London Transport Museum

A journey getting around London in the past 200 years. The permanent exhibition takes you through early omnibuses, horse drawn trams, etc; many of the exhibits can be boarded, and in fact the barriers preventing the rest were small enough to allow B free access when I wasn't looking!

Further on one fines various ages of tube trains including an underground steam train and finally the main room contains various old busses, trams, trolly busses; a picnic area with transport related toys. The opportunity to sit in the driving seat of a big red bus. Surrounding the large exhibits are various smaller models; information posters and old adverts. Finally each child is given a card to stamp at various points throughout their journey keeping them entertained throughout.

This was a fantastic museum with a huge amount to engage kids and enough to be interesting to adults too. However, I went on a Monday which I had taken off work, given its Covent Garden location I would imagine that this could become very crowded at weekends.

What: London Transport Museum
Where: Covent Garden
Cost: Adults £10; under 16s Free
Going again: Probably
Try: Science museum, Kew steam museum
Top tip: The cafe seem to be happy to feed your children with food taken from home assuming you buy something for yourself.

London Model Enginering Exhibition

Who with little boys could possibly resist such an opportunity! And the number of little boys clearly showed that I was not alone. However, most of the exhibition was more targeted at big boys with many modelling companies and tool manufacturers displaying their wares.

What was available for little boys was reasonably good, D&B both spent a lot of time staring at trains (both and stationary), traction engines (stationary), helicopters (moving) and a hovercraft (moving) and a miniature steam train ride. And for this it was well worth the visit, however, having a show area and a trade area and perhaps some more adventurous demonstrations would have improved the day out immensely.

What: London Model Engineering Exhibition
Where: Alexandra Palace
Cost: Average (Adult £9.50)
When: Jan 2008
Going next year: if there is nothing else on
Similar:

• Various miniature model railways (I'm familiar with the one in Chingford, Waltham Forest, but others exist)
  
• Kew Bridge Steam Museum - Never visited
  
• Science Museum - Many examples of old machines in the permanent "The making of the modern world" including models; most of these are stationary exhibits with no working railway.
  

Lunch at St Pancras

A lot of fuss has been made about Eurostar's recent move to St Pancras, but not just about the super fast train bringing a short stretch of Britain's railway up to the standard of the rest of western Europe but about the station its self. Obviously being father of two boys this was a must.

The main floor of the station, i.e. where the trains sit also have the worlds longest Champagne bar (given my youngest isn't out of nappies I thought passing him off as 18 would be tricky) so we settled for the Baby Betjeman's cafe at the end of the platforms. The Champagne bar runs as far as we walked down the station blocking the view of the trains for little people and, sadly, the does not give such a good view of the trains to the boys were not as entertained as I had hoped.

The coffee and food was good but, not surprisingly, expensive at about £13 for a small portion of Lancashire Hot Pot, portion of (excelent) chips and a coffee.