Judith McNicol became director of the National Railway Museum in York, UK, in 2018, coming from a role as director of people and culture at the Science Museum Group, and with a background in commercial development.
She spoke to blooloop about her role, the museum, and the Vision 2025 redevelopment that will see the creation of the groundbreaking Railway Futures: The Porterbrook Gallery, a new permanent exhibition, part of the museum’s wider redevelopment project.
Joining the Science Museum Group
Describing how her involvement with the Science Museum Group began, she says:
“I had been working for a venture capitalist in the Midlands and in London. My sister lived in York, and I came up for the weekend. It was a summer’s day; we sat by the river having a glass of wine, and I had that sort of moment. I thought, ‘I could live here. I could really live in York.’ A few months later, I moved to York without a job. I saw a job advertised at the National Railway Museum, which was head of commercial development.”
At this point, McNicol didn’t know much about museums:
“I did know a lot about commercial stuff, however. I knew about how businesses work, and how to make the most of them.”
She wanted to use the skillset she had developed for something of more benefit to the greater good than for a commercial business; something that she could become passionate about:
“What Britain has done in terms of innovation, and developments for around the world are two things I become excited about. Railways and engineering, of course, are a large part of that. We developed the railways in this country and then took them around the world. This, I felt, is something that we should talk about. It was a completely different role from the one I’m doing now, but that was what drew me.”
Stepping up at the National Railway Museum
She then worked across the Science Museum Group for the next 11 years in a variety of directorship roles.
“When the government’s CSR (Coalition Spending Review) hit in 2010 and we needed to take large amounts of costs out of the business, my experience of having worked with a venture capitalist and of making businesses operate in the way they should came into its own,” she says:
“I was able to do quite a lot across the group thinking about how we could work differently, and how we could work group-wise rather than as separate museums. I was very fortunate. Sir Ian Blatchford, who came in as director of the Science Museum Group at that time, was very keen for us to do things that would really improve the way that the Group worked, so I did a whole load of different things on that.”
The last directorship she held was People and Culture:
“I had always been based here at York, because I had wanted to move to York, and then Ian asked me if I would take over as interim director here when the previous director moved on, for three months.”
She adds:
“He’s a wily person. He had asked me a couple of times before if I was interested in the job, and I’d said ‘No: it’s not my thing at all; not what I want to do’. Six weeks in, I was absolutely hooked.”
Vision 2025
The reason for this was the National Railway Museum’s Vision 2025:
“The invention of the railways was something Britain did for the world, and for us as a country. Vision 2025 was an opportunity to say, what do we need to do in the future? What does engineering need to look like in the future? How do we ensure that the museum is a place for people to engage and get excited about? What are the opportunities in engineering? What, for a young person, could those opportunities look like?”
It’s not, she says, about driving a train:
“We always need train drivers, but that becomes the thing that people fixate on. It’s either driving a train or wearing high vis out on the mainline, repairing something. Actually, it is the multitude of skill sets sitting behind that that make the railways work.
“I realised I could use Vision 2025 to inspire through using the past, homing in on the innovations that have changed the world as a springboard to look at what’s happening today, and the challenges of the future, particularly the sustainability credentials that the railways can deliver in terms of mass transport.
“That was what got me excited six or seven years ago, and I’ve been doing this ever since.”
Central Hall and Railway Futures: The Porterbrook Gallery
Railway Futures: The Porterbrook Gallery is a key feature of Central Hall, a cornerstone of the Vision 2025 redevelopment:
“Central Hall is this lovely new building across two sides of a road that is part of the redevelopment around us. That road is being diverted, and we’re building the new central hall gallery across it. Part of it is the gallery about the future of the railways, which is a real challenge. We are talking to the rail and aerospace industries, among others, about how we can tell the story of things that haven’t been invented yet, which is interesting.”
There are lots of ways to do this, she says:
“It’s about looking at the themes. What are the things that need to change around the world about mass transport and how do you bring all modes of traffic transport into one, taking you from your home to your destination? Importantly, how do we get freight from wherever it’s produced to where it needs to be with the minimum amount of carbon expenditure? The railways are part of that solution.
“The National Railway Museum’s Railway Futures: The Porterbrook Gallery is about looking at those challenges and bringing out the themes that need to be addressed through innovation, which means bringing aerospace and railway innovation together to come up with a full answer to end-to-end travel.”
Looking at future challenges
She adds:
“The Future Forum dinner I held recently, which brings various industries together to talk about the challenges that we are facing, focused on decarbonisation. We had people from alternative fuels industries, someone from the shipping industry, the aerospace industry, and lots of other people coming together. It was brilliant to hear these technologies crossing barriers.”
“The days of starting your career in aerospace or the railways and working there for the rest of your life are gone. Now, it’s about having a skill for innovation; it’s about the way you think. It’s about creativity, and the way we take that creativity and apply it to all of the industries that would benefit from that innovation development.
“That’s what we were talking about. A lot of it was way over my head, but it was really interesting to bring them all together at the museum to have that conversation.”
The start of the National Railway Museum
The National Railway Museum, which opened in 1975, was the first national museum to open outside of London.
“It came about when British Rail closed their facility at Clapham, which had all the railway history. The objects were handed over to the Science Museum Group, and a new museum needed to be found to put them in. Dame Margaret Weston (DBE, FMA), who was a leading light in museums throughout her life and who died last year, was the director of the Science Museum Group at the time. She was very keen that this piece of land in York should be considered.”
