The Scottish artefacts - including Aberdeen circus elephant - starring in £11m National Railway Museum revamp
Unseen photograph among Scottish exhibits as major redevelopment opens to public
A previously unseen photograph of a circus elephant causing havoc at Aberdeen Station in 1931 is among Scottish artefacts going on display when the biggest revamp of the National Railway Museum for more than 30 years is unveiled on Friday.
The £11 million upgrade of the huge Station Hall in York also features locomotives built in Scotland, a Victorian-era Travelling Post Office and a painting showing a newspaper boy selling The Scotsman on Perth Station.
The former 1870s goods shed - the equivalent of an Amazon warehouse of its day - will also tell the story of other cross-Border freight, such as an insulated fish wagon to keep London-bound produce fresh and a steam-heated carriage to ripen bananas as they headed north.
Pictures of royalty travelling to Balmoral include King Charles as a boy.
Head curator Andrew McLean told The Scotsman: “It’s a major moment for us in our redevelopment - a very significant milestone - and the museum’s biggest development since the early 1990s.”
An even bigger project to build a new Central Hall follows later this year.
Mr McLean said: “That will tell lots of stories about the present and future of the railways, including with Scottish connections such as the Borders Railway. In the next three years, the museum is going to be the biggest it’s ever been.”
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Mr McLean said the image of Bebe the elephant threatening to flatten a John Menzies stall was to publicise John Lester’s “Midget Circus”, which had arrived by train to perform at His Majesty’s Theatre in Aberdeen.
He said: “It showed the railways could transport anything - it was very common for circus animals to travel by rail. Bebe got a bit too excited by the bookstall and there was a worry at one point that the elephant might crash through and destroy it.”
Station Hall will include a recreated WH Smith bookstall from Waterloo Station in London that dates back to 1921.
Mr McLean said: “The railways played a major role in increasing the amount of reading, with bookstalls selling ‘yellow backs’ - cheap paperbacks - along with newspapers. It completely democratised reading so you didn’t need to be wealthy to buy a book to read on your journey.”
Mr McLean said such bookstalls - including those opened by John Menzies in Scotland from the 1850s - also sold accessories such as keys, so women travelling alone could lock their carriage compartments, along with reading lamps.
The 1895 painting Perth Station, Coming South - one of a pair, with Going North, King’s Cross, by George Earl - features passengers preparing to return to London at the end of the shooting season, with a boy amidst them depicted selling The Scotsman.
An 1899 Glasgow-built shunting will highlight the city being Europe’s largest locomotive manufacturer of the time.
Other Scottish exhibits include enamel signs advertising the newly-opened North British Hotel - now the Balmoral - beside Waverley Station in Edinburgh in 1902.
Station Hall has been closed since 2023 for the work, funded by a £10.5m grant from the UK Government and £577,000 of exhibition upgrading supported by the Friends of the National Railway Museum.
Its chair is Aberdeen-born Frank Paterson, a former British Rail eastern region general manager, one of whose first jobs in the late 1940s was checking the fish vans before departure.
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