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Transport Museum Looks to the Past and Future

by Zoe Strimpel
Mon, 12 Nov 2007 at 6:37 PM
updated Mon, 12 Nov 2007 at 6:40 PM

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London has gone transport mad. Talk of the deliciously refurbished St. Pancras, which will fling open its doors and its tracks for high-speed rail travel to Europe on Wednesday, has sent a city already in a constant state of agitation — about the ever-faulty Tube, the steep congestion charge (an £8 fee for cars driving in central London), and unreliable and overcrowded trains and dangerous buses — into travel overdrive. What better time, then, for the London Transport Museum, in the old Covent Garden flower market of "My Fair Lady" fame, to open again after a two-year, £22-million refurbishment?

The museum reopened in the Piazza, Covent Garden, last week with grand speeches from the mayor, Ken Livingstone (who introduced the congestion charge and oversaw the now-iconic blue Oyster pass system), and an appearance from Vivienne Westwood. The invitation to the event was glossy and embossed with soaring planets and a request that guests come dressed "glamorously." This is no backwater transport museum, certainly.

Indeed, there can be fewer cities with a riper, more interesting transport history than London's. The museum's mission is to show how changing modes of travel have shaped the city over the past 200 years. As well as the past, the museum explores futuristic models and looks at the role that transport has played in Delhi, New York, Paris, Shanghai, and Tokyo. New galleries boast original artwork and advertising posters, and take a good long look at the wonderful and distinctive design that characterizes London's sprawling, various network.

Original exhibits contain the only surviving locomotive from the world's first underground railway (Engine No.23, built in 1866 by a Manchester firm called Beyer Peacock, to haul passenger trains before eventually being added to the sub-surface lines) and a horse tram (the South London Tramways [SLT] no. 284, which was imported from the United States in 1884). Other curiosities such as specimens from London's trolleybus fleet (once the largest in the world) and the city's first reliable motor-bus cannot fail to amuse visitors, particularly those who live amid the constant turmoil and development of this city's transport apparatus.

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