and other rolling stock, as well as technical material concerning the development of locomotives and rolling stock, such as specifications, reports, correspondence and drawings.
It is absolutely obvious that visiting the National Railway Museum once, you will get tons of precious information, useful for everybody. So just find a little time and go to the National Museum!!!
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