The welcome news that Locomotion was granted planning permission for New Hall means that we can press ahead with the exciting transformation of our site. Housing more than 50 vehicles from the national collection, the new building will mean that Locomotion becomes home to the largest undercover collection of heritage rail vehicles in the world, a wonderful accolade for Shildon and County Durham—places so intimately connected to the origins of the global railway story.
The new building
New Hall draws on the aesthetic of engine sheds, linking it to Shildon’s history as the world’s first railway town, and at one time the world’s largest carriage works. Simple and elegant in design and occupying a footprint of 2100m2, the building has three pairs of tracks allowing visitors to easily walk between these giants and learn about their history and significance.
It has been designed to help us meet our goal of being net carbon zero by 2033. The building draws on passive environmental design principles. It will incorporate high levels of insulation to reduce the demand for heating and cooling, with limited to glazing to reduce solar gain.
New Hall will also be set in a landscape that encourages biodiversity. Existing trees will be retained wherever possible, and the boundary fencing will be softened with hedgerow planting to provide a range of habitats. We will also extend our existing planting schemes to develop areas that replicate what is found next to many railway sites across the country.
New stories
The opportunity to see more icons of the railway age will, of course, be a draw, but New Hall will also allow us to tell richer stories of the rail industry from its earliest days in Shildon to the present, revealing how Shildon changed the world. We want to inspire the next generation of engineers and scientists and this story is inspirational.
The focus of New Hall will be the relationship of the railways with industry, from their connection to early coal production to showcasing wagons produced in Shildon and the importance of freight. This will be complemented by the redisplay of vehicles in the existing Main Hall to highlight rail innovation over the last 200 years, beginning with pioneering Locomotion No 1 and exploring how locomotives of the future could be powered.
New ways of working
New Hall will also act as an impetus to enhance activities already taking place on site. Shortly after New Hall opens in early Autumn 2023, Locomotion will host the national centenary commemorations of Flying Scotsman and it goes without saying that the museum will be a major hub in the celebrations planned for the 200th anniversary of the opening of the Stockton & Darlington Railway in 2025.
Locomotion has always exceeded expectations, but New Hall and our wider plans mean that it will become a must-see stop for visitors to the area and a world-class national museum for our community.
To find out more about our plans and programme, please visit the Locomotion website.
Fabulous news, lots of railway locomotives etc etc,will stand with pride
I do hope that you can make the exhibition and collections more exciting and realistic than NRM, York. Which looks and sounds like a loco mausoleum. No noise, no smells, no animation. Everything tarted up as the exhibits never looked in their working lives. And hardly changing every year. Lifeless, dull and boring.
Shouldn’t that be called the new warehouse? Very few windows, admit it, it’s just a huge storage cupboard.
When is the so-called museum going to get back to be a more welcoming place to go to, the science group have taken all the life out of the place, it is now totally disconnected from the surrounding community that it’s supposed to represent,but it’s more than happy to use thier Council tax money to help assist with this new so called “venture”.
What’s gonna be left at
York at this rate ? as it’s looked empty since shildon opened
And I think the old shildon building never filled its full potential
Nice to see but when will you start to bring back the Toy Fairs and local events that attracted so many people through your doors before the Science Museum group take over ?
The latter part of this sentence i.e. the section after the comma, makes no sense to me:-
“It will incorporate high levels of insulation to reduce the demand for heating and cooling, with limited to glazing to reduce solar gain.”
Is there a word missing – possibly between ‘with’ and ‘limited’? Please clarify…
I do hope the history of Shildon Wagon Works wil be well represented in New Hall. It played a major role in the early development of the town and must never be allowed to slip away.