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There were two museums which I intended to visit but as my daughter's birth day approached the time available for such luxuries declined.
I wrote to the Duke of Edinburgh's Royal Regiment museum, at Lichfield, Staffordshire, and received a very helpful reply. The 98th Regiment, later the 2nd North Staffords, served in the First China War and in Hong Kong.
On display at the museum are a "soldier's watercolour" in the uniform of the period c1840-50. "This also shows a sentry box and the Colours and seems intended to indicate a coastal location. The 'China Dragon' is on the colour and the painting could well relate to the Regiment's subsequent service in Hong Kong (1842-45)".
There is an officers' Shako plate (1829-44), an officers' shoulder belt plate, an officers' sword belt clasp (1826-55) and "two buttons, a shoulder numeral and a few other relics of the period, subsequently dug up in Hong Kong".
The other museum which I missed was that of the Royal Berkshire Museum, successors to the 49th Regiment, in Salisbury, Wiltshire.
My experience in 1983 proved that visitors to England should make a point of calling in at virtually any regimental or army museum that they pass. What may be judged an unimportant relic against the span of centuries of regimental history may be viewed quite differently from a Hong Kong point of view.
Not army, but equally interesting, is the National Railway Museum, in York, which might seem an unlikely place to search for souvenirs of China--but it houses what is probably the biggest one in Britain. There, sparkling and gleaming, is a mighty Chinese National Railways Class KF 4-8-4 locomotive. The 93-foot long behemoth was built in the mid-1930s at the Vulcan Foundry, Newton-le-Willows, to haul 600-ton trains over the mountainous central section of the Canton-Hankow Railway. After 43 years in service the locomotive was presented to the museum by China and it left Shanghai for England in 1981. The sheer size of this monster makes it stand out and it looked to me far and away the biggest in the extensive collection. The engine weighs in at 114.9 tons with a 77-ton tender.
201
There were two muscums which I intended to visit but as my daughter's birth day approached the time available for such luxuries declined.
I wrote to the Duke of Edinburgh's Royal Regiment museum, at Lichfield, Staffordshire, and received a very helpful reply. The 98th Regiment, later the 2nd North Staffords, served in the First China War and in Hong Kong.
On display at the museum are a "soldier's watercolour" in the uniform of the period c1840-50. "This also shows a sentry box and the Colours and seems intended to indicate a coastal location. The 'China Dragon' is on the colour and the painting could well relate to the Regiment's subsequent service in Hong Kong (1842-45)".
There is an officers' Shako plate (1829-44), an officers' shoulder belt plate, an officers' sword belt clasp (1826-55) and "two buttons, a shoulder numeral and a few other relics of the period, subsequently dug up in Hong Kong".
The other museum which I missed was that of the Royal Berkshire Muscum, successors to the 49th Regiment, in Salisbury, Wiltshire.
My experience in 1983 proved that visitors to England should make a point of calling in at virtually any regimental or army museum that they pass. What may be judged an unimportant relic against the span of centuries of regimental history may be viewed quite differently from a Hong Kong point of view.
Not army, but equally interesting, is the National Railway Museum, in York, which might seem an unlikely place to search for souvenirs of China--but it houses what is probably the biggest one in Britain. There, sparkling and gleaming, is a mighty Chinese National Railways Class KF 4-8-4 locomotive. The 93-foot long behemoth was built in the mid-1930s at the Vulcan Foundry, Newton-le-Willows, to haul 600-ton trains over the mountainous central section of the Canton-Hankow Railway. After 43 years in service the locomotive was presented to the museum by China and it left Shanghai for England in 1981. The sheer size of this monster makes it stand out and it looked to me far and away the biggest in the extensive collection. The engine weighs in at 114.9 tons with a 77-ton tender.
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