tales from the corner house…

Last weekend Sam and I went to London for a fantastic trip with Steve and Penny. We met at the Science Museum and headed for Launchpad, the museum’s hands-on gallery with over 50 interactive exhibits. These include this bubble wall,

magnet power towers,

the mesmerising effects of dry ice in water,

and our personal favourite: the chance to build your own bridge!

On our way back through the museum we past through Space,

and saw the original Stevenson’s Rocket, very fitting, as we were just off on our way up to Kensington Park to Ride the Rocket! See below…

One of the highlights of our trip to London last weekend was to ride on a replica of Stevenson’s Rocket. It turned out to be the very same replica from the York Railway Museum which we visited with Granny last month (shown below). The  replica was built  in 1979 by Locomotion Enterprises for the 150th anniversary celebrations. The chimney was shorter than the original so that it could pass under the bridge at Rainhill on the celebration journey. The driver explained to us the reason the funnel was white was to show off how clean the engine was, and the boiler was painted yellow to mirror that of the public transport horse-drawn coaches that were around at the time, thus giving the message that Rocket was designed as a passenger engine, not an industrial one.

The BBC have a fun animation of the Rocket on their site, where you can learn in more detail how the engine works, then test your knowledge with a ‘build the engine’ game.