I spent yesterday morning sitting in a 110-year-old train carriage.
Well, I say train but actually it was the last surviving motor coach from the Liverpool Overhead Railway - third class. I know my place!
(Lizzy Rodgers from NML and yours truly in the "Ovee")
The carriage will be one of the biggest exhibits in the new Museum of Liverpool currently being constructed on Mann Island.
It should look incredible when the exhibition is created around it. The carriage, which weighs about 20 tons apparently, will be at the original height of the "Ovee" 16ft above the ground.
Museums bosses plan to recreate the Pier Head station complete with wooden staircases up from 'street' level to the platform. Hopefully visitors will be able to actually step inside the carriage as well for a closer look.
It may have hard wooden seats (and we had to clamber in on a step ladder!) but it was so atmospheric sitting inside, and amazing the same carriage had been used for the entire life of the railway.
They don't make them like that anymore....
One of my favourite things was the route map with all the dock stations it stopped at painted on the wall.
The carriage, which is in storage on a short set of rails, rocked slightly when we moved and you could imagine it rumbling along its tracks as it skirted the River Mersey from Seaforth to Dingle.
NML is also looking for people who worked on the railway and may be able to share their memories with curators for the new exhibit.
