An eventful trip to both Leeds and York, with a visit to Midland Road Depot and York depot AKA National Railway Museum.
The National Railway Museum is a museum in York 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.
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; since then, the collection has continued to grow.
As of 2019 the museum embarked on a major site development. As part of the York Central redevelopment which diverts Leeman Road, the National Railway Museum building has new entrance building to connect the two separate parts of the museum together. At the same time, the space around the museum is landscaped to provide public spaces.
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.
There are approximately 280 rail vehicles in the National Collection, with around 100 being at York at any one time The earliest are wagonway vehicles of about 1815. The permanent display includes "Palaces on Wheels", a collection of Royal Train saloons from Queen Victoria's early trains through to those used by Queen Elizabeth II up to the 1970s, among them some of the first rail vehicles to be set aside for preservation. Other key exhibits normally to be seen at York include the 1846 Furness Railway No. 3 "Coppernob" locomotive, and the more modern express passenger steam locomotives London and North Eastern Railway Class A3 No. 4472 Flying Scotsman (added to the collection in 2004), its streamlined sister Class A4 No. 4468 Mallard and London, Midland and Scottish Railway Princess Coronation Class No. 6229 Duchess of Hamilton. Flying Scotsman is among the exhibits intended for operation on the National Rail network from time to time.
Other physically large exhibits are the Stockton and Darlington Railway Gaunless Bridge and several stationary winding engines used on railway inclines.
Leeds Midland Road depot was opened in 2003 by London & North Western Railway as a maintenance facility to maintain the Freightliner Class 66 fleet under a ten-year contract and was located on the former Balm Road sidings that had been used to offload quarry products. LNWR were contracted to maintain up to 30 class 66 locomotives that worked in the Yorkshire area at the site, with heavier maintenance being carried out by Electro-Motive. In 2006, Freightliner Maintenance Limited was formed and assumed control of operations at Leeds. FML is a subsidiary of the Freightliner Group and was instituted when the number of locomotives and wagons the company leased or owned increased with an upsurge in traffic. Besides being a central point for maintaining the class 66 and Class 70 fleets, both classes are based from here and the facility undertakes wagon maintenance.
The site has a total of nine roads; the shed has two covered roads that have pits beneath them to allow access to the underside of wagons and locomotives, whilst the fuelling point also has two roads, but only one of these is covered. Outside of these, there are a further five roads for storage and maintenance.
As the site is 10 chains (660 ft; 200 m) north of Stourton Freightliner Terminal, locomotives in need of repair (or electric locomotives)[12] are often hauled dead-in-train (DiT) to Stourton and transferred to Midland Road for servicing or repair. Locomotives on routine maintenance find their way to Midland Road by hauling scheduled services. Besides the container trains passing through Stourton to the south, many Heavy Haul trains run past the depot too, which makes switching locomotives easy and cost-effective.
The view from Midland Road south east across Leeds Midland Road Depot showing the 25-tonne (28-ton) crane.
With the downturn in tonnages of coal moved by railfreight in the United Kingdom several examples of Class 70 locomotives have been stored on the non-maintenance sidings that border the running lines to the south.
Filmed by Allan Roach