This sparked a fierce debate in the Houses of Parliament on whether such a museum could be outside London. Many believed at the time that nobody would travel to see it.
“However, Margaret Weston was very passionate about what could, I suppose, be regarded as the early days of ‘levelling up’, about getting outside London. Obviously, there is a direct rail link to here. York has always been a big railway city. Even now, 14% of the rail industry is employed in York. So it seemed to make sense for it to be here.
Levelling up
The museum opened in 1975, which was the 150th anniversary of the Stockton and Darlington Railway – the first commercial passenger railway. The National Railway Museum has a global reputation as the world’s finest collection of rail artefacts:
“Everyone, wherever they come from, recognises that we have the best collection in the world,” she comments. Over the years, we’ve added new buildings to it.”
The museum has also told an increasing number of stories about the social history behind the advent of the railways:
“Stories, for example, such as the fact that people in the countryside, who used to drink milk, because that’s where the cows were, lived far longer than those in the cities, where there was a high mortality rate, particularly among children,” she says:
“As soon as milk was transported by rail into city centres, mortality rates dropped literally almost overnight. We were able to tell those types of stories across the museum. We have evolved the collection and the stories we were telling, which have been fantastic and inspirational, bringing us to where we are now. York Central was evolving around us.”
Redeveloping the National Railway Museum
Outlining the situation leading to the realisation of the redevelopment, she explains:
“There was the desire within the York Central development to have a new access road. We have this challenge where the main road through this part of York has got a tunnel at either end. This means you can’t bring low loaders through it, which is very challenging when you’ve got a museum with big lumpy objects.
“So, York Central, as the developer of the 45-hectare site around us, wanted to put a new road onto the site, which gave us this opportunity. The road that goes between the two sides of the museum would close, and we could then do something different with it.”
McNicol and her team looked at the site through the lenses of the past, present, and future:
“We do the past brilliantly. We tell a lot of the social history, involving the STEM elements that sit behind those innovations, and how they evolved.
What we needed to do is look at the story of today. We needed to look at things like High-Speed Two. We needed to explore the challenging, difficult stories, as well as the really exciting stories of innovations. What are the stories of today, and also what are the things we need to do for the future?”
Wonderlab: The Bramall Gallery
As part of that, the National Railway Museum has evolved its own ground-breaking interactive Wonderlab: The Bramall Gallery.
“It is purely about engineering, and using something called the engineering habits of mind. What are the thought processes involved in engineering a solution to a problem?
“We’ve got 20-odd interactives that are about helping people to think and problem-solve like an engineer. While it’s generally for 7-14-year-olds, I was there with a 70-year-old. They said they’d never imagined they could have so much fun with an interactive sandpit. I suspect it will be a hit with all age groups. I know we’re going to have a lot of corporate and team-building events.”
Community outreach has been part of the museum’s development. McNicol explains:
“Our learning team goes out into the school community, and we manage the STEM Ambassador programme across the TransPennine region: we have the museums in Manchester, Bradford, and the one here, and manage the STEM hub for that area.
“We’ve got about two and a half thousand STEM ambassadors at the moment. We do a lot of work going out into schools and into community groups to meet with people and bringing schools and community groups into the museum to work with us, both STEM ambassadors and our learning team. That’s an ongoing part of our programme.”
Outreach at the National Railway Museum
When Wonderlab: The Bramall Gallery opens, the plan is to take elements of it online in order to reach an international audience. She adds:
“I’m also working on a very exciting project with Network Rail. We will take a mini version of Wonderlab around the country in 2025. 2025 is the 200th celebration of The Stockton and Darlington Railway (S&DR), which operated in northeast England from 1825 to 1863. So, more on that at some point, but we’re looking at how we can have something that goes around the whole country over the year, which will be very exciting.”
Additionally:
“We do lots of outreach at stations with Network Rail. When they have events at King’s Cross or Waterloo, our learning team will work with their early years engagement to do stuff at stations, which families just love. You are waiting for a train and you do 10 minutes of fun rather than standing there with your bored child. We play with them, and they have such a great time.”
Curator with a Camera
YouTube features another National Railway Museum initiative. She comments:
“One of the other things we have, which is phenomenal, is the National Railway Museum Curator with a Camera. This is where the curator takes an in-depth look at a particular locomotive or carriage. We’ve got a lovely one about the rural carriages and a couple about the Mallard and the Flying Scotsman. We’ve also got one about the Duchess of Hamilton loco.”
“Thousands of people around the world watch these things and write in with requests. We’re looking at a whole series over the next year. We will also do a big one in 2025 around the bicentennial of the Stockton and Darlington Railway. It all comes back to this starting point about how we changed the world.”
Central Hall coming in 2025
In terms of timing, Wonderlab: The Bramall Gallery will open in June this year:
“We’ve got a new building, New Hall, opening at Locomotion, which is going to take another 50 rail vehicles. That will open in November this year.
“The other big thing going on at the moment is the centenary of the Flying Scotsman. We’ve got various things happening for that. That includes an amazing VR experience that’s opening at the National Railway Museum in April. I’ve never seen a VR experience as good as it.”
“Central Hall opens in the summer of 2025 with a beautiful entrance, which will be quite cathedral-like. I’ve deliberately kept it really pared-back. It’s about that moment when you walk into that space, somewhere like St Pancras or King’s Cross, or York Station, even, and get that big cathedral feeling. It’s pretty special.”
