Museum of Transport

I headed over to the Museum of Transport yesterday since Mike is in London completing his research for his thesis. I definitely did not want to run back to a quiet apartment and have an evening by myself. So, to make the time go faster, I went to the museum right next to where I am working. They are currently developing a new musuem building, which looks magnificent. The current one is on the end of the Sports Arena and not so great for the preservation of all the old carriages, bikes, prams, cars, subway cars, etc.
The museum was quite nice, and reminded me a lot of the Grand Rapids Public Museum. I love the GR museum and there was a time I frequented it monthly, so it was like a slice of home here in Glasgow. They have a wonderful life size replica of an old Glaswegian street complete with store fronts, and of course at various times some of these stores open... just like back home. Except GR never had an underground or electric cable cars. Maybe it should have an underground though. Its big enough. Why doesn't Grand Rapids have a subway??


Here is Kelvin Street. An old telephone booth. Without broken windows or grafitti!!


The rest of the museum was a tad overwhelming. They have amazing vintage cars in great condition, but because the current building is too small, everything is packed in. There were old train engines and cars fully restored, along with old electric cable cars. You could walk along the replica underground station and see the progression of the subway car. If the subway cars still looked like they first did, I would ride the subway more! Now they are ugly little packed cars with trash and old gum all over them. No ornate woodwork nor beautiful windows to be found now days. It was a quite interesting to see the progression of transportation through the ages, and it will be more interesting once the new building is (contructed) up and running. Hopefully they will be able to more with what they have.