The story of steam trains, engineering genius and God’s Wonderful Railway all under one roof!
Isambard Kingdom Brunel built his Swindon Works to repair locomotives in the 1840s. Today, it’s been beautifully restored and turned into STEAM, the Museum of the Great Western Railway.
You can climb aboard famous locomotives here, have a go at changing the signals and be an engine driver. And when you run out of steam, you can pop next door to the Swindon Designer Outlet for a spot of shopping!!
Swindon
The Museum of Computing
The first museum of its kind in the UK will take you back to the earliest days of computers!
Exhibits include a wide range of vintage computers and handheld video games, which continue through time to the museum’s Robots Revolution exhibition, which presents state-of-the-art technology.
If all that sounds a bit geeky and dull, it’s not. This little gem of a museum is really friendly and a whole lot of fun because you can play on lots of the exhibits too, as long as you’re careful!
Swindon
The Swindon and Cricklade railway
An authentic taste of life in the pre-electronic age, with locomotives, carriages and wagons!
Another wonderful volunteer-run museum, this atmospheric railway of yesteryear operates just like a branch line 50 years ago.
A four-mile round trip on a vintage train is obviously the main highlight of the day, but you can also ‘go behind the scenes’ at the loco shed to see engines being maintained and pop into a signal box to learn how trains were controlled in the days before computers.
