Be Excellent To Each Other

Finding myself uncomfortably NORTH yesterday, with a couple of hours to kill, I thought I'd attend the National Railway Museum. And what a decision it was. It's simply spiffing, packed to the gills with trains and rail paraphanalia and staffed by quite a few hotties. Sadly, I was wearing my anorak, as it looked a bit damp outside, so no CHARM BOMBS were dropped. Anyways, this is what I saw (some highlights):

1) The Mallard. It's beautiful in a way that only something powered by steam can be.

2) A replica of The Rocket. Seeing it next to the Mallard was strange, but kinda cool:

There was a Bullet train there, which was interesting, as how small the seats were.

Especially for Kalmar, here's one of the first electric trains, with batteries either side of the cab. Behind it is one of the first diesel shunting engines.

Here's also on of the first attempts at "Streamlining" a train. They got quite into this sort of thing, back then.

This ugly yellow colour is actually described as "Green". Which is clearly a case of no one telling the boss he's color blind.

Look at the size of the wheels on the "Iron Duke" About eight feet tall!!!

Next is a dirt hopper used to take dirt from foreign and under the sea and remove it from the Channel Tunnel.

I took some pictures of the controls for a steam train, but couldn't tell you what does what, nor which engine it was from. Sorry.

Here's some gubbins from underneath a train. I couldn't find anything to use for scale, so please accept it when I say "Large", ta.

There's some quite useful info for the hard of thinking, like Adrian Edmonson

And a 1960s Sulzer Diesel Engine BTH Generators. These chuck out a cool 1,160 HP through it's six cylinders, coupled directly to electric generators producing DC current to drive the train. it's got a turbo as well. So not unlike the MaliAMobile.

And a plate explaining what not to do.

Finally, as PJ O'Rourke observes, if anyone ever goes anywhere, something will be covered up with tarpaulin, or undergoing restoration, so no two people have ever seen the same things in a museum. In my case, the Flying Scotsman was in the workshop, so it was in bits. However, there was a button to push to hear hammering. So I did.

So, to conclude, go to the National Rail Museum. it's free, and it's awesome, and there's every chance of hitting on some totty.

*jumps into hermetically sealed chamber to avoid the meatygasm*

Cool pics. Whereabouts is it up north? I know it's a small place, but still...

York. it took me about 2 hours to go around it, but I'd like to go again, as I wanted a bunch of postcards from the shop. but then mrsA called as her meeting had finished so i had to go.

Awesome pictures.

It is indeed awesome. Went there a few times with school. Except of course we had to go *south* to get there.

Nice pics. I haven't been there since I was about 12.

That Iron Duke is amazing. I wish to purchase that and a top hat to tour the world.

Cool stuff. I've been meaning to go up to York again at some point. Trains aren't enough to tempt me, but it looks worth a visit if I'm there. Cheers, Mali.

It's got seriously fucking big wheels. I'm still agog at them.

Amusingly, after the Mallard had done the speed record, it got into the shed and promptly fell to bits.

I could have a fair guess, it's one of my random skills. So let's see.

Big handle in the middle - accelerator (or 'regulator' as they called them)
Bottom left - reversing lever
The gauge above that - I'm not sure
The gauge above that - Steam pressure. Note the red line where the safety valves open
The silver box to the right of the bottom gauge - water level. There'll be another one of these somewhere
The tap at the top - probably turns water flow to the injector on and off.
Various small levers (some with black handles, some with brass) - would turn steam to gauges / components on and off
Wooden handled lever - may be the steam water injector lever, which uses steam to force more water into the boiler
Bottom right - brakes

Now someone that knows will come along and tell me that all of those are wrong

Thanks Grim.

There was a Chinese engine (which was massive, as the chinese have a far greater load gauge than the UK) with all of them labelled, but I didn't take a photo of it.

I like this one, too:

Fantastic!

I'll only take a trip up there if the hovertrain from BTTF3 is there.

The Railway Museum was one of the first places I went when I went South last month. It was better than I remembered it being & we spent the best part of a day there.

I went to the Railway Museum in York. No trains were running, it was quicker to walk.

I went to the Railway Museum in York, but they'd changed it to a Temporary Replacement Bus Museum instead.

I went there when I was about 10, I liked it.

Malc

Lies.

I love Mr Dave.

That's obviously fake - he's not to scale with the locomotive.