Tuesday – April 24, 2012

Maxine is still not 100% and after breakfast decided to stay in the hotel and read while I went to Kew to visit the Steam Museum.  The Underground worked incredibly well.  The ticket seller recommended a station for the necessary change of lines and I took his advice.  The train departing the local stating, Green Park, was pulling in just as I got to the platform, so zero wait time.  At the change point, Hammersmith, the train to Kew pulled in parallel to us on the other side of the platform, so again, zero wait time.

At Kew, I was studying the local area map to figure out how to get to the Steam Museum, at the same time some people were trying to figure out the route to the National Archives. Since they were pretty close to each other, I decided to go the Archives first.   It is relatively new building right on the banks of the Thames.  It is open to the public for research and if you want it, they will let you have access to just about anything they have.  I didn’t have any particular research in mind, so just went to the small museum where they have some key items from their collections.  Since this is April, 2012, they of course have a few items about the Titanic.  I was particularly amused by the certificate of seaworthiness filed before she sailed and the death filings for Astor and Ismay.  They also have a few items from the American Revolution including one of the rare July 5th printings of the Declaration of Independence and the British copy of the treaty ending the war.  Not surprisingly, they have copies of several versions of the Domesday Book.  I wasn’t aware that there were several versions. I had only heard of the version of 1067.  There was also one done in about 1300 and then a similar inventory done in the middle 1500s by Henry VIII to  catalog all the property he had seized from the Catholic Church.  I then took a walk along the Thames to get to the Steam Museum.  The river was amazing, I have never seen it this low.  It is impacted by the tidal forces all the way to Kew and apparently beyond.  Most of the boats were lying on their bottoms in the mud and the passenger ferry that runs from Greenwich to Richmond had been cancelled because there wasn’t enough water.  The Steam Museum was very quiet, in fact, I was the only person there.  They don’t fire up the steam except on weekends so there isn’t much to see except for the  innate beauty of the machinery.  I was pleased to see that since I had last been there they have gotten two more of the large beam engines back into working order.  The 90 inch engine is the largest steam engine operational in the world.  Just think about how big that is….a piston over seven feet in diameter.  I hope that they will soon have the funding to rebuild and operate the 100 inch engine.

Maxine was up for a short walk and we went to Prezzo for dinner.  It is a sort of higher end pizza and pasta restaurant.  Excellent salads and pasta, and for London, pretty good value.

Weather forecast for tomorrow is horrible.  Hopefully, the forecasted will be wrong again.