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Published: June 25th 2019
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BB9004 Electric Locomotive
Set World Speed Record of 331 km/h in 1955 Tuesday 25th June
Well summer has definitely arrived. It started on Saturday, and as soon as the seasons clicked over, the heat came on. Yesterday was 35 degrees here, today 36, tomorrow 37. I am heading to Lindau on Lake Constanz in Germany tomorrow, via Zurich, but the forecast is only a little cooler. The heat is forecast to continue until the beginning of next week. At least this hotel has air conditioning, though it was faulty for the first two nights here and sat on 26.5 degrees all the time. They must have finally fixed it today. No more air conditioned hotels from here on. At least when I'm up in the mountains on the weekend it should cool off at night.
Mulhouse is a fair-sized city of about 100,000 or so, and features several very good museums, which is why I am here. One is what they claim is the world's largest car museum, which I did not visit! Not enough days. At least I saw an excellent car museum in Brittany – see previous blog. Mulhouse also has some historic buildings, most notably the medieval former hôtel de ville, and a large 19th Century Reformed Protestant
temple with the 14th century (Catholic - pre reformation) stained glass from the church it replaced.
Today I visited the Cité du Train, the SNCF (French Railways) official museum, and Electropolis, a museum of electricity. Both were excellent.
This morning I took the tram out of town to where both museums are located across the road from each other. The Cité du Train has an excellent collection showing the history of French railways, from their beginnings in the 19th Century, to the latest TGVs. It features the evolution of steam engines, electric engines, multiple unit trains, railcars, VIP trains, trains in the two world wars, mountain railways, freight trains, model trains, etc, etc. It was very interesting and I spent about four hours there, including lunch. The carriages, wagons and locomotives (and everything else) in this museum are beautifully restored – some are just gems, like the Wagons-Lits carriages, and the Bugatti railcar.
I then headed across to the Electropolis, a museum which is extremely well organised, and tells the story of electricity, from ancient times until today, and ideas for the future are also shown. They have a wonderful collection of early electrical apparatus, helping to
explain the history of electricity's discovery and our understanding of it. A lot of interesting stuff on Galvani, Volta, Oërsted, Ampère, Coulomb, Faraday, Maxwell, Hertz, etc. One could teach quite a bit of HSC Physics on the spot. Then there was a history of electrical generation, lighting, appliances, toys, etc. The display of the evolution of home appliances during the 20th Century was excellent. My personal favourites were the children's Xray generator toy from the early years of the 20th C (yes, a little real Xray machine), and the display of trendy orange home appliances from the 1970s. Memories!
The museum's biggest feature is an enormous electrical generator from the first decade of the 20th Century, which was previously in a Mulhouse factory. It is gigantic. The generator is powered by a steam engine with four separated cylinders (high, medium and 2 low pressure), which drive the enormous generator flywheel and windings. Also outside in the grounds (a bit warm out there today) there are smaller buildings housing hydro- and steam- powered generators, as well as transformers, switching equipment, etc. For me it was all very fascinating and I spent two and a half hours there, before taking the
tram back to my (at last cool) hotel room.
This is my last night in France, after 11 weeks here. Tomorrow I move into Germany, which makes me a bit nervous compared to being in France because I won't be able to speak the language any more. Au revoir La France!
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