Gutted

Eat your heart out, Damian Hirst.

This is a Merchant Navy class locomotive which has been given the cutaway treatment in order to explain to the public how steam locomotives work.

I decided to take a day off job hunting and went to the National Railway Museum in York, a wonderful resource and still free to enter. What a day I had: I stood on the footplates of two great locomotives (the LMS' Duchess of Hamilton and the LNER's world speed record holder, Mallard), sat in the carriage of a Japanese bullet train, and watched 4472/63103 Flying Scotsman being subjected to some tender (no pun intended) loving care.

The extra shows part of an old ceramic map of the North Eastern Railway's network when Otley still had a railway station. How I wish we had one now.

Here's a lovely piece of music to celebrate the day.