No sooner do I write a blog about the symbolism of Waterloo’s station clock than it gets taken out of service for a refurbishment! The concourse underneath the Waterloo clock has become an iconic meeting-place, a focal point amidst the hurry of the station, as shown in Terence Cuneo’s dramatic painting: Now, for a few weeks, time stands still for the station’s passengers. Railways run on time. In the early days, time was a life-saver – literally – as trains […]
Keeper of Technology and Engineering, David Rooney, takes a closer look at Waterloo Station by Terence Cuneo.
David Rooney, Keeper of Technology and Engineering, celebrates the anniversary of the first Channel crossing in a balloon.
The wonderful caricature of a windswept midwife by Thomas Rowlandson in my last post got me browsing through other prints by this famous artist. They’re a great window into the past. The caption of this one states, ‘Lose their compass, their ship slips between the teeth of a fish unknown in this part of the world’. Not what you want to happen, really, when out for a sail. It was one of Rowlandson’s wonderful images to accompany the tall tales […]
Having written last week about my singular inability to ice-skate, my eye was drawn today to this poster in the National Railway Museum’s collection: The caption reads ‘Watch your step on our platforms this winter… Leave the skating to the profesionals’. Wise words. Having said that, if I saw a briefcase-carrying penguin skating along the platforms at London Bridge station, I think slips and falls would be the last things on my mind…
Alison Boyle, Keeper of Science Collections, takes a closer look at a framed embroidered illustration of an astrologers prediction.