Activities, Attractions and Heritage, York

National Railway Museum

Superb museum telling the story of locomotion.

The National Railway Museum (NRM) is a museum in York, England, forming part of the Science Museum Group. The museum tells the story of rail transport in Britain and its impact on society. It is the home of the national collection of historically significant railway vehicles such as Mallard, Stirling Single, Duchess of Hamilton and a Japanese bullet train. In addition, the National Railway Museum holds a diverse collection of other objects, from a household recipe book used in George Stephenson’s house to film showing a “never-stop railway” developed for the British Empire Exhibition. It has won many awards, including the European Museum of the Year Award in 2001.

Starting in 2019, a major site development was underway.[2] As part of the York Central redevelopment which will divert Leeman Road, the National Railway Museum will be building a new entrance building to connect the two separate parts of the museum together. At the same time, the space around the museum was to be landscaped to provide public spaces.[3]

In 2020, architectural practice Feilden Fowles won an international competition to create the museum’s new £16.5 million Central Hall building—a key element of the museum’s Vision 2025 masterplan.[4][5] In January 2023, the museum’s Station Hall (a Grade II listed “former goods station built between 1875–77”) was closed for an estimated 18 months for “urgent structural repair” which was to include the installation of a new roof over that area.[6]

Overview
The National Railway Museum has over 6,000 objects on display[7] of which around 100 are locomotives or rolling stock which tell the stories for Britain’s railway innovation. The collection also includes fine jewellery worn by railway queens,[clarification needed] models of planes, boats and hovercraft, and experimental technologies such as Louis Brennan’s Gyroscopic Mono-rail car.

It is the largest museum of its type in Britain, attracting 782,000 visitors during the 2018/19 financial year[8] (the largest in the world in terms of floor area of exhibition buildings is Cité du Train in the French town of Mulhouse, although this attracts far fewer visitors than the National Railway Museum).

The National Railway Museum was established on its present site, the former York North locomotive depot, in 1975, when it took over the former British Railways collection located in Clapham and the York Railway Museum located off Queen Street, immediately to the southeast of the railway station;[9] since then, the collection has continued to grow.