Garswood Primary
and Nursery SchoolGeorge Stephenson - visit to St Helens Transport Museum, Rainhill Station & World of Glass.
Lesson: History
Class: Year 2 Year: 2024 - 2025
George Stephenson- Rocket and development of the Railways
Transport Trip 25th February 2025
This half term Year 2 have been learning how transport is different now to how it used to be in the past. They have compared how jobs and homes were different 200 years ago. They have also learnt about a significant person in history, George Stephenson from the same era! They have discovered lots of new facts about George Stephenson and how he impacted the world with his engineering work. He built a steam locomotive called the Rocket for the Rainhill Trials in 1829.
The trip began with a short walk to Garswood train station, where we caught the train to St Helens to begin our trip at The Transport Museum.We explored old and new transport at the Transport Museum and viewed artefacts. We then hopped on a Heritage London Bus to the actual site of the Rainhill Trails and visited the local museum to view more artifacts from the Trails. Year 2 visited the exact site where the trails took place in 1829. The Rocket was the only locomotive to complete the trials successfully! A team of local historians took us on a tour of Rainhill Station where we imagined jumping back in time 194 years. It looked a lot different then but the same bridge still stands to this very day. From that day travel changed forever. A new railway line was built from Liverpool to Manchester that made carrying goods and people a lot faster. Small villages along the railways became larger due to people moving out of the city and into the countryside. Even the time of the days changed to match the train time tables.
In the afternoon the we visited The World of Glass to see what houses, shops and pubs looked like 200 years ago. The chldiren got to handle artifacts that really brought history alive. The children were well and truly submerged in history for the whole day.
Thank you to Keith and all the volunteers at The Transport Museum and Rainhill Trails society!
