Nelson

The model locomotive called Nelson, is beautiful, well-made and interesting. It has always been my favourite object at Wakefield Museum.

Nelson records the ingenuity and imagination of its maker, a skilled metal-worker called Edwin Thresh. In 1843 there was nowhere to buy kit parts, so Mr Thresh adapted what he could find. There's a large brass nut at the bottom of the chimney and a spring balance controlling the steam pressure.

Nelson is deceptively accurate. It looks like the wrong shape for a real locomotive. But steam locomotives in the 1840s were much shorter and smaller than the ones we see today. This is an accurate working model of the kind of locomotive Mr Thresh saw in Wakefield in the 1840s.

Nelson connects us to other times and events. Like Nelson Mandela, it was named after Lord Horatio Nelson, the admiral who died fighting the French in 1805. Nelson went on show at the Wakefield Industrial and Fine Art Exhibition in 1865, eighteen years after it was made, and Wakefield Museum bought it in 1932. Seventy five years later, and 164 years after Mr Thresh made it, it is still enjoyed by visitors at Wakefield Museum.

Christine Johnstone - Principal Cultural Officer : History