Curious curios

Published on 10/08/2012 00:00

Tiffany Jenkins in her article about the new National Museum of Scotland (Perspective, 2 August) was spot-on. Sadly, the museum has become a gigantic free crèche, a fun-palace, a leisure mall.

The number of visitors has increased dramatically – many more scampering tiny feet than before – but, is it still a museum?

Far from going back to Victorian ideas of being “a place of education and enlightenment for everyone” it seems to have gone back even further, and has become a very large cabinet of unconnected curiosities. But if one is curious about these items, it is sometimes difficult to find any useful information.

Simple explanatory cards have been replaced by elaborate “touch the screen” technology, which I tried a few times only to find it often didn’t work. So all that gee-whiz innovation has left me in ignorance. But running children can pause, touch the screen, and see that wheels really do go round. What fun!

In the Scotsman Magazine of 23 July 2011, Dr Gordon Rintoul said: “Every item in the museum is either Scottish or it was a Scot who brought it back.”

One rather important object in the museum is the oldest – or second-oldest – railway engine in the world. It has nothing to do with Scotland; it was made in England in 1813. The information available at the museum is sparse; the touch screen wasn’t working, there is no literature about it on sale, not even a postcard.

I suggest this old locomotive should be repatriated to Newcastle, near where it was made. I’m sure it would be welcomed there, recognised and appreciated for its importance and local interest.

HARRY JACK

Dundas Street

Edinburgh