Trains and Trains and Trains and Vikings!

Today we went to York's National Railway Museum, and Jorvik, had some local brew, and some grandelicious pizza. 

That's your tl;dr.  Tommy needed coffee to write this and as a result the caffeine took over. 

You've been warned. 

Before setting off to the National Railway Museum (NRM) Libby graciously made eggs, toast, strawberries, grapes, and had french press coffee. I might have also had a few shortbread cookies the host was kind enough to supply us with. We then walked the 17 minutes or so back towards the railway station near where the NRM was. 

The NRM was as I remembered it. Little inside has changed as far as I can recall. Upon passing the ticket folks you meet Wren (1887), a small train made to haul stuff around a rail station in the late 19th century.  Wren is the only of the eight that were built that still exists. It was used up until the 1960s. 

You turn left and enter "Station Hall". Station Hall contains many locomotives and "coaches" (or "carriages" as they are named on this side of the pond) from the 19th and 20th centuries. There are a few locomotives and at least some coaches that went along with that train which belonged to various members of the royal family. When looking at Princess Mary's and comparing her saloon coaches to Queen Elizabeth II's, the former's seemed fancier with more amenities. She had electronic powered fans, and baseboard heat. 

There wasn't a clear chronological order to trains as far as I could tell, but it was a lot of fun to peer into the various locomotives where the engineer(s) would operate the train from, and to see the changes to the coaches. There were a lot of advertisements for other regional routes, or locations one could get to by rail. I found myself enjoying the marketing and art work trying to encourage the British public to "Go by rail" more than the tech behind the trains themselves. (At least with regards to 20th century trains.)

After passing through the subway walkway you enter the "Great Hall" where there are even more, mostly locomotives" are located. One big difference is the level at which you are looking at the train from. In "The Station"you are at station height with everything as if you were to board or alight from the trains. Here you are at the rail level. Again, there is no chronological order to anything here.  Since you were at rail level some of the trains had steps and platforms that let you look into the various locomotives and carriages. 

A few highlights for me:

They have some of the oldest, most complete set of carriages in the world. From Bodmin and Wadebridge Railway, they provide examples of contemporary first, second and third class travel. The first class was in the middle because carriages in the middle had the best ride at the time, and the first class had no roof, sometimes had no seats, and in this example sat directly behind the coal. That sounds like a very sooty ride. 

NRM has a mining vehicle called a Hund Truck from around 1560. It was used to move extracted mined material from the mine and was people powered. Such vehicles were used in the UK between 1566 and 1630. 

They cut a steam locomotive in half vertically so you could view the cross-section of the train. It did not really help me understand how the train worked and the placard didn't help either. It was fun to see nonetheless. 

On display was a replica of a "Rocket" designed by Robert Stephenson. He entered his design in a contest by Liverpool and Manchester Railway to find the best way to haul carriages. Stephenson's Rocket won, and steam powered locomotives changed the world. 

A "Muck Truck" used to haul earth out during the digging of the "Chunnel" between France and Britain. It helped move more than 4.3 million cubic meters of earth, expanding Great Britannia's size by 90 acres. 

Great Western Railway introduced their GWR DIESEL RAILCAR NO. 4 in 1934. Aimed at business travelers these were diesel powered and inspired by rail vehicles introduced to France by Etorre Bugatti. (Yes, that Buagtti.) I'm adding this one to the list because I think it looks fun. 

There was a whole other building that contained a (or the?) Flying Dutchman. I honestly didn't pay to close attention to this part of the exhibit. My ADD was taking over at that point, and all the other "smaller" tens of thousands of artifacts were drawing my attention and I was starting to really wear out at this point. I can't adequately describe the amount of and range of "stuff" they had. Think of an antique store. Now focus its contents on items related to the task of traveling physical space and anything adjacent to that. Now multiple whatever store you are imagining by....oh, a thousand? 

