Riding mini train added bonus of Steampunk Exhibition

If you like Doctor Who (Tennant & Smith era), William Gibson and the whole Steampunk scene and happen to have some free time from 23rd August, pop along over to Kew Bridge for your last chance to see the amazing Steampunk Exhibition.

On Sunday and Bank Holiday Monday there's the added bonus of getting a free ride on London's only steam railway. Today I was on the "Wren" class locomotive Thomas Wicksteed, which is apprarently typical of a waterworks engine. More trains here, here and here.


Back to Steampunk - there's an awe inspiring collecton of masks, costumes, jewellery, posters and props which all hint at what science fiction in the Victorian age could have been like.  It's very similar to the some of the futurology in the Sense and the City exhibition at London Transport's Museum, except Steampunk is an imagined  futurology of the past (still with me) where modern writers and thinkers imagine what Victorian science fiction writers like HG Wells and Jules Verne could have been writing, if they'd have known a lot of the things we know now.

So you get wonderful Victorian imaginings of K9


Cyborg-looking fighter pilots in copper masks:

And people taking part in Tea Duelling competitions. (One of the weirdest games I've seen in my life).

It basically involves a pair of duellers who each select a biscuit, then dunk it in tea. They then have to hold it upright for a long as possible, before it goes floppy and then eat just before it's about to drop. The person who can hold out the longest and not eat before the other, wins.


And lots of people making jewellery and other small things that are all part of what Steampunk means




The full set of Flickr Photos are here (including more trains) and I look foward to seeing any comments or thoughts you may have.

London Underground; Tube Posted by annie mole Sunday, August 21, 2011 Permalink COMMENT HERE
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