Museum Piece

 

Not far from Ropsten station, a short walk round the back of some sports courts, is the Gasverket district.  As the name - and the architecture - implies, this used to be the site of Stockholm's gasworks, until technological advances rendered them obsolete.  The natural response to this was to build a new district here; close to the T-bana, overlooking the coast, with new schools and facilities to encourage growth.

One way to encourage people to visit your new district is to locate a tourist attraction there, and in 2022 the Spårvägsmuseet, or Tramway Museum, opened in the former scrubbing plant for the gasworks.  It covers all of Stockholm's public transport and it is bloody marvellous.

I wasn't even planning on visiting.  It was only when I'd come out of Ropsten station that I'd spotted the board pointing me in its direction.  With the Lidingöbanan behind me, and it still being the afternoon, I thought why not get a bit of culture?  I'd come all the way to Stockholm and not visited a single tourist hotspot; what could be more on brand than this one?

Every aspect of the network is covered here.  At the top, you get a historical perspective; the evolution of Stockholm's transport, with ferries, horse-drawn carts and the like.  As you work your way down, you advance through time, with social and engineering advances covered equally.  You get vehicles:

You get architectural features:

You get pieces about uniforms and the people who wore them:

You get interactive displays with saucy looking actors:

I was particularly taken with the map gallery, as you'd expect, which included T-bana maps from both the past...

...and the future:

I mean, it's all incredible.  I wandered around with a giddy smile on my face, enjoying every moment of it.  I'll also point out that every single label is in both Swedish and English, meaning us ignorant Brits can enjoy the museum just as much as the locals.  We are so lucky.

As you'd expect, the museum is very popular with young children, with plenty of interactive buttons and videos and little games for them to play.  It was a weekend afternoon and the whole building echoed with excited screams.  There's also a tiny train for them to ride and it is adorable.

My only complaint is that the shop's a bit rubbish.  The London Transport Museum has taken way, way, way too much of my hard earned cash over the years, and I looked forward to handing over an enormous amount of money at its Stockholm equivalent.  I'd not bought any souvenirs of my trip and I thought maybe I could get a nice t-shirt with the circle T logo, or some pointless and yet lovely ornament.

No such luck.  The museum shop is very much child-oriented and so none of the t-shirts were available in adult sizes.  Worse, most of its merch seemed to be aimed at school parties with a few kroner to spend - post it notes, erasers, badges and the like.  Nothing a grown up transport nerd could spend his cash on.  In the end I bought three books, one about each of the T-bana lines, even though they were in Swedish; I wanted to buy something and I can never resist a book.  I'll have to read them through the lens of Google Translate.

When I got home I sent the museum an e-mail, politely complaining that I had a load of money I literally couldn't spend. I got a very nice reply from an Eijla Berglund, who's in charge of the store, saying that they're definitely hoping to upgrade it and will have more nerdy adult stuff later in the year.  Oh no, I'll have to go back now, what a shame.

Funnily enough, not long after I returned to the UK, the BBC published an article saying that this area was exactly what Birkenhead was after.  It named this specific district as the ideal for when Birkenhead builds its Dock Branch Park, together with its own transport museum.  The Scouse version is sadly entirely dependent on external funding and is significantly less ambitious; the article mentions that the hope is for 1200 new homes, while Stockholm is delivering 12,000.  I'd love to see this level of dense, well-built regeneration in Birkenhead, but it'll probably end up being a load of Barratt Homes and empty plots with a possible start date of 2054.  (I first covered The Transport Shed on the Dock Branch in 2021; there's been absolutely no progress since and now they've concluded it's too expensive to build and are going to expand the existing Wirral Transport Museum.  Don't hold your breath).  

In the meantime, go to Stockholm.  Go to the Spårvägsmuseet.  It's ace.

The museum website is here and it's also brilliant.