Skip to main content

Culture day at Head of Steam Railway Museum

In the interests of local culture we visited the Head of Steam Railway Museum in Darlington today.  It was an interesting and educational experience... if I'm honest I went because they advertised an exhibition of 1950's table ware and it looked fun. Other then travelling on them, I've never been that interested in trains of any description but actually the museum turned out to be very good and there was just enough to hold my limited 'railway' attention span.

It was helped by the fact that while he museum hosts the Locomotion Number One - Stephenson first triumphant steam engine designed to carry coal quickly and cheaply - it also houses some relevant social history and artifacts giving a more personal feel to the place and extending the general interest.  The museum is set in the old station building and still had the Victorian gents loos on show  (complete with notice asking people NOT to use them!!) and the displays are well laid out with quite a lot of hands on things for the younger generation and of course those of us that like to be involved if possible.... .  I loved all the various bits of luggage strewn around the place as well.

various aspects of museum including gents loos!!!

The 1950's tableware was great - there wasn't much I suspect it was some ones private collection loaned, but it was nicely presented and I really like the lovely simple clean lines of the drawings and shapes of the pottery.

1950's tableware

The bit I like best were the wooden dogs heads removed from a building that was being demolished in 1957, I thought they were stunning - so busy was I taking photos that I forgot to note quite which building they came from and why they were relevant to the railway museum.. I'll check that out on my next visit as I know we will have to bring our steam mad family member here next time hes up our way!!!

they are so expressive - I do need to find our more about them....

wooden dogs heads (slightly bigger then life size)

Aren't they fabulous!!! ... and yes I've just learn't how to make photo collages so I can cram even more pictures in!

All that education left us is need of cake so we drove across town to the french patisserie Robineau's where we had a taster selection of delicious scrummy french cakes and afternoon tea!!

Mid demolition...too busy eating to take pictures 

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Alesund

Our final destination stop was Alesund. This is a very pretty town in southern Norway built on a peninsula. All the houses are painted pretty colours and a lot of the architecture is all very Art Nouveau based. This is because the town itself was completely burnt to the ground In 1904 by a fire for which they never found the original cause. The whole town had to be rebuilt and this became a huge National Effort and a lot of prominent and up and coming architects flocked to the town to stick there 20 pence in. Consequently the town is very heavily Art Nouveau which was very fashionable at the time. There is this wonderful Museum just off the harbour which is a very beautiful Art Nouveau house. It has amazing panelling, doors, wallpaper, and it's all furnished with beautiful art Nouveau Furniture. It also house a collection of of enameled Art Nouveau Trinkets,boxes, spoons, jewellery, very very beautiful.   There is an interesting collection of old books and paintings a...
1 comment
Read more

The Blue Dot

Excellent evening spent at the first Blue Dot festival held at Jodrell Bank.  Clever use of the radio telescope as back drop for the main stage... there were some major teething issues which hopefully will addressed if this event happens again - mainly access and parking.. it was a nightmare approach to the festival and fortunately as we were only doing one night we decided to ditch the car and chose to walk the last mile and half into the site... what a relief as if we had queued we would most certainly missed Public Service Broadcasting which was one of the reasons we were going.. anyway we caught them and then enjoyed fantastic set by Underworld - danced much of the night away in the rain - my trusty solfest poncho almost kept me dry.. it was a splendid evening and the telescope looked brilliant when lit up when it got dark. There was a rather fab "installation" called a luminarium, lack of site information - another hiccup meant we were really lucky to catch it just ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Goodbye Dissertation!!!

The dissertation is finished...  it took me ages to do all the detail stuff Harvard referencing ect... the simplest tasks were starting to drive me mad!! I cant believe how long it took me to work out how to number pages excluding the first two pages aagghhhh...  I suppose I should be grateful that its not like the olden days where you had to get it typed and bound before hand in - this essay has been a hard slog, a subject which I felt was interesting - how the digital explosion is ruining traditional creative methods turned into a fairly unexciting - pretty boring unexceptional topic!  there will never be a next time but my advice is think of something funky - does Danny Boyle like garden Gnomes - Racoon meets Lady Gaga - anything that might surprise you but not too grown up!! I have worked hard and will be rewarded with a mid grade because there is no passion in this essay - the hard slog is evident as is the lack of enthusiasm - C'est la vie you cant win them all....
Post a Comment
Read more