Power Hall: The Andrew Law Gallery

The Power Hall is one of the most beloved industrial heritage galleries in the country, housing one of the UK's largest collections of historic engines. See our list of objects on display here.

The gallery's twenty-two stationary engines and six locomotives have been beautifully reinterpreted, and we have added six new supporting objects in display cases. Power Hall brings to life the people behind the power. Visitors can discover 19 new stories of engineers, makers and technicians from the past and present.

It is a lively, working gallery, full of engines that changed the world and continue to inspire future innovations. Visitors will encounter staff and volunteers using their skills and senses to care for our engines. 

Three main themes guide visitors:

• Making More explores how engines helped people to make more, faster—featuring the steam engines factory and mill owners eagerly installed to boost their productivity and profits from the 1800s onwards, at a cost to people and the environment. 
• Powering Lives examines how engines power the electricity network we plug into, and touches on how today's scientists and engineers are developing greener ways to power our lives. 
• Connecting Places takes a closer look at how people used locomotives to connect communities around the world. This all started at the site of the museum, which in 1830 was the Manchester terminus of the pioneering Liverpool and Manchester Railway, sparking a transport revolution.

Visitors can also see:

• New live demonstrations of an initial selection of working engines from our team of expert Explainers and Technicians.
• Technical skills and work in action as we work to maintain the engines on a daily basis and prepare more engines to run in future months.
• A fresh perspective revealing the people who worked with these engines every day; running whole factories, pulling trains across India, or kneading bread in a local bakery.
• New stories that will inspire future generations to take up careers in science, technology, engineering and maths.
• Lots of different ways to explore, including new interactive activities.

The gallery offers the unique opportunity to explore these machines as well as the museum's journey towards becoming carbon-neutral, seeing the 21st-century green technology used to power the historic engines and warm the gallery space.

As well as compelling people stories, clear narratives and the conservation and operation of historic working engines, key improvements include:

• Increased accessibility. A new central platform, central entrance door, routes around the gallery's historic listed cobbles and accessible interpretation designed with audiences mean that more people can now enjoy the gallery.  
• New interactives, schools and volunteer programmes designed with audiences and community partners, bring alive the possibilities of engineering for all ages. 
• The gallery is greener. A new electric boiler on a green energy tariff generates steam for the historic steam engines, and four water-source heat pumps tapping an underground aquifer warm the gallery space.
• Continued conservation of engines and testing of historic working machinery.

The urgent repair of the globally important, Grade II listed building has been an epic undertaking and it's been essential that our work protects and respects its history. We have worked in a way that preserves the heritage of the building and protects its collections, while extending its life by at least a century. 

Work has included:

Building repair

• Full building scaffold construction and post-work deconstruction (one of the largest free-standing scaffolding structures in Europe, which took several months to assemble and disassemble owing to its scale).   
• Demolition of external 1980s platform to enable better access to the building. 
• Roof stripped, dried out, insulated and retiled to futureproof the building, making it wind and weather resistant. 
• The preservation of original tiles to allow contractors to reuse the majority when retiling. 
• New guttering to manage the predicted increase in rainfall over coming years. 
• Repairs to the timber trusses. 
• Relocation of historic objects within the gallery. 
• Installation of new electric boiler and water source heat pump technology. 
• Installation of new LED lighting and routes for services. 
• Conservation of historic brickwork.
• Major surface and structural repair to the historic Gantry, which is connected to Power Hall, plus new waterproofing, drainage and repainting to help defend against future weather.

Decarbonisation

• The installation of sustainable wood-fibre roof insulation, made from the waste created when timber is sawn, to make the building more energy efficient.  
• The installation of new insulated and energy efficient roof lights, windows and doors. 
• Drilling boreholes in our Upper and Lower Yards, the deepest to a depth of 135 meters—the height of 30 double decker buses stacked on top of each other. These have allowed us to access the natural resource of water from an underground aquifer to heat our buildings, a renewable resource which was first used to power this historic railway site in the early 19th century.
• The clean energy harnessed from this system will also be used to warm the building. 
• Installation of an electric boiler to produce the steam needed to run our historic steam engines. 
• When we run our historic engines, waste heat will feed the heat pumps to provide sustainable heating for our New Warehouse building.

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Read our online stories celebrating the stories of women who will be featured in the Power Hall, the historic railway engines that are on display showcasing a century of innovation, and the modern-day stories of local people working with engines and energy.