TV stardom for NRM ‘cleaners’
THE National Railway Museum is to star in a new TV series on More4 this summer.
Cleaning Britain’s Greatest Treasures will follow the museum’s conservation team as they clean and maintain the 1906-built NER/ LNER Dynamometer Car and Queen Victoria’s 1869-built silk-laden LNWR saloon carriage.
Narrated by Sheridan Smith, the new series, produced by Whitworth Media, highlights the role of some of Britain’s army of dedicated conservation cleaners who look after our national treasures. Other locations to feature in the series include stately homes, historic churches, and museums.
The programme aims to demonstrate the techniques and tricks of the trade used to clean and preserve historical artefacts, and each episode follows the cleaners at three locations around the UK, also including Beatrix Potter’s Hilltop farmhouse in the Lake District, and a London church with fragile Portland limestone carvings.
The episode featuring the NRM is set to be broadcast in July.
The museum has a dedicated conservation team which is supplemented by volunteers who work to ensure the collection looks its best for visitors. In the first episode, retired conservation assistant Chris Binks returns to supervise trainee conservator Shoun Obana as they clean the Dynamometer Car.
It is crammed with antique analogue recording equipment that was used to record A4 Pacific No. 4468 Mallard’s world speed record run in 1938.
The episode provides a snapshot inside the space that can normally only be viewed by museum visitors through the windows.
NRM conservation and collection care manager Emma Hogarth said: “Programmes such as this can be an important way to let people know about the conservation and cleaning work that goes on behind the scenes to help look after the National Collection.”
As reported in the last issue of Heritage Railway magazine, the York museum is running a temporary exhibition in the Great Hall called Royals on Rails that explores the monarchy’s love of railway travel. Visit www.railwaymuseum.org.uk/whats-on/royals-rails for more information.
Meanwhile, a new exhibition at York highlighting the future of the railway will run until summer 2024. Autonomous Technology looks at driverless transport and how it could take passengers to and from stations.