History of the National Railway Museum in York

But there is no harm in reminding ministers, and the leadership of the Science Museum Group which runs the NRM, just how important this wonderful museum is both to York and to the nation.

Today, therefore, we reproduce in Yesterday Once More a selection of old photographs from the museum’s early days.

The NRM was formally opened by the Duke of Edinburgh in 1975. But its history really goes back much further than that – all the way back to 1862, in fact, which was when the Patent Office Museum in London (later to become the Science Museum) started its collection of railway artefacts by acquiring Stephenson’s Rocket.

By the late 1800s and early 1900s, many railway companies had begun preserving their past. Key among them was the London and North Eastern Railway, which opened a public museum dedicated to railways in York in 1927.

Railway companies continued adding to their collections throughout the 1930s. Following nationalisation of the railways in 1948, a curator of historical relics was appointed in 1951, and a collecting policy began to be implemented. The national collection was housed partly in the British Transport Museum in London, and partly in the York Railway Museum in Queen Street.

The 1968 Transport Act, however, encouraged British Rail to work with the Science Museum to develop a National Railway Museum.

Leeman Road in York, which contained a number of railway buildings, was chosen. The former North Motive Power Depot (an engine shed which originally contained four locomotive turntables) became the Great Hall; the main freight transhipment station for York became the Station Hall; and, in 1999, the former York Diesel Locomotive Depot became The Works.

This is a museum planted firmly at the heart of York’s railway heritage, in other words.

It has expanded hugely since the Duke of Edinburgh originally opened it in 1975 – most notably with the aforementioned addition of The Works in 1999, the establishment of the Yorkshire Rail Academy in June 2004, the opening of the Shildon depot in County Durham in 2004, and, most recently, the £4 million archive and research centre based in the Great Hall that goes by the name of Search Engine.

There are more than 300 locomotives and pieces of rolling stock in the NRM’s collection – including a world class collection of Royal trains, the only Japanese bullet train outside of Japan, and a Chinese locomotive that is too big to operate on the British mainline.

Other items in the collection include more than 11,000 posters, almost 5,000 pieces of railway uniform and costume, 1,750,000 photographs (equivalent to a staggering 29 photographs for every day since 1850) – and a lock of Robert Stephenson’s hair.

All of which makes this museum quite literally priceless. It is unthinkable that it could ever be allowed to close.

The museum’s Station Hall in 1992

Crowds greet the arrival of the Flying Scotsman in 2004