Riverside Museum

The Riverside Museum is Glasgow's award-winning museum of transport and technology, housed in a dramatically angular building designed by Zaha Hadid Architects and opened in 2011 on the north bank of the River Clyde at Pointhouse — the former home of the Pointhouse Shipyard and, before that, the A. & J. Inglis and Barclay Curle yards that built some of the most celebrated vessels of the Clyde's Victorian shipbuilding era.

The museum's railway collection is extensive and particularly strong on Scottish prototypes. The preserved Caledonian Railway 4-2-2 No. 123 — the single-driver express locomotive that raced the Great Northern Railway in the 1888 Race to the North — is among the most significant Scottish railway vehicles in existence, and the North British Railway Glen class 4-4-0 No. 256 Glen Douglas represents the NBR's West Highland Line engineering tradition in the railway's characteristic olive green livery. A Glasgow and South Western Railway 0-6-0 and various Glasgow tram cars complete a collection that gives the museum an unusually comprehensive coverage of Scottish land transport heritage.

The Riverside Museum received the European Museum of the Year Award in 2013, and its free admission policy and dramatic waterfront setting — moored alongside the restored Tall Ship Glenlee of 1896 — make it one of the most visited cultural institutions in Scotland. The museum is a short walk from the Bo'ness and Kinneil Railway via Scotrail, and a combined visit to both is a rewarding way to explore Scottish railway heritage across both static collection and active heritage operation.