Falling For A Shooting Star: London Transport Museum

This week I’m looking at other museums and exhibitions to get a feel for general style, content level and interactive possibilities. Not all the things I look at will be particularly relevant, but I feel it’s beneficial for me to experience as many exhibitions as possible and see different approaches before deciding on my own.

My first visit was to the London Transport Museum (LTM) in Covent Garden.

Admission is £10 (student), which I felt was quite expensive until I realised that gives entrance for a year. I will definitely be going back.

There were three things I particularly liked about the experience.

1) “Transport is the lifeblood of cities”

The first thing that caught my eye as I walked in was an animated graphic projected onto a wall, showing the transport links in various major cities (one by one – Paris in the photo, I think). The image was faded in using a heartbeat rhythm, along with the sound. After each city a sentence was brought up, saying “Transport is the lifeblood of cities”.

This was a brilliant way of getting me to think about how much I rely on public transport to go about my life, and it set the scene for the message of the rest of the museum – how important public transport is to the development of a city and how it connects areas and people.

2) “The Stamper Trail”

One of these cards is given to every visitor, and there are 13 stamps around the museum to collect in the relevant order. The person I was with had visited the LTM many years ago and this immediately brought back memories of that visit. The first one is an ink stamp but the other 12 all punched holes through the card in relevant shapes.

The mechanism used to create the holes is very well designed. It’s simple, safe and very easy to do (even for the young children I saw around).

The reverse of this card has a simplified map of the museum, with the position of each of the stamps and a suggested route around. The whole system is a fun way to keep children (and adults) interested all the way through, as well as directing visitors around a particular way without putting arrows around the entire building.

3) The Simplified Maps

There are a lot of maps, in various forms, around the museum. Most are those that were used by the general public for information on routes, over the history of transport in London, but there is a series of simplified maps that were obviously designed especially for this museum and they are very effective because of their simplicity.

In general the LTM is a very interactive museum. For example, digitally there are tube simulators, interactive information screens and a specifically interactive area with questions, games and dressing up for children. You can also go in and out of many of the trains, buses and trams that are displayed to see what the seats really feel like, look at all the posters and listen to audio about relevant experiences.

I also found the content very well written; keeping the detailed history to the interactive screens certainly helped the main displays remain as a general overview, with immediately interesting details added. It also related well to experiences of modern transport in London, for example:

· Commenting that “Nothing changes” after showing a complaint about the reliability of commuter services in 1864 identifies well with anyone who uses modern commuter train lines into London (from my own experience First Capital Connect’s reliability has something to be desired)

· Anyone who’s ever used the tube service in rush hour will identify with this quote from 1980 (and just in case the picture doesn't come out): "The train rocked alarmingly. It was so packed with people that getting in or out was a regular scrimmage. We entirely endorse the railway company's advertisement in that it is the "warmest line in London"."