The Future
The museum underwent major building works in 2007. This entailed removing the Rennie flat V steam engine (now to be found at Chatham Historic Dockyard) to create a larger exhibition space, a cafe and improved toilet facilities. With the closure of the East London Line in December 2007 for extensive upgrading the museum hoped that the access shaft into the tunnel (originally built to be the grand entrance hall to the tunnel) could be capped with a concrete shelf at the bottom, above the level of the trains. This shelf was completed in early 2010, with the inauguration taking place in late January. The access shaft took in its first groups from the general public on 14 February 2010 (Valentine's Day) when it was opened as the 'Tunnel of Love' for short historical presentations detailing the history of the tunnel and of some interesting historical notes from the private life and diary of Brunel's son, Isambard.
The museum now plans to continue the fit-out of the shaft, which will house exhibition and performance space.
Read more about this topic: Brunel Museum
Famous quotes containing the words the future and/or future:
“It would be no reproach to a philosopher, that he knew the future better than the past, or even than the present. It is better worth knowing.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“For me chemistry represented an indefinite cloud of future potentialities which enveloped my life to come in black volutes torn by fiery flashes, like those which had hidden Mount Sinai. Like Moses, from that cloud I expected my law, the principle of order in me, around me, and in the world.... I would watch the buds swell in spring, the mica glint in the granite, my own hands, and I would say to myself: “I will understand this, too, I will understand everything.””
—Primo Levi (1919–1987)
“I was so grateful to be independent of the academic establishment. I thought, how awful it would be to have my future hinge on such people and such decisions.”
—Jane Jacobs (b. 1916)