Beginnings
Discussions about a national railway museum began in earnest in the 1960s. Mainline steam was coming to an end all over the network as locomotives and older rolling stock was withdrawn and scrapped, and many smaller heritage groups were scrambling to save individual vehicles and sections of track. Clearly something had to be done, and the search began to find a site for a new national railway museum.
After considerable debate, York was chosen—the old motive power depot (now Great Hall) was thought to be the most suitable building available. Collections were to come from the Science Museum’s transport galleries and British Rail’s own heritage centre at Clapham.
The decision was met with excitement across the North of England; many saw it as an important step in spreading national museums outside of London.
For others the decision was controversial. Opponents wanted to keep the collections in London, either at Clapham or at a rival proposed museum based at Crystal Palace. Some even doubted whether tourists would want to travel to York!
In the end the York proposal won out and during the early 1970s the depot was transformed from a working engine shed into a display hall the public could visit. Famous vehicles such as Mallard were spotted moving north, alongside thousands of precious objects that had been collected by railway workers and enthusiasts over the preceding 150 years.
Expansion
The following decades saw the museum grow and expand. In 1990 the former Goods Station across Leeman Road became the museum’s new Station Hall after repairs were needed on the Great Hall roof. The original loading and unloading platforms that allowed access to the freight wagons offered visitors a very different way to look at the vehicles on display. In contrast to Great Hall, which told the big-picture story of railways, Station Hall was designed to offer more personal and up-close stories of passenger travel.
The museum’s collections grew as well—current visitor favourites Chinese locomotive KF-7 and the Japanese ‘0’ series Shinkansen were acquired as the museum looked to tell bigger and broader stories about railways.
In 1997 the old British Rail Diesel Depot was reimagined as our Open Store. An alternative to sending thousands of objects to deep storage hidden from view, the Open Store was imagined as just that—a store visitors could access and explore. The first of its kind in the UK, it was key to the museum winning European Museum of the Year in 2001.
Meaning and Purpose
From the very start the museum has existed to share the railway story with the world. Sometimes this has been through grand events such as the Great Gathering in 2013 when all surviving LNER A4s were brought together from across the world. It was an event that wowed the public but was also a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for railway enthusiasts.
Other times, it has been through longer-term changes. A sister museum, Locomotion, was opened in Shildon in 2004, a town with a direct link to the very earliest days of the railways but that also had hosted a major railway workshop until closure.
In 2008 the National Railway Museum’s Search Engine was officially opened as a research centre that could be used by anyone interested in knowing more about our shared railway past. Search Engine and Locomotion have been embraced by communities and groups trying to understand how railways shaped their lives.
Now in the process of another great period of change as it reaches its 50th anniversary, the NRM is once again reinventing itself for new audiences.
