Glasgow Riverside Museum visit

Seeing the carbide lamp with Bleriot on the manufacturer’s plate made me wonder if it took eleven attempts to get that right. I only ask because I read somewhere that the only reason Bleriot flew the channel crossing in his type 11 was that he’d crashed the other ten including either the type 6 or 7 into a hay rick because he underestimated its required takeoff run.

We came in from the north-west through one of the nicer underpasses in Glasgow tastefully decorated with artwork of a transport theme 🙂 Unfortunately didn’t test the canteen out!

You were there on a much nicer day by the looks of it! It was grey, windy and cold when I was there, and the atmosphere soaked into the building! I came in to the site from the North-East, partly because the chap on the Clockwork Orange told me to get off as though I was heading to the old museum. Cue a protracted wander through red sandstone tenements and along busy roads.

I seem to remember only seeing bleak overgrown docklands from the front of the museum, but I was actually thinking of the view from the tall ship to the South of the museum. I was keeping an eye out for the Govan ferry as, on the same day, I visited the ancient stones on Govan Parish Church, just as the Polish mass was clearing out. The Canteen in the new museum was rather good!

No mention of the Bennie at all unless I missed it. Would make a great subject for a scale model.

Maybe I did miss it!!

http://www.urbanrealm.com/news/1350/Mini_challenge_for_Transport_Museum.html

Overall, I’m not sure what to make of the new museum.

Got to partially agree with what you say Meddle – I was never in the old Transport Museum so can’t compare and generally prefer older buildings to the clinical atmosphere of newer architecture. But I have certainly seen worse! My overall experience/ impression seems to have been a bit more favourable than yours and I expect we either approached from the other side or they have done a fair bit of tidying up since last summer ( or Hogweed dies off over Winter!) I tend not to interact with the interactive displays as they are often glitchy anyway. As to the display walls, I felt that worked with the motorbikes (still low enough to view properly though I didn’t like the colour-changing lights behind them) but not so much with the cars (too high making viewing and photography difficult). The vast windows let in plenty light but that combined with the green walls confused my camera on occasions ( more likely showed up a lack of photography skills lol). Yes, a mix of good and bad where the building is concerned but still fascinated by the range of exhibits. Definitely needs some aviation content though to be complete.

Didn’t think the view too bad –

http://web.archive.org/web/20070814062218/http://www.baldernock.btinternet.co.uk/images/Bennie/

Apparently the one and only Bennie Railplane was still in existence in the middle ’60 s! Another missed opportunity.

I’ve only been to the new museum once, but I visited the old one fairly regularly as a child. I seem to remember the old museum being slightly better. The new one felt like a chilly barn when I was there, with vast windows looking out over pretty much nothing except the Clyde (not a picturesque strait by any means) and some bleak industrial remains. The building itself is visually arresting, but I decided to get to it via the Underground which required me to wander a fairly unloved corner of Glesga. The fancy landscaping adjacent to the site was already being overrun with Giant Hogweed last summer, and the final stretch from the station took me via some sort of underpass/overpass system that had ‘mugger country’ written all over it.

The old museum seemed to have more of an organic feel to it, as you stumbled upon exhibits rather than have them (idiosyncratically) laid out like the new site has. Nothing fancy, just a room full of old cars, a room full of railway and tramway locomotives and trains etc. I rather liked that! I’m either old enough or was only taken to a certain style of museum when I was younger, but my memory of several museums were of there being generally more exhibits, less interpretation, less interactive technology and less ‘steering’ and ‘signposting’. I feel that both East Fortune and the National Museum of Scotland have gone down the route of thinning out the exhibits but pushing for certain agendas instead. Not a bad thing, but I preferred the whimsy of being a small boy surrounded by big machines, rather than a sole exhibit that is meant to make us all feel great pathos for individual or group X. The old one was also a barn of a place, but you could find yourself wandering down long lines of trams or upstairs (?) in the room full of model ships and feel like you were in separate places. The new museum felt, to me, like an Ikea that happened to have old cars pinned to the walls; you were very much meant to observe and interact with the exhibits, and form your opinions about them, in a certain way. I felt like I was missing out on something, yet I saw the entire exhibition fairly quickly. Some sections of the old museum, such as the underground station reproduction and the historic street, are laid out much as I remember them from before, which is pleasing.

Overall, I’m not sure what to make of the new museum.

You can say that again. The Scots seem far more dedicated to commemorating their engineering prowess too.

Exactly! For example, the first plane to fly in Canada in 1909, flown by a Scotsman, John McCurdy and designed by another Scotsman we may all have heard of, Dr. Alexander Graham Bell!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AEA_Silver_Dart

You can say that again. The Scots seem far more dedicated to commemorating their engineering prowess too.

Yes and the Transport Museum does impress upon you how much was designed and built up here. A point that comes across really well.

The place it was built still stands too and has a blue plaque to mark it. It’s on Main Street, Milngavie a.k.a Mullguy 🙂
A good photo on this website –

https://theoldreader.com/profile/d0d151d2065bd5f328ede806?page=14

You can say that again. The Scots seem far more dedicated to commemorating their engineering prowess too.

Great vid! You have saved me starting a new thread about the Bennie as I had intended starting one after reading about it in the Michael Connelly book, ‘Lost Light’. We (the Scots) are great inventors!

Thanks Newforest,

No mention of the Bennie at all unless I missed it. Would make a great subject for a scale model. They have a large number of excellent, highly-detailed model ships on display so obviously have the right connections should they ever decide to do that. There are quite a few Youtube videos available showing the railplane. There’s a short one here –

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvSmwMqtylA

If you think it’s slow, you’ve never been on an Edinburgh tram lol 🙂

Great report and photos, thanks. Will have to visit on my next trip. No mention of the Bennie Railplane I suppose?

Some aviation names did appear here and there! –