Mainly Museums

Heather Tweed Heather Tweed is an artist, writer and researcher with a practice spanning more than twenty five years. Her exhibition work has been shown at the Venice Biennale, OXO Tower Wharf, Old Truman Brewery and Edinburgh Fringe.

I was eight or nine. The last weekend of the Christmas holidays. School loomed large, I needed my own world. My parents, younger sister and I lived a short train hop from London so we often spent a treat day exploring museums and art galleries browsing the shiny shops and maybe popping into the Cartoon cinema in Leicester Square if it rained.

The accredited Museum of Rail Travel is an independent charity museum run mostly by volunteers and a small team of staff. Owned by the Vintage Carriages Trust, the collection is primarily 9 vintage wooden-bodied railway carriages, 3 industrial locomotives and a railbus, as well as a huge collection of historical railway posters, signage, photographs, maps and significant railway artefacts.

According to new research from the Mapping Museums project at Birkbeck University, the museum sector in the UK has more than tripled in size with a growing number of museums since 1960. The project created the most comprehensive database of museums in the UK ever developed, providing a rich resource for further research and analysis. The report accompanying the dataset also suggested a large increase in the number of small museums that have less than 10,000 visitors per year.

It’s not every town that gets to be the backdrop of a Sean Connery movie, and afterward gets turned into a museum. I first became aware of Eckley Miners’ Village when I was looking up the locations of historical markers for my blog. Its importance could not be overstated, since so much of Pennsylvania’s history was built on the backs of coal miners.

These are exciting times at York's magnificent National Railway Museum. Not only is it 50 years old and has now hosted over 40 million visitors, it is also in the final stages of a major £10.5 million renovation programme. Last year saw the re-opening of Station Hall, which had been closed for the past two years. Based in the former York goods station this was always a thrilling space with a stunning range of exhibits, notably of luxury carriages.

Ian Richardson Born & raised near Manchester, Ian moved across the Pennines to Yorkshire in 1977 & never left! He was a teacher of history & politics for 35 years, since retiring he does freelance writing for journals & magazines, focusing on landscape & heritage. He lives in the beautiful historic market town of Beverley.

Georgia is home to dozens of state parks and historic sites, but few are as significant as Franklin D. Roosevelt's Little White House in Warm Springs. Nestled in a town of fewer than 500 residents, the modest retreat became far more than a presidential getaway. It was here that FDR found renewed purpose after polio, forged lasting connections with the people, and sought refuge from the pressures of leading the nation through the Great Depression and World War II.

Holley Snaith Holley Snaith is a historian and writer specializing in twentieth-century American history. Her interest in public history began in high school when she interned at Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Little White House in Warm Springs, Georgia. Her work has appeared in American Heritage Magazine and on the PBS American Masters website, and she has worked with the Franklin D.

Above: © Acropolis Museum, photo: Nikos Daniilidis Few museums in the world make a statement as elegantly as the Acropolis Museum in Athens. A spectacular home for some of ancient Greece's greatest treasures, from the moment visitors arrive, it becomes clear that this is no ordinary museum. For those who are unsure, the term ‘Acropolis’ includes the fortified hilltop citadel and archaeological site, whereas the ‘Parthenon’ is the famous ancient temple situated within the hilltop complex.