Since it’s Easter, I couldn’t go without mentioning something chocolate related – and this weekend, the Museum has been packed with families doing the easter chocolate trail.
The trail sends you to 11 locations within the museum looking for clues, and hopefully discovering a few new things about the railways and our collections. I’ve been working in Search Engine this week as Duty Curator and we’ve had around 3000 people up here onto the balcony in search of chocolatey clues.
This poster from the collection advertises rail excursions to Cadbury World and features the signature purple colour of the chocolate wrapper along with a reproduction of a vintage poster to emphasise and promote their heritage. The poster from 1992 shows how Cadbury’s and Regional Railways used joint marketing to attract visitors to Cadbury World by train.
Cadbury’s, like Rowntree’s and Fry’s alike, used the railways extensively in order to move ingredients, materials and people within their factories, as well as to transport the finished product. In the 1930s, visits to the chocolate factories became popular with members of the public and school groups. In fact, they remained popular for many years and I remember my own tour of Rowntree’s when I was at school in York; turns out orange creams taste even better fresh from the factory!