Transport Museum & Covent Garden

Today was the first half of my visit to London's Transport Museum. Today I trekked to their Covent Garden Location and tomorrow I will be going to their Acton Depot, where they have more and larger items on display. I will also be going to the Sherlock Holmes museum tomorrow with some friends.

The Transport Museum is housed right on Covent Garden and uses an old flower market building to house their exhibits. Going in, you pass a wall that has parts of different subway and bus maps from around the world. I was able to identify Paris, New York and London.

The above picture is of a steam engine that pulled some of the first underground trains between Paddington Station and Farringdon. The steam trains used a condenser to eliminate the steam, but could do nothing about the smoke. This, and most of the early underground lines were built using the cut-and-cover method, as can be seen in the model below:
Imagine doing that to London's streets today! Most new routes are built much deeper and a few stations are so deep, they only use elevators to carry passengers to the surface, the stop for the museum is like this. They also use some really long escalators. In fact, when escalators were first introduced, a man with a wooden leg was hired to demonstrate that they were safe. The following picture is of a later tube train, this time from 1938:The museum also had many examples of the buses that have been used in London. The next two photos are of two examples of double decker buses, but it is the first one may look familiar to you. It is a Routemaster, which served London from 1959 until 2005. They are still in use on two "Heritage" routes in central London. Most buses are now a modern version of the double decker (the second picture)or new single-level "bendy-buses."


So after leaving the museum, and telling myself I could not buy everything in the gift shop, I went to Covent Garden, which had once been an important fruit & vegetable market, but is now a semi-enclosed market for all sorts of things.

While I was there, a string quartet was performing in the building, which was very nice. I think when it gets warmer, I might come here some days and do some homework, although I imagine it will get more crowded when the weather gets warmer. There were also several street performers, including this guy who dragged me into the performance to help him get on his unicycle so he could juggle a machete, a club, and an apple. He also ate the apple while juggling all these items.

So tomorrow is the Acton Depot and Sherlock Holmes Museum, so look for another post tomorrow evening.