LONDON, ENGLAND.- Today, David Lammy, Minister for Culture, is welcoming three young Sierra Leonean museum workers as they arrive in the UK for a unique exchange including month’s training at the National Railway Museum and Hull City Museums. The exchange will provide opportunities to experience world-class collections care and visitor services before they take over the running of the newly opened Sierra Leone National Railway Museum in Freetown.

The new Sierra Leone National Railway Museum was established by Colonel Steve Davies MBE, Deputy Commander of the International Military Advisory Training Team in Sierra Leone, working in his spare time with a team of fifteen young unemployed Sierra Leoneans. Together they have transformed a shed of locomotives, abandoned since abolition of the State railway in 1974, into the country’s first railway museum (and second national museum). It includes a coach built for the State Visit of HM The Queen in 1961.

Funded by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport as part of Government’s Africa Initiative, the training is arranged by the National Railway Museum, York in partnership with Hull City Museums. The visitors will experience working steam engines for the first time at the North Yorkshire Moors railway, where they will also learn more about conservation techniques. In Hull, the city twinned with Freetown, they will visit the birthplace of anti-slavery campaigner William Wilberforce. The trainee curators will also visit the Welsh Highland Railway, Ffestiniog Railway and the Llanfair and Welshpool Light Railway - which has a working example of a former Sierra Leone Railway steam locomotive.

David Lammy, Minister for Culture, said: “Africa is a priority and museums have an important role to play in the rebuilding of a civil society and in contributing to the development of the tourist infrastructure. The new Sierra Leone Railway Museum is an excellent achievement created in just six months by the dedication and enthusiasm of Colonel Davies and the team of fifteen in Freetown. By providing training through the National Railway Museum in partnership with Hull City Museums we are helping to ensure the sustainability of a museum that will provide a significant element in the developing tourist industry of Sierra Leone.”

Colonel Steve Davies MBE said: "The project to establish a Sierra Leone National Railway Museum has captured the imagination of both that generation of Sierra Leoneans who remember the old railway with great fondness, and also the Country's youth who by and large have never seen a train before. As Sierra Leone emerges from the dark days of the recent past, what better way to demonstrate her emerging confidence and return to normality than by proudly displaying her heritage on the world stage in the form of her priceless and irreplaceable railway collection.

“Thanks to the assistance of a number of generous sponsors, including the British Council and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, the project's future seems assured, and international visitors to the National Railway Collection of Sierra Leone can expect a very warm welcome from this most friendly of people"

Andrew Scott, Head of the National Railway Museum said: “It’s difficult for us to imagine the impact of this new initiative in a country which is emerging from a long period of unrest and which has no railway system and few public museums. In that sense, although the Museum uses objects that have survived from the past, it looks very much forward to a future that involves a peaceful existence, with continuing stability and where the Museum can play a real role in education, tourism and redeveloping a sense of community. We hope that the programme based here in York can help the team sustain the museum development for Sierra Leone’s future."