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Duchess of Hamilton I by Paul Turner Via Flickr: The gloriously streamlined art-deco Duchess of Hamilton sits outside the National Railway Museum for Railfest. Built in 1938 and one of thee Princess Coronation class, the train sports a streamlined design by Sir William Stanier and is the most powerful express passenger locomotive built in Britain. The train was destreamlined in 1947 and only restored in 2009 after a sustained appeal. Railfest 2012 was a nine-day celebration of all things train-related, held at the National Railway Museum in York during the period of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. Famous locomotives such as Mallard, the Flying Scotsman and even the Hogwarts Express all lined up out on the tracks, with thousands of visitors taking the chance to admire them up close or even climb aboard. Several trains were operating over the course of the festival, with steam puffing into the sky as they carried visitors up and down small stretches of track. The National Railway Museum in York is the largest railway museum in the world and houses a collection of more than three million items, from ticket machines and platform signs to bullet trains and steam locomotives. The museum charts the rise of the railways in the 19th century, their use in the transportation of goods and people, their role in the Industrial Revolution and their overall effect on the world, especially England. The current museum was founded in 1975 and is housed in a former steam engine shed, an old goods depot and numerous other buildings close to York station. The main structure, the Great Hall, holds everything from a replica of Stephenson’s Rocket, the first steam train from 1829, to the Flying Scotsman, from the Mallard to a modern-day bullet train – one of a very select group of bullet trains outside of Japan. There is also a workshop where visitors can see museum volunteers and engineers working on trains and the station hall, where trains sit on old platforms and you can step in and out of carriages.