What the heck is a lek?
Males great bustards perform spectacular courtship displays, gathering at a ‘lek’ or small display ground to try to impress the females.
This April, Wessex Museums is very excited to welcome the three Swindon Museums to our partnership. Here’s an introduction to the first, STEAM – Museum of the Great Western Railway.
The museum tells the story of the men and women who built, operated and travelled on the Great Western Railway, a network that, through the pioneering vision and genius of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, set the standard for rail travel.
The museum is housed in a beautifully restored Grade II railway building in the heart of the former Swindon Works, once one of the largest railway engineering complexes in the world.
The story is brought to life with iconic GWR locomotives, imaginative story-telling displays, videos – mixing rare archive film footage with the stories of ex-railway workers – hands-on exhibits, interactive displays and rare GWR memorabilia. There are over 400,000 items in the STEAM Museum Collection, which include locomotives and rolling stock, photographs and archives, fine art and textiles and everything in between!
A vibrant special exhibitions programme explores the changes to train travel on the GWR network. High Voltage illuminates the story behind the electrification of the Great Western network; The Diesel Decades looks at the early diesel experiments by various railway companies, and Changing Trains – the Journey from Broad Gauge to Standard Gauge explores the series of events that led to the end of Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s Broad Gauge system.
STEAM offers a popular annual events programme. Shows lined-up for this year include: The Great Western Brick Show, Stars of Time Film and Comic Con, Swindon Railway Festival, Swindon Beer Festival, and Christmas at STEAM.
Photo by Jack Boskett, features a locomotive on loan from the National Railway Museum.
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Males great bustards perform spectacular courtship displays, gathering at a ‘lek’ or small display ground to try to impress the females.
The great bustard has a dignified slow walk but tends to run when disturbed, rather than fly.
The hen-bird on display at The Salisbury Museum was one of the last great bustards to be eaten in the town!