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Ulster Folk and Transport Museum

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Drever
Drever
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5 out of 5
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Editor Pick

Ulster Transport Museum

  • September 12, 2006
  • Rated 4 of 5 by Drever from Ayr
Ulster Transport Museum

Ulster Transport Museum covers everything from carriages to cars to fighter planes, as well as the definitive exhibition on the Titanic. The multitude transport items on display actually made in Belfast itself is astonishing.

The story of transport in Ireland on a country-wide scale began in 1710 with the Post Office running mail coaches along the routes linking towns. Private operators adding to the routes led to a permanent road network. Some canal building also occurred and in 1779 to the first 12-mile section of the Grand Canal opening. By 1815 passenger-carrying horse-car services set up regular services in the south of Ireland, the first of many to follow.

Nothing, however, beats the snorting, puffing glamour of a steam train breathing and exhaling steam. The museum’s Irish Railway Collection tells the story of over 150 years of railway development. Rail transport in Ireland began a decade later than that of Great Britain. By its peak it extended to 3,400 miles of track with about half remaining.

Steam locomotives, passenger carriages and goods wagons combine in the museum with extensive railway memorabilia and interactive displays. These include an award-winning computer game. One of the collection's main attractions is Maedb, the largest and most powerful steam locomotive built and run in Ireland. Clambering up on its footplate, the simple controls and the meagre view down each side of the engine surprised me.

Alongside the Irish Railway Collection are the Road Transport Galleries, which contains a large collection of transport ranging from cycles and motorcycles, to trams, buses, and cars. One of its most famous attractions is a De Lorean DMC-12 car made by the De Lorean Motor Company in Belfast - made famous by the Back to the Future trilogy.

The museum boasts a moving section on the luxury liner the Titanic, designed and built in the Harland and Wolff shipyards, just a few miles from the museum. The exhibition documents the construction, voyage, and sinking of the ill-fated vessel on her first voyage, in 1912, killing 1,500 of the passengers and crew.

A modern exhibition is the X2: Flight Experience. It enables young visitors to discover for themselves the principles of flight, explore the history of aviation, and understand the science of making a successful aircraft. Also on display at the museum is the Short's of Belfast produced SC1, a prototype vertical take-off aeroplane. Principles learned from it led to the building of the Harrier jump jet one of the most successful planes in aviation history.

Attractions in the grounds themselves include a model railway run by the Model Engineers Society of Northern Ireland, and the 120 ton steel schooner Result.

The Ulster Transport Museum in its beautifully designed building is across the road from the Ulster Folk Museum. A combined ticket for both parts of the museum (Folk and transport) costs £6.50 for adults and £3.50 for children. The transport museum has full disabled access.

From journal Three days in Belfast

Editor Pick

Ulster Folk Museum

  • September 12, 2006
  • Rated 5 of 5 by Drever from Ayr
Ulster Folk Museum

Ulster’s Folk Museum, a 15-minute drives from Belfast, presents a bye gone simpler world where villages are self-contained and have close social cohesion. Reassembled and preserved in its open-plan village are historic churches, bakeries, a bank, a printing shop, a sheriff's office, a basket maker’s shop, a tobacconist, and a general store. To complete the picture they contain furniture and decorations for their time period and are populated by people in period costumes who demonstrate and answer questions. We wandered in and out of the buildings, picked up and touched items and got a feel for the past - an ideal educational experience for the young as well as oldies like us.

The village includes a traditional weaver's house, terraces of Victorian town houses, two 18th-century country churches one with the original tombstones - though not the bodies! Also the village contains a flax mill, a farmhouse, and a rural school and a print shop. Some cottages evoke nostalgia, especially when we saw the delicately carved cribs and beautiful quilts - others are bare and cramped. The labourers cottages, have only two bedrooms, and we wondered how they managed to fit the 10 to 14 people into them. The houses of more skilled workers are bigger and have more expensive items. In a 17th-century row of thatched cottages live coal fires and life-sized human figures, skilful works of art with a haunting presence, heighten the atmosphere.

Members of staff using the tools of yesteryear proved interesting to watch as they practicing woodworking and basket weaving. A printing office had copies of the newspapers covering the Titanic sinking. The printer produced a handbill using individual letters of type, an ink roller and a hand-operated printing press. In a cottage a young woman was busy at the spinning wheel and elsewhere another was making soda bread and allowing visitors to sample it.

The village also includes a courthouse, an old Northern Bank with an exhibition of all the money and ledgers used by the banking staff. Schools with textbooks and real graffiti were also present - my wife, a former teacher, sat at the teacher’s desk for a photo. There is also a police station with Spartan cells and an exhibition of the police force in its various names and guises up to present-day.

A rural area, spread over 60 acres contains farms and mills. As it would take a day to see everything we only had time to visit a hill farm but it was clear that for children the farm animals in the rural area are a popular attraction.

The teashop, converted from an old temperance hall, serves pastries and hot drinks but, unsurprisingly, no alcohol. They've also got a small visitor centre store and traditional indoor photo display.

A combined ticket for both parts of the Folk and Transport museums (across the road from each other) costs £6.50 for adults and £3.50 for children, while a family ticket is £18. Allow a day to see everything.

From journal Three days in Belfast

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