Gears & Levers

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Train Parts

I love anything mechanical. Give me gears, cogs, levers and any sort of engine and I love it. I love cars, motorcycles, boats and trains. If it moves with an engine I like it. So when we discovered a museum of transportation here is Glasgow, it was on my “must-see” list.

Glasgow has always had an image problem, seen as a working town with its neighbor Edinburgh being the “interesting”  city. As a result Glasgow is trying to improve it’s image for visitors. One way it has done this is to make most of the city attractions free. Most of their museums do not charge to visit them.

A wall of cars

The Riverside Museum of Transportation is one of the best and most interesting museums I have ever visited. It is in a beautiful setting right on the River Clyde in a beautiful modern new building. Although a ways from our hotel, it was on our "Hop-on-hop-off” tour bus route, so getting there was easy.

The most interesting thing about this museum was how they presented things. For example I have visited many excellent car museums with impressive collections of vehicles, but here the cars were displayed on a wall or parked on an incline two stories long. In addition there was a special display of a Mini, an Anglia, and an Imp There was a whole room devoted to engines including a Beetle that children could climb under to see the engine. There was a display of a new Mini used in safety testing and a Ford Cortina that was sold as original, but was really two cars welded together.

South African Steam Locomotive

There was a wall of motorcycles, four massive steam locomotives including one that had been built in Glasgow, shipped to South Africa, returned to Scotland 100 years later and restored, A tiny trailer where hippy protesters of Nuclear war lived, a presentation on the first ship sunk during WWII, a room about subways, a revolving carousal of model ships, a number of displays about bicycles and many other different topics and displays. Outside docked on the river was a three masted tall ship also open for exploring.

Although I walked through the entire museum and saw everything (I think . .), I did not have time to spend the amount of

Part of a steam engine

time I would have liked with all the displays. I spent a lot of time with the old steam engine from South Africa, and I spent a lot of time on the wall of motorcycles, but the police pursuit vehicle could have used more time, as could the Hillman Imp.

You can see why this museum appealed to me, but Regis also said it was the most interesting one she has visited as well.