Laura Davis takes a tour of the four new galleries opening at the Museum of Liverpool on Friday

SHE may never work again, but that won’t stop this star of the silver screen from taking her place in the limelight.

When the doors to the Museum of Liverpool’s new Great Port gallery open to the public on Friday, it will be the steam locomotive Lion that many visitors will be rushing to see.

In her heyday, she hauled luggage trains on the Liverpool and Manchester railway – the very embodiment of modernity and speed.

She also featured in three films – the 1953 comedy The Titfield Thunderbolt, starring Stanley Holloway, George Relph and John Gregson; The Lady with the Lamp, in 1951; and the 1937 historical epic, Victoria the Great, released to coincide with the Coronation of King George VI.

“People may remember seeing Lion in the transport gallery at Liverpool museum,” says Sharon Brown, curator of land transport and industry.

“We’ve had the fender stripped right back and repainted and the wheels have been repainted. This will be visitors’ first chance to see the engine in quite a few years.”

In 1959, Lion was sold to the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board and installed as a stationary pumping engine at Princes Dock.

Presented to the Liverpool Engineering Society in 1928, she was restored at Crewe railway works ready for the Liverpool and Manchester Railway’s centenary celebrations in 1930, where she pulled a replica train.

In The Global City, Lion, which was permanently gifted to National Museums Liverpool in 1970, will be displayed alongside vehicles that worked at the port (including a horse-drawn wagon and a Collings mobile crane), objects that would have been imported and exported through the docks (including cotton and Meccano) and the stories of people whose livelihoods depended on Liverpool’s trade links, such as a docker, a Norwegian sailor and a salvage corps officer.

“We wanted to tell the whole story of the docks from the Ice Age to the advent of containerisation,” says Sharon.

“As we’ve been getting close to completion, people have come in and said they think it’s going to be their favourite gallery.

“I can’t wait to see people’s reaction, not just to the gallery but also to the large objects that we haven’t been able to show for some time.”

It is just one of four new galleries opening on Friday, which include the whole of the first floor – the others are Liverpool Overhead Railway, City Soldiers and History Detectives.

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