
Caution! Railway safety since 1913
Discover the story of railway safety over the last century and explore the attempts to prevent accidents.
See highlights from our collection, immerse yourself in stories from centuries of railway history and discover objects you might not have been expecting from the world's largest railway collection.
As well as hundreds of locomotives and carriages, our collection includes original engineering drawings, paintings, signs, posters, models and even a bridge.
These incredible inventions underpin our collection of over a million railway-related objects. Among them are the world's fastest steam engine Mallard, the exquisitely streamlined Duchess of Hamilton, a replica of George Stephenson's pioneering Rocket and the only Shinkansen bullet train to be found outside of Japan.
From the original drawings of game-changing locomotives to a sign asking passengers not to spit in carriages, our collection of railway-related items reaches far and wide.
You can see more of these objects in Highlights, our newest exhibition which puts some of our most interesting non-locomotive objects under the spotlight on the Search Engine balcony in Great Hall.