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The National Railway Museum, Yorkshire

The railways were the world's first overland mass transportation system. They changed the way people lived, and helped create a more open and mobile society. The railways offered concessionary fares to Hyde Park's Great Exhibition in 1851, and in that year more people travelled by train than had ever travelled by train before. Day tripping became popular, and travel became important for its own sake. Some writers have suggested that the railways helped produce the kind of open society into which the revolutionary scientific discoveries of the nineteenth century could be introduced. Darwin's biographers Adrian Desmond and James Moore remark that publication of The Origin Of Species had to wait for the kind of society that would accept such radical ideas. By 1859, the year of the book's publication, the railways had contributed towards creating that society. As Tennyson was to write: "Let the great world spin forever down the ringing grooves of change." He mistakenly thought, following his first rail journey, that train wheels run in grooves, but you get his point.

Although by the mid twentieth century the motor car had taken over as society's favoured mode of transport, it had been on the railways that a modern mobile society had taken shape.

A replica of George Stephenson's Rocket, the locomotive that won the Railway Trials of 1830, can be seen at the National Railway Museum in York. There are over 100 other locomotives, which include Mallard the world's fastest steam locomotive. There are about 170 other items of rolling stock, and millions of railway artifacts.

 

Opening Times: The museum is open 10am to 6pm daily but closed 24th - 26th December.

Directions: The Museum is situated in Leeman Road, in the middle of York, only a few minutes walk from York railway station. York is twenty minutes from the A1(M) and the Museum is clearly signposted on all approaches to the city. There is car parking available at the Museum. Click here for an interactive map centred on the National Railway Museum.

Access: wheelchairs are available free of charge. Two battery powered chairs are available by prior appointment. Access within the museum is good with ramps, wide doorways, and lifts with audible floor indicators and tactile control buttons. Sound guides with Braille instructions are available. Museum exhibits are available for touching as far as the needs of conservation allow. Special 'touch' evenings are organised. See the web site for details. Guide dogs and hearing dogs are admitted.

Contact:

telephone: +44 (0) 8448 153139

web:http://www.nrm.org.uk/home/home.asp

e-mail: nrm@nrm.org.uk