62 Report of a Journey Around the JJ'or/d. 



modelled figures showing costumes cotemporary. There were also 

 good ethnological specimens from other parts of the world. New 

 steel cases were being installed. The Director was absent, to our 

 regret, but we were shown all that we desired to see. The whole 

 method was much like that in the Nordiska Museet in Stockholm. 

 On the other side of the building was a museum we had nearly 

 passed, but the open door gave us a glimpse of some machinery 

 and we entered more from curiosit}' than in expecftation of gather- 

 ing information on museum matters. I am going to describe the 

 contents more fully because they were so different from what we 

 had examined hitherto, and in the end because of the complete- 

 ness of the plan and arrangement. 



Museum of Transportation, Budapest. June 28. 191 2. 



This museum is well housed in the People's Park, and per- 

 haps owes its existence to the admirable preparation of models for 

 one of the great expositions since 1896. It is the most complete 

 collection of everything contributing to the work of modern trans- 

 portation by land or water that I have ever seen, nor do I recall 

 any colledlion of modern implements and processes so complete ; 

 it is what I believe a museum should strive to be in au}- depart- 

 ment. To enumerate all the exhibits (and I do not know that 

 there is any printed catalogue, and if there were it would doubtless 

 be in the Magyar language) would be out of the question, but it 

 may be said that they began with the raw material, whether animal, 

 vegetable or mineral, and presented all the important stages from 

 the moment they were taken from the general pile and directed to 

 their future niche as factors in the transportation problem. 



Here were the woods used for building cars and furniture as 

 well as those best fitted for sleepers or ties — both in cross and 

 longitudinal section, in the rough and polished ; steel, both rolled 

 and cast or drop-forged, among these, portion of a plate burst by 

 pumping in cold water to a nearly empty boiler when hot ; piston 

 rods and axles bent double when cold ; a driving wheel experi- 

 mented on after twenty years use by pressing in the rim so as to 

 bend the spokes without a crack ; a rail that had been cracked 

 badly by a dynamite explosion and yet held together while a fast 



train passed over it. Then there were buffers and coiled springs of 



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