The steam museum is located just off the M4 at Swindon about halfway between Bristol and London. It’s right next to the
Swindon design outlet which has a bunch of restaurants and shops. It’s a good place to refuel with decent food before completing the London leg of the journey. Restaurants here include Wagamama, PizzaExpress, El Mexicana, Five Guys and KFC. After a bit of umming and ahhhing, we went for PizzaExpress as there was a table big enough for our group and there didn’t seem to be a wait and … kids love pizza.
After lunch, it was time to head to the museum. The museum was only a short walk away no more than five minutes gentle walking. The weather was a bit overcast but at least it was not too cold.
The museum is housed in an old railway works building. When it was operating between 1843 to 1986, the Swindon Works spanned an impressive 300 acres and at its peak boasted the ability to produce three locomotives a week! Upon entry into the building, the main foyer has a fire truck and a train axle with a life size representation of what I suspect was supposed to be Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who built the Great Western Railway which connects London to the West (And South West) of England and Wales. Though I’m not I would say that he “built” it, because for me that implies he did all the heavy lifting. He was the chief engineer which meant he had a central role but there were of course many other people involved in its construction. Let me not detract from his contribution, because he was appointed as Chief Engineer at the age of only 27 and let’s face it, what was I doing when I was 27? This is the first of many rather creepy representations of people that the museum has put on.
[img alt="Building housing the STEAM - Museum of the Great Western Railway
"]https://therealglobetrekker.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/img_3060.jpg?w=1008[/img][img alt="Entrance to the STEAM - Museum of the Great Western Railway
"]https://therealglobetrekker.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/img_3063.jpg?w=1008[/img]
[img alt="A representation of Isambard Kingdom Brunel by a train axle in the entrance foyer of the STEAM - Museum of the Great Western Railway
"]https://therealglobetrekker.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/img_3066.jpg?w=1008[/img][img alt="A machine in the entrance foyer of the STEAM - Museum of the Great Western Railway
"]https://therealglobetrekker.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/img_3136.jpg?w=1008[/img]Interactive Exhibits and Locomotive Displays at the STEAM Museum
And you know kids, many love mechanical things and the museum provides an immersive experience with interactive exhibits as well as the actual locomotives. Some of the locomotives that are displayed include North Star, 3717 City of Truro, 4003 Lode Star, Dean Goods 2516, and Pannier Tank 9400. You can explore many of the actual component parts of the railway such as the locomotives (including underneath one!), carriages, and there are plenty of interactive exhibits like block puzzles, bridge-building, signal boxes and a train simulation where you can pull levers and pull the chain to sound the whistle. Of course, those creepy mannequins are every where!
Right at the end of the musuem tour there is a section with vintage amusement arcade machines which hark back to the days when people used to take the train to the seaside.
I did not like the attitude of the staff. They seemed annoyed that we were there. I had seen an online special offer for cheaper tickets and I enquired about. They told me no. "The offer is not available" oh I thought I saw it on Facebook and said they were very brusquely "No the offer ended yesterday" in a very offputting manner - in fact they never looked at me throughout the whole interaction. So I asked for the prices and they were very abrupt in the way they gave them - again barely looking at me. I would understand their attitude if they were busy but there was no one else in the museum (literally we only saw 3 other visitors for the whole 2 hours we were there) ... it felt a bit like we had interrupted their day. What I suspect was they were hoping to shut up early, but we arrived a couple of hours before the entry. We arrived at 2:45pm and the museum wasn’t due to shut until five.
There are a variety of different ticket combinations that you can buy it will take too much space to discuss, you can just find the information
at this link.
I think this is definitely worth it visiting. If it wasn’t for the attitude of the staff I would have given this a 5 star rating.
You can see the original report here.
A youtube video will come soon.