Monday 4 February 2013

Kew Bridge Pumping Station

A few years ago I wrote about our visit to Kew Bridge Pumping Station which you can read by clicking on the link. I was reminded of this recently whilst reading an old copy of the English Heritage magazine.  There was a short piece about the museum which included the following quote relating to 2009.
- Lead thieves visited the Steam Museum five times over a couple of weeks and stripped most of the lead from the roof causing £100,000 of damage.
- Our landlord sold the museum site to a property developer
- An agent went out of business with a loss of more than £20,000 of the museum's money
- We made an operational loss for the third successive year. 
However, we also:
-Put into operation the only Bull engine in the world after full restoration and won several heritage awards for doing so.
- Put into operation a replica Kerr Stuart Wren Class narrow gauge locomotive.
- opened to the public on more than 300 days and were in steam for 80 days
-Held six special events
- Hosted many school and educational visits. 
So, all in all, a pretty average year.

If you have not visited the Kew Bridge Pumping Station (or the London Music Museum which is close by) then here is a flavour of what you might see.
An engine in steam
 Or one of the  Special Events like this Meccano exhibition

The musuem recieves no grants for operational support and needs people to switch off their virtual experiences for a while  and visit the real world.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Comments will be removed if considered inappropriate