Does the Riverside Transport Museum in Glasgow live up to its billing?

• The opening day for the public to visit the Riverside Museum Glasgow. Picture Robert Perry

NEARLY 7,000 people flooded into Scotland's newest visitor attraction yesterday. The Riverside Transport Museum in Glasgow was opened in ship launch-style with a bottle of champagne being smashed on the side of the iconic building.

Crowds, including large groups of schoolchildren, formed around the entrance to Glasgow's latest transport museum as city council leader Gordon Matheson hailed Zaha Hadid's "masterpiece" design. He said: "Nothing is too good for Glasgow."

Matheson also pledged to keep the 74 million building, and the city's other museums, as free admission. He said Glaswegians loved their transport collection, and was honoured to hand over the museum to them: "This museum belongs to the people of Glasgow."

A total of 6,800 people visited the building yesterday, 1,500 of whom arrived within the first hour.

Despite a series of previews that had lifted the lid on many exhibits, new features were unveiled on opening day, such as a bespoke conveyor belt which moves model ships around a giant display case that is visible from both ground and upper floors.

Officials said the vibration created by the mechanism – which is similar to that used in computer factories and was tested by a bomb disposal expert – would not damage the intricate models. They hope to sell the technology involved to other museums.

Staff hope it will increase the number of people viewing the model ships, which were in one of the less-visited parts of the previous transport museum at the Kelvin Hall. To coincide with the opening, a new ferry service was launched to bring visitors from across the Clyde in Govan.

The Glenlee, Glasgow's tall ship, was also reopened at its new berth in front of the museum yesterday after a 1.5m refurbishment as part of its move from near the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre. It is one of only five Clydebuilt sailing vessels still afloat and the only one in the UK. Unlike the Riverside, the Glenlee will continue to charge admission.

The riverside frontage to the museum affords commanding new views up and down the Clyde, with one section of the railings mimicking the prow of a ship. The museum contains 3,000 exhibits in more than 150 displays, with a new emphasis on the role of people in building, owning and operating the vehicles on show.

They include the "great tram gamble", which recalls the controversy caused by women taking over as conductors and drivers because of the staff shortage caused by the First World War.

The Riverside replaces the museum at the Kelvin Hall, which closed in April last year. The collection was previously housed in a former tram depot, now the Tramway, in Pollokshields.

The Riverside project, funded by the city council, the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Riverside Museum Appeal, started nine years ago, with work starting on site in 2007.

A straw poll of visitors gave the new museum a big thumbs-up.

Patricia Meneely, from Glasgow, said her son, Ross, six, had not slept the night before because he was so excited.

She said Ross and brother Callum, ten, had loved the interactive displays, such as putting a fire out and using a welding torch and mask.

Michael Mullaney, 18, who was among a group of leavers from Holyrood Secondary School in Glasgow, said: "I enjoyed the previous museum and was keen to get back – it's impressive."

David Glass, a Glasgow-born hotelier from Blackpool, said: "It's absolutely brilliant. I've been to all Glasgow's previous transport museums and this one is amazing."

• Riverside Museum, Pointhouse Place, Glasgow G3 8RS. Open 10am-5pm daily (from 11am on Fridays and Sundays). www.glasgowmuseums.com

'At last you can sit inside a Subway carriage or tram car rather than just peer inside'

By Alastair Dalton, Transport Correspondent

THE Springburn tram looks like it's coming straight out of the entrance doors. Cross the threshold of the Riverside Museum and you immediately know where you're at. No ticket desk or lobby clutter masking the exhibits – the full-on, and free, Glasgow experience that is the city's brand-new transport museum is immediately spread out before you.

While one of Glasgow's earliest trams may be in pole position, there's also a steam engine, a 1910 Bentley and the inviting curve of a recreated cobbled street beckoning your first footsteps. That was my first thought. Because for even those familiar with the museum's previous incarnation at the Kelvin Hall, there appears to be so much more to see here. After four hours yesterday there were many exhibits I had hardly glanced at.

My other immediate impression was that, in true gallus Glasgow style, the museum screamed cutting-edge – and it may not all be to everyone's liking. Aside from the pale green decor, which I think adds to the building's bright, airy feel, not only are many cars mounted on the walls, but motorcycles, too, complete with coloured lights that border on the garish, and a "velodrome" track of bicycles suspended from the ceiling.

To compensate for such staging, display screens contain detailed information about each vehicle, complete with an array of internal and external pictures. But even if the exhibits are rotated among their perches, it remains to be seen if that will satisfy the visitor wanting a close-up view.

One of the frustrations with the previous museum was there were few things you could clamber on and not many buttons to press. The Riverside is a definite improvement – at last you can sit on the varnished slats of a Subway carriage or tram car rather than just peer through the glass and try to imagine the travel experience of a century ago. However, it is not made clear the differences between two climb-aboard Subway carriages in different parts of the museum.