Old overpass train station signs, warning signs, ship models, a giant table aimed at teaching train signalers (used up until recently to actually train folks), a styrofoam burger container behind glass commemorating the last train that served food (or something like that) from 1999, train-station dioramas (so many dioramas). I really could have spent a lot of time just in this one room, but boy was I tired, and we had Jorvik on deck, so we went up to the second floor, looked at some railway related paintings, and Libby was able to extricate me from the building into the bright light of the day. 

Rick Steves unfairly maligns Jorvik. It's definitely worth a visit. His triangle system might have its value in context of how much time his "three-week journey" has one in York. I don't know. Either way, Libby and I like it. It's worth going to once. And it's worth going to twice a decade a part. I'd probably go there a bit more frequently. I do think it is excellent as a museum if one sees the purpose of a museum to educate and inspire. 

You descend down a few flights of stairs and are greeted by a docent in period garb. They explains you are at Viking York level as it is at this level underground the items documented and displayed at Jorvik were excavated. They point down and explain you are seeing one living hut, and the edges of two others. They really did a good job of interpreting what you are looking at, and asking you questions to keep you engaged. It feels strange because we aren't used to it in most traditional museums, but when you become comfortable with the process it is quite engaging. Some of what you see behind glass is a replica, and some--like the 1000 year old wall--is original. (They even explain later how they preserved the wall to prevent it from shrinking.) There are some screens that teach you basic preservation techniques including what tools to use to extract an item, and how best to preserve it. 

At this point you do smell some odd odor. I know. What are you talking about, Tommy. What's with this left turn into odors? The next stage of the fairly directed museum journey is the "Disney-esque" ride. You hop into a hanging "ride"(?) car with a tv screen in front of three seats, two speakers per rider aimed at your ears, and a bar to keep you inside. You are then given a multi-sensory experience including a narrator providing commentary on what you are seeing in real life within the context of the historic culture of the time, and how it relates to what the excavated as you are moved through an "It's a Small World" version of  Coppergate street (where the majority of the excavation was held) circa 900 something C.E. And the smell. Oh, the ever changing horrid smells! You might say, "Way to really sell me on this, Tommy", but it really does help transport you to the time and palace along with the excellent animatronics. 

Once the ride is over you come upon a more traditional "museum" portion. Here you see many o the items excavated along Coppergate during the excavations. Swords, axes, jewelry, coins, feces, skeletons, a lock, combs. All of it categorized logically with a small placard explaining about the category as it relates to the time period historically and the people that would have used the items. There as even a guy near some fake viking coins explaining how if you had a coin, and wanted to buy something worth less than that you would cut the penny in half, making it a halfpenny. From there you could cut it again, making it a farthing (a fourth). The guide said you could buy 16 chickens with a penny. Sounds like a great deal to me!

a Viking sock

a Viking pan

We were really tired at this point and found a "brew pub" of sorts called The Last Drop Inn where The Black Sheep Brewery is served. I think the two are related, but they also seem to serve beer from other brewers. I really wanted to go to a place that had the house brewery. I had the Riggwelter, Libby had Respire. I cannot remember what Bob had and he's asleep. I really liked mine and Libby's was good too. It was a freshop brew that isn't new to us, but it was nice. I am drinking as much cask ale as possible because of the great dearth of cask options, and British style ale, we have in Bellingham and it's surrounds. 

Our AirBnB host suggested DoughEyed a pizza place that was just a couple minutes from Last Drop. Libby and I both got an Aperol Spritz before ordering. Oh, and what pizza did we have. It was some of the best pizza of our lives. The pizza brought a tear to Libby's eye, her life will never be the same.  I had a pesto, mozzarella, and mortadella pizza. It was a special and I'm....so glad....I got it. Their dough is delicious, the toppings and pesto were delicious. I cannot say enough good things about my culinary experience. Libby had the Salami & Hot Honey. She loved it too. Possibly more than me? I don't know.

Then we went home.

Tomorrow's the Minster and Yorkshire Museum. 

✌

 Psst.....tomorrow is also Tommy's birthday ;)