Date of Visit : 25 August 2011
It was a beautiful day in Leeds, and we took a short 30 minute train ride to the ancient town of York.
The first place we visited was the National Railway Museum, right beside the train station. I must say it is every boy's, or guy's, dream to be in a place with so many trains! It houses so many different types of trains from different eras of the British Rail history, from steam trains to the eurostar, and Royal Carriages as well. Seeing all these trains remind me of the game Railway Tycoon, where you are able to buy all these trains to build your railway empire.
The controls of these trains are really complicated. There're are steam pressure, temperature, speed, and many other gauges. Not to mention that the driver is standing on top of a fire furnace, it must have been a very tough job being a driver. However, it is very prestigious job to be a driver to because it is the top of the career path for many people in the rail industry. They would start off as train cleaners and slowly progress their way up to become a driver.
They also have a Shinkansen train in this museum. To those of you who do not know what is that, it's actually the Janpanese Bullet Train. The interior is just like any other trains. But that did not stop me from having a Superman moment where I stopped a bullet train!
Back in the heydays of rail travel, travelling by rail is only for the rich and famous. It's like the first class of airline transport now. Everything was decorated elaborately and luxuriously. With the reduced price of automobiles and air travel, the rail industry have to adapt and cater to the masses in order to survive. Thus, slowly, they started serving everybody, which resulted in what we see now as rail travel.
These are some of the interesting signs and posters used by the rail companies. They even have a model train and city during the medieval eras.
They even have the Hogwarts Express. We just can't find platform 9 and 3/4. I think we will try it out at King's Cross Station in London. :)
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We visited the city next, and it is a really beautiful city, inter-weaved with parks and shopping streets.
The weather was just fantastic today. People were just lying on the grass to soak up the weather. The air temperature is about 15 degrees and the sun was up. Really awesome, how I wish Singapore has such weather! If there is a place on earth that has such weather throughout the year, I will definitely move there! Nonetheless, we took advantage of the awesome weather and found ourselves a bench to eat strawberries! Haha. We have to 'kope' sugar from a cafe to make the strawberries taste sweeter.
The main attraction in York has to be the York Minister. It's a grand church that can be seen even if you are far far away! This will be the first of many many grand Minister and churches is see in Europe I guess! I'm just amaze at how the ancient people manage to build such amazing buildings!
Photo taken with Constantine the Conqueror. This is where he was pronounced the Caesar of the Roman Empire.
This is also another attraction of York, the remains of what was the York Castle. A nice teacher helped us take this photo after seeing me trying to put timer to take a timed photo.
York is surrounded by a city wall, which is still standing today. We managed to climb onto a section of the wall and walk along it. It really is interesting to imagine how everything was like in the past, how the invaders will be under the wall and trying to get over it while the defenders defend. Hmm...
There really isn't much in York as well, thus we returned to Leeds early, and decided to make dinner ourselves! And this is the result:
(Thumbs up for a pot of curry, some prawn thingy by Jian Hui, and stir fried veggies)