Behind the now-open doors of the 1895-1930 recreated street, sound effects help to convey the atmosphere in the Mitre Bar, along with a clever "see-through" mirror showing people ordering drinks further along the bar. However, for the museum to describe display cases adjacent to buses and trams as comprising two further such "streets" is perhaps style over substance.

There are iPad-style touch screens throughout the museum for those with low attention spans where you can chance upon gems such as the Prince Philip driving a Hillman Imp at the opening of its Linwood plant in 1963, or a 1918 cover of Scottish car-maker Arrol-Johnston's company magazine – The Spanner – "a monthly journal for the control of the 'nuts'." I just hope the mainly non-operating or faulty screens will be fixed soon.

There's plenty of hands-on stuff, too, but how long will it survive the likely battering from over-enthusiastic visitors? A rowing machine was taken out of action within hours yesterday, and the welding helmet from a shipbuilding exhibit will soon walk if it is not tethered. Glitches aside, there were some intriguing games to play, such as having to correctly fire up a steam locomotive, delivering telegrams through 1950s Glasgow and pedalling a simulator version of Sir Clive Sinclair's ill-fated C5 mini vehicle.

Finally, visitors won't want a nightmare reaching the museum, but the car park looked full by early afternoon yesterday and the school holidays haven't even started yet.

Many people are likely to take the ten-minute walk instead from Partick train/Subway/bus interchange, but may be frustrated by the lack of any directions in the station or the tiny, hard-to-spot green signs just outside. They should not be losing their way to an exciting new Glasgow destination.'It's difficult to stand back and take a measured view of some of the most impressive exhibits'

By Joyce McMillan, Theatre and Arts Critic

THE HEAVENS opened, the Glasgow weather did its midsummer worst; but nothing, it seemed, could dampen the mood of excitement down at the old Govan Ferry, on the day when the people of Glasgow acquired a new "dear green place" to take to their hearts.

Set on a bleak headland on the north side of the river, Zaha Hadid's iconic Riverside Museum building is undeniably a thing of beauty, curving and rolling like a wave between the railway and the river. Outside, its zinc-clad roof and pleated walls are all grey and blue; inside, the walls, ceilings and walkways of Hadid's great, column-free space – shaped like a large, uneven "u" – are painted in a sharp, fresh green, slightly startling, always vivid. The building seems to work well, in terms of access, facilities, food, drink and ambience. The downstairs caf has a riverside terrace, the upstairs self-service bar has a fine view across the water. The transport links are impeccable, by train, boat, underground, ferry and new, dedicated bus from George Square; and the staff are as enthusiastic and excited as the visitors, as they help everyone from jolly gangs of schoolchildren to elderly couples to climb in and out of old trams, buses and subway trains, to admire the huge South African locomotive built at Queen's Park Works in 1945, and to find their way around the myriad astonishing and fascinating objects that this city museum – transport-based, but also featuring many other historic artefacts – has to offer.

Whether the exhibition itself offers the same quality of experience as the building will, I suspect, be the subject of prolonged debate. What's clear almost at first glance is that the complex space is crammed to bursting with vehicles, objects, and small screens offering personal stories, to the extent that it's often difficult to stand back and take a measured view of some of the most impressive exhibits; and that sense of crowding, combined with a resolute refusal to arrange the material in a clear chronological or thematic order, makes it difficult for the ordinary visitor to grasp the real weight and value of the collection.

Add to that lack of clarity an inconsistent and jumbled presentation of information about what we're looking at – there a tiny notice, here a large signboard, there a temperamental and confusing touchscreen display – and it's no wonder that people were to heard asking, in good-natured puzzlement, why "they're not telling us which boat it is", or why, in front of the Arnold Clark Wall of Cars, the touchscreen information-points stand so close to the wall that you can't look simultaneously at the information, and at the cars.

By far the most eloquent and successful part of the museum is the late 19th-century street, full of traditional shops, an old subway station and tramcars. Here the space and the layout tell the whole story, loud and clear. For the rest of the museum, though, the curators need to take a deep breath, make some difficult choices about the items they will put on display, give them room to breathe, have the courage to tell a lucid and compelling story through them (even if that story is only there to be challenged), and dramatically raise their game in terms of the clear, consistent, information, accessible at a glance.

When I arrived at the museum, I asked one of the friendly staff members whether there was an audio tour, or if not where I should start on my journey round the museum, so as not to miss any highlights. "Oh," she said, "you just start anywhere and go anywhere, it's not really connected." And despite the glory of the material on view here, and the obvious affection for it shown by the packed first-day crowds, the truth is that without that sense of connection and context, even the most magnificent objects lose some of their power, and speak to us much less clearly than they should.