Changing Routes? The New London Transport Museum

Abstract

CHANGING ROUTES'? THE NEW LONDON TRANSPORT MUSEUM COLIN DIVALL London Transport (LT) has provided some of the most powerful and enduring symbols of the city it serves. The red, double-decker, open-platformed bus; silver “tube” trains burrowing through the soft London clay and traveling through suburbia to the fringes of the countryside; the diagrammatic Underground map—all are linked in the mind’s eye by LT’s “bull’s eye with a bar” symbol. Since 1980, the story of LT and its predecessors has been told in one of the splendid cast-iron and glass buildings erected in the 1870s to house the fruit, flower, and vegetable stalls of Covent Garden. Located in one of the most fashionable and popular parts of London, the museum rapidly became a favorite with tourists and Londoners alike. But this popularity brought its own problems. Packed with old vehicles, the building was very cramped. Moreover, there was little control over the internal environment, and prospects for the conser­ vation of artifacts were bleak. In 1993, the museum took the bold decision to close for nine months to allow a complete refurbishment. Costing £4 million, the result was nearly a third more display space, amounting now to some 25,000 square feet, several air-conditioned galleries, much-improved facilities for visitors—and the opportunity to recast the museum’s philosophy of interpretation. Although the museum is a wholly owned subsidiary of LT, the curatorial staff say they were given a free hand in reviewing the content of the galleries. Project developer Mark Dennison, assisted by designers from the Donald Janssen Design Office of The Hague, wanted a greater emphasis on people and their journeys, both for work and pleasure, and on the contribution of public transport to the social and physical development of London. London Transport’s head office should be pleased with their efforts. The new exhibition subtly questions the notion, much favored by the present governDr . Divall, formerly a lecturer in social studies of technology at Manchester Metro­ politan University, recently assumed ajoint appointment in the Department of History at the University of York and the Institute of Railway Studies at the National Railway Museum.© 1995 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/95/3603-0008$01.00 630 The New London Transport Museum 631 ment, that London’s transport problems can be solved by requiring LT to run at a profit, splitting up the organization, and selling off the dismembered pieces to the private sector. By virtue of sheer bulk, the old trams, buses, railway locomotives, and Underground cars inevitably dominate the museum. Always pop­ ular, their attractiveness to visitors is now enhanced by a much greater freedom to board several of the vehicles. They do not stand alone, however. Well-established techniques of interpretation place the tech­ nical development of each vehicle in the social, economic, legislative, and regulatory context of its period. Textual panels, many liberally interspersed with large photographs, accomplish this task, along with small touch screens (the work, along with other audiovisual treat­ ments, of Robert Lansdown) that offer a short selection of slides and brief texts relating to individual vehicles. London Transport’s contribution to the social, economic, and phys­ ical development of London and the surrounding regions is another important theme. It is most obviously treated in the section “Beyond the Suburbs” and in an eight-minute video wall on “The Growth of London.” But many of the panels and touch screens in the other displays also tell of the social and economic purposes and impact of the system. Mannequins in several vehicles give a more immediate sense of period and purpose, enhanced by the occasional use of suit­ ably attired actors who “crew” some of the vehicles (fig. 1). The technical mysteries of operation are not neglected. Several archival films, mostly of LT publicity material, combine with the lib­ eral use of audio recordings to convey some idea of the method of working the obsolete systems. (Only the sulfurous fumes of the steamworked , subsurface railway lines of the 19th century and the stench of the manure-infested streets of the era of horse-drawn vehicles are missing!) Looking...