London: Nov 12: London Transport Museum Part 1

On Friday, November 12, 2010, a rainy afternoon, I visited the London Transport Museum. The museum explores how London's transportation system evolved from the nascent state it was in at the beginning of the nineteenth century to the modern day. The museum has full scale models of many of the vehicles used in London's transit system. In the part I visited this day, I saw sedan chairs, stage coaches, horses buses (omnibuses and more), horse trams, coal/steam trains, and electric trains. However, rather than the vehicles, I liked the small things in the museum, especially the transit agency's posters and handouts. There were countless shelves of these, and I smiled wryly at all those promoting that people should buy houses in (or at least go out walking in) the country.

I learned a lot at the museum. Here are some interesting facts, in roughly chronological order as I learned them / as they happened.

• Since the beginning, cabbies in London were always licensed and fares were regulated.
• There have been toll roads for a long time, often called turnpikes. I learned about them.
• In 1843, a company completed building a tunnel under the Thames (the Thames Tunnel)! I had no idea such an engineering feat could be tackled in the mid-nineteenth century. Though it was mainly famous for a time as a pedestrian tunnel, for a long time now it's been used by trains.
• Queen Victoria opposed plans to build the Tower Bridge, saying claims it would beautify the area were 'bosh'.
• Trams, at least the ones used in London, were symmetric. Rather than turning around at the end of the line, they unhitched the horses and moved them to the other end.
• In 1900, the vast number of horses in London's public transit system (mostly pulling trams) produced one thousand tonnes of dung a day.
• Terrorist bombings occurred in London's transit system as early as 1883 (Irish nationals).
• As in everywhere else in the world, it was mostly lower-class people who were forced to move due to the building of train lines. Parliament, partially in compensation for this disparity, required trains to have special working-class rates. Interesting, but I'm told probably not useful: few of these lower-class people needed to take a train every day.
• In the 1907, the tube changed from flat-fare to a distance-based fare.
• The transportation system's design changed substantially with the advent of elevators and escalators. I learned quite a bit about how it changed.

I also visited the museum's special exhibit, Under Attack, about London, Coventry, and a bit on Dresden. Although I found the special exhibit "meh", I enjoyed the related part of the regular exhibit: a collection of WWII-era posters praising London tube and bus drivers for doing their duty with bombs streaming down under the blackout. Also, some posters advised passengers on safety: "In the blackout: before you alight, make sure the train is in the station. Look for the platform." Good advice.

Incidentally, the elevator to the museum exhibits was great, playing sounds of transit: "all aboard", trains chugging, horses clopping, and even "one small step for man."

I took a few photos in the museum.

Because I began my afternoon outing later than usual, and because I knew my admission ticket would provide unlimited future visits, I explored slowly and only made it through half the museum before it closed, seeing only the early history of the transit system.

I'm withholding judgment on the museum until I complete my visit.

Later, feeling inspired by all the game for sale in London's groceries, Di Yin cooked three as part of dinner at home: mallard duck, wood pigeon, and partridge (with bacon). I had a frustrating yet entertaining time trying to debone them.