National Railway Museum - Overview

Overview

The NRM in York displays a collection of over 100 locomotives and nearly 200 other items of rolling stock, virtually all of which either ran on the railways of Great Britain or were built there. Also on the 20 acres (8.1 ha) site are many hundreds of thousands of other items and records of social, technical, artistic and historical interest, exhibited mostly in three large halls of a former motive power depot next to the East Coast Main Line, near York railway station. It is the largest museum of its type in Britain (the largest in the world in terms of floor area of exhibition buildings is La Cité du Train in the French town of Mulhouse, although this attracts far fewer visitors than the NRM). It also has more visitors than any other British museum outside London, attracting more than 717,000 visitors in the financial year 2011-2012.

The NRM 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 elsewhere in the city; since then, the collection has continued to grow.

The museum is a short walk from the railway station in York, either on the road or via a staircase from the rear of the platforms. A "roadtrain" runs from the city centre (near York Minster) to the museum on Leeman Road. York Park and Ride also serve the museum from the car park entrance, on Line 2 (Rawcliffe Bar-York). Admission to the museum has been free since 2001. It is open daily from 10 am to 6 pm.

Locomotion – the National Railway Museum in Shildon, County Durham was opened in 2004 and is operated by the NRM in conjunction with Durham County Council. It houses more of the National Collection in a new building and a historic site around the former workshop of Timothy Hackworth and in the most recent full year for which figures have been published (2011-2012), it attracted more than 210,000 visitors.