Mobility, museums and awkward unsettling

Abstract

From 1972 British Rail's “Advanced Passenger Train Experimental” (APT‐E) tested a combination of innovations that promised a tantalising and proficient mobility on the UK's Victorian‐era railway network. The project's failure and eventual cancellation in 1985 has made the preservation and display of APT‐E awkward. APT‐E's revolutionary mobility sits awkwardly with its present (immobile) material state as a museum artefact, as does the context of derision and disappointment surrounding its cancellation. By experiencing APT‐E in situ and interviewing the conservation team, this paper forms an initial exploration of the ideas and tactics used by those who preserve and display awkward and rejected mobilities in a way that rehabilitates their potential and their temporal indeterminacy.