Giraffes standing between the gleaming locomotives? Huge birds hovering overhead? I had come to Belgium’s national railway museum, Train World, at Schaerbeek in Brussels, to learn about railways, not wildlife. But I came away impressed at how well the current exhibitions convey the message that railways can lessen carbon output, and reverse some of the damage that the ‘Anthropocene’ (human-dominated environment on this planet) inflicts on nature.
It is capacious, utilising both the old railway hall of Schaerbeek station as well as about four large warehouses. Like the UK National Railway Museum in York, it contains the actual locomotives and carriages of various periods. So, if one’s interest is mainly historical, one can go from period to period, looking at how railstock developed. The first steam locomotive here is ‘Le Belge’ built in 1835, made by John Cockerill under licence from Stephenson’s company, using the ‘patentee’ arrangement of three-wheel axles to provide more stability.
Building bridges
Industrialisation came soon to Belgium in the 19th century because, like England, it had plentiful coal mines to supply the energy for steam. Belgians are proud of what some of their engineers contributed to railway engineering, for instance, Egide Walschaerts, inventor of a valve gear, and Alfred Belpaire who improved the firebox of the steam engine.
Industrialist Charles-Henri Marcellis and his partner V Duval developed cast-iron girder bridges, first tested in Ghent over the Scheldt River. In the heyday of 19th-century railway building, there was a lot of knowledge transfer between England and Belgian bridge engineers, as wrought iron and steel replaced cast iron.
Engineering and design
If your prime interest is mechanical engineering, there are ample wall-size explanations and actual models to show how locomotives convert energy to motion, from the old steam models to the modern electric, with overhead pantographs like the Javelins and Eurostar.
If your interest is more civil engineering, of how the rail tracks are constructed, there is a section for that too, with fun push-button displays for inquisitive children.
If your interest is social history, you can walk through a railway family cottage, furnished in 1930s style. Or step into the royal carriage, plushly furnished, 1950s style. One of the first displays the visitor sees, still in the original station hall, is the ticket office. One can marvel at the meticulous use of ticket machines, telephones, and all the office equipment of the pre-electronic epoch, before computers and the internet.
The railway’s timeline
There is a display of mobile mapping which shows how the railways fanned out across Belgium over the last 180 years. In a time sequence of maps, the web of railways densifies from the 1840s up to the period after World War II. Then there was some trimming (as there was with the Beeching cuts in England in the 1960s).
I was particularly interested to note this as I had just read a study by a Flemish group who are determined to replace old lines and add some modern ones, so that there will be a through route (A73) from Ghent across the border to Dunkirk, which may increase the flow of travellers across the Channel. The rail track that used to cross the France-Belgium border was removed decades ago, with only a slow-stopping bus now to connect the eager traveller to the superb 67 km tourist tram route along the Flemish coast.
“If you build it, they will come”
Another display points out how means of transport shape the population distribution. Whereas before 1960 there was plenty of countryside in Belgium with people living in towns connected by railways, by 2020 the increase of car ownership caused the growth of urbanised living throughout. Belgium now has 98.7% of its population classified as urban. Population density is 386/km2, compared to England with 434/km2 (444/km2 in Kent, 722/km2 in Surrey).
Grey versus green
My favourite display is a model cityscape, making the point that we need to change the design of urban living. On the left is a city of skyscrapers, with hardly any green space and two multi-laned motorways clogged with traffic. Then there is a green landscape, with some solar panels in a field, and a few wind turbines. On the right is another city, still with tall buildings, but all of them with greenery, mostly on capacious balconies. No roads are running through: just a large station and trains on one side and then bicycle lanes through the neighbourhoods. It makes the point – the sooner we can move to less polluting forms of transport the better.
The graphics beside this (EU statistics of 2018) show that trains produce much less carbon pollution: 0.4% of emissions compared to 71.8% for road transport, 14.19% for industrial emissions and 13.2% for aircraft. There is another, quite alarming, whirling circular electronic graphic which shows how rapidly emissions are increasing.
Downside of the Anthropocene
As I gazed down on the gleaming locomotives, with the giraffe alongside, and the bird overhead, I applauded the message of this museum – we can admire human progress and technology, but it must not be at the expense of the environment.
