I finally got to visit the Engineerium today. They seem to do tours when the site is open for the makers fair, which we also visited briefly, and we’d booked on to one in advance.

The tour started in the workshop. It is a wonderful place that instantly made me think of and miss my Dad. He was a toolmaker, and I remember visiting his workplace at least once when I was a young girl. The smell here had a familiarity. Some of the equipment looked like the sort of thing he would have been able to explain to me. He probably would have pointed out something that wasn’t configured quite right, too!

Somehow it hadn’t occurred to me that the machinery would be steam-powered using belts, which was a charming extra detail. Dad would be at pains to point out that his own working life didn’t involve steam-powered tooling.

I enjoyed the “You are entering a metric-free zone” sign!

The rest of the tour was fascinating, and the scale and elegance of the engineering details was stunning. There were beautiful curves where a straight edge would have been perfectly functional. As our guide explained, the Victorians really did love things to be beautiful as well as efficient.