National Railway Museum

Not at all, but the "N" in NRM stands for National, so their collections should be relevant to our National Railway industry. If it was the World Railway Museum, then anything woud be relevant. But it isn't.

 

Why? Is the rest of the world irrelevant? The NE of England gave railways to the world and that’s an integral part of the story.

 

In that case, why not have a separate museum for overseas exhibits? For the purposes of BRITISH railway history, the rest of the world is irrelevant, yes.

 

Ah, but it is. Look up the NRM's Masterplan and you will see this headline........."Becoming the World's Railway Museum". There you have it.

Peter

 

If you look on their website their ambition is to.be the World's Railway Musuem.

Sent from my SM-A556B using Tapatalk

 

Stage 1: Become the World's Railway-themed Café
Pat

 

The Japanese themselves do not have a good track record on this. A QJ and RM Pacific were donated by China to Japan in the 1980s and were scrapped in Japan some years ago because the money could not be found for asbestos removable.

 

So the British Museum should only display British exhibits? It's a national museum, not a museum of the nation.

 

The British Museum would be very empty if it only displayed items produced in this country!

 

That would rather defeat the objective of providing education on the development of railways. Why be so parochial? There is much to learn from foreign railway history. If we follow a logic that says there should only be British exhibits do we scrap those exhibits that contain foreign technology too? (Which is most of the exhibits post rocket)

 

you do like splitting hairs don't you?

 

That makes little sense because the scrapping would have involved removing the asbestos.

 

But the contractor recovered the cost through the scrap value presumably.

 

Possible explanation is that the asbestos was just an excuse to get rid of something that had an ongoing cost. On a more granular basis, may be a budget thing, they did not have a choice to do something about the asbestos but had no budget or other incentive to put the locos back together. And as @21B suggested, possibly the outcome looked even better if the scrap steel paid for the removal.

 

That's a very fair point. Do the opponents of foreign locomotives in the NRM feel the same about foreign things in the BRITISH Museum...

 

So there are two 'foreign' items in the NRM

A bullet train from Japan whose network was built & equipped by the UK & a Chinese loco designed by a British engineer and built in thde UK

They both seem pretty relevant to me

Oh and there are 'other' links with the 'Chinese' loco and the UK

https://blog.railwaymuseum.org.uk/s...ext=4-8-4 KF7 Class,Newton le Willows in 1935.

 

Fact remains the NRM fails to inform in a cohesive manner and the exhibits are poorly displayed compared to say Canada, France, Russian examples.

 

I’d agree it doesn’t do a very good job of education on railways.

 

And that's known about - I reemmber a talk by one of the curators a year or so ago where they said there's a lot of redevelopment happening and the story of railways is a key part of the interpretation that hasn't yet happend. A lot of work is happening to the buildings first

 

Jolly good. I last went there about 2years ago. I recall it being very poor. The exhibits were not interpreted well and there was absolutely no attempt to link them, or put them in context.