Porterbrook sponsors NRM’s new Futures Gallery
ROLLING stock leasing firm Porterbrook has announced a £2.5 million sponsorship deal with the National Railway Museum for a Railway Futures Gallery, described as a key component of the museum’s Vision 2025 masterplan. The gallery is planned to provide an interactive experience that explores the role of railways in transport systems of tomorrow. It is planned to open in 2025 to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the museum being in York, and will be a key feature of Central Hall – the new building to be built over Leeman Road to join up the museum’s current Great Hall and Station Hall. Work on the new Central Hall will begin once an alternative highway for Leeman Road traffic has been completed, but Station Hall is to close from January for an estimated 18 months for vital improvements and a new roof to protect the Grade II-listed structure. Great Hall and North Shed will remain open during this time. Announcing the sponsorship, NRM director Judith McNicol said: “We have never been able to tell these stories on this scale before and I am delighted to announce that, thanks to Porterbrook, the Railway Futures Gallery is a step closer to being realised. “It is truly fitting that Central Hall and the Railway Futures Gallery will open in the same year the National Railway Museum celebrates its 50th birthday and the Stockton and Darlington Railway is 200 years old.” The NRM’s Vision 2025 plan also includes the interactive Wonderlab: The Bramall Gallery, due to open in York in spring 2023, while a new building at Locomotion in Shildon will open in autumn 2023, housing up to 50 vehicles. Wonderlab takes the space previously used by the engineering workshop, although the museum says new workshop facilities will be opened elsewhere on site.