The Bristol Industrial Museum is a museum in Bristol, England. The museum features exhibits documenting Bristol's maritime history, and includes outdoor exhibits along Prince's Wharf on the Floating Harbour, including the Bristol Harbour Railway and a small fleet of preserved vessels.

The museums indoor exhibits are housed on the two floors of a former quayside transit shed. On the lower floor is the transport gallery, which houses various land transport exhibits with a particular Bristol slant. Exhibits include what is believed to be the world's first purpose-built holiday caravan to be compared with a 1950s equivalent, the Grenville steam carriage , bicycles, motorcycles, cars, carriages and buses.

On the upper floor the aviation gallery tells the story of Bristols involvement in aircraft manufacture and contains a collection of Bristol-made aero engines, a Bristol built helicopter, a mock-up flight deck of Concorde and scale models showing the many aircraft built in the city. On the same floor the story of the Port of Bristol is told with models, paintings and other exhibits. The adjacent Print & Pack gallery tells the story of one of Bristol's biggest industries with machinery and products.

Elsewhere in the museum, the Bristol and Transatlantic Slavery gallery tells the story of Bristol's involvement in the trans-atlantic slave trade between the UK, Africa and the Caribbean, from its early days through abolition to today's legacy.

On the quayside outside the museum can be found several preseverved dockyard cranes and one terminus of the harbour railway. This railway which reopened in 2000, was a branch of the Great Western Railway and operates on selected weekends between the Museum and the SS Great Britain on standard gauge track for half a mile. The railway is currently being repaired as far as the Create Centre , a mile from the museum.

Normally moored in front of the museum, the collection of historic vessels includes two tugs and a fireboat.

External links

• Bristol Industrial Museum
• Note on the Railway's opening
• More photographs of Prince's Wharf and the railway

Sources

• Web page http://www.bristol-city.gov.uk/mus/bim.htm, retrieved on the 22nd March 2005 at 11:30 GMT.