![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rhythmaningA couple of weeks ago, I spent an hour or so in the York Railway Museum. I have been there before – a couple of years ago.
I think York Station is one of my favourite buildings. Train stations are strange places – leaving loved ones, arriving in new places – but it is the roof and the curve of the platforms that I like most. I have spent some strange moments there – lost between arriving and departing – but it is a great place (not least because it is halfway between home – Edinburgh – and home – London…).
I have taken these pictures before, back then, but this is how I saw it now…
The museum itself is just wonderful. I wandered back and forth, not only taking the same picture I had two years ago, but copying what I had done fifteen minutes before.
The footplate of one of the locomotives was opened up, and there were two guys there to explain it to visitors; well, one guy and his mate – because one bloke did all the talking, and the other simply nodded when he said something.
The engine was a Black 5; it was too dark, and too black, to take a photograph (although I should have thought to use the flash to take a picture of the guy telling me about the engine).
He told a great story. He showed the different gauges and levers – and he let me pull the whistle (ok, there was no steam, so there was no noise – but I have wanted to do that forever!), he explained how the engine worked in ways that made sense – and best of all, he explained the vacuum brakes. I thought the vacuum brakes were really, really clever: using the flow of steam blowing across an opening, a vacuum was created in a tube, which stretched the length of the train. To apply the brakes, a valve was opened, releasing the vacuum; and so, if the carriages (or goods, or whatever…) should become decoupled from the engine, the tube carrying the vacuum the length of the train would break, the vacuum would be released, and the brakes would automatically go on. So simple; so clever.
I spent fifteen or twenty minutes on the footplate of the Black 5, asking stupid questions, trying to understand how this beautiful concoction of polished brass and black-painted steel worked.
I had a wonderful time at the York Railway Museum; and in another couple of years, I shall go back, and be thrilled all over again.
I think York Station is one of my favourite buildings. Train stations are strange places – leaving loved ones, arriving in new places – but it is the roof and the curve of the platforms that I like most. I have spent some strange moments there – lost between arriving and departing – but it is a great place (not least because it is halfway between home – Edinburgh – and home – London…).
I have taken these pictures before, back then, but this is how I saw it now…
The museum itself is just wonderful. I wandered back and forth, not only taking the same picture I had two years ago, but copying what I had done fifteen minutes before.
The footplate of one of the locomotives was opened up, and there were two guys there to explain it to visitors; well, one guy and his mate – because one bloke did all the talking, and the other simply nodded when he said something.
The engine was a Black 5; it was too dark, and too black, to take a photograph (although I should have thought to use the flash to take a picture of the guy telling me about the engine).
LMS Black Five 45157 'The Glasgow Highlander' at Crewe Works. Picture by Phil Scott.
He told a great story. He showed the different gauges and levers – and he let me pull the whistle (ok, there was no steam, so there was no noise – but I have wanted to do that forever!), he explained how the engine worked in ways that made sense – and best of all, he explained the vacuum brakes. I thought the vacuum brakes were really, really clever: using the flow of steam blowing across an opening, a vacuum was created in a tube, which stretched the length of the train. To apply the brakes, a valve was opened, releasing the vacuum; and so, if the carriages (or goods, or whatever…) should become decoupled from the engine, the tube carrying the vacuum the length of the train would break, the vacuum would be released, and the brakes would automatically go on. So simple; so clever.
I spent fifteen or twenty minutes on the footplate of the Black 5, asking stupid questions, trying to understand how this beautiful concoction of polished brass and black-painted steel worked.
I had a wonderful time at the York Railway Museum; and in another couple of years, I shall go back, and be thrilled all over again.