By Kenneth Thompson
A delegation from the British Railway Museum is in Freetown on a visit to the Sierra Leone Railway Museum with the object to “restore the museum and to digitise it.”
The head of delegation, Helen Ashby said their visit was to help the ministry of tourism and cultural affairs to restore the national railway museum “so that Sierra Leoneans will have the opportunity to see the cultural similarity of the two museums." He said they also wanted to digitise the railway museum “so that it could be uploaded to the internet so people all over the world would have access to it.
Speaking at a conference held at the ministry of tourism and cultural affairs conference hall, Ashby pointed out that there were two government railway museums in the world that shared the same historical and cultural heritage which she said were the Sierra Leone Railway Museum and the British Railway Museum. She said "those two railway museums have been working as partners over the years,” adding that over 40 years after the closure of the Sierra Leone Railway Museum, the British Railway Museum had to revive it again in another way.
Ashby said the project to digitise the Sierra Leone Railway Museum was funded by the “Endangered Archive in the United Kingdom” with an estimated budget of £ 5,252. She added that all the equipment for project would have arrived by yesterday, 20 November 2013 to start the project. She said the estimated time for the completion of the project was nine months, and that people with photographs of the then railway museum were encouraged to come forward with them so those photographs could be used as part of the project.
Welcoming the British delegation, the director of cultural affairs, Foday Jalloh said the Sierra Leone Railway Museum had a long-standing shared cultural heritage with the British Railway Museum. He noted that the Sierra Leone Museum was reopened in 2005 under the previous government after the eleven year brutal civil war in the country.
Minister of Tourism and Cultural Affairs, Peter Bayuku Koroma said he was happy to know that the Sierra Leone Railway Museum was the only railway museum in the world that shared the same cultural heritage with the British Railway Museum.
He said his ministry appreciated the decision to digitise the museum and assured the delegation that his ministry would facilitate and expedite their work. He said that when the project would be completed, the proper collection, processing and archiving of railway records would open numerous windows to explore and enrich the country’s cultural history.
(C) Politico 21/11/13
