We got the tremendous privilege of touring this place, which despite the 'museum' title is actually the private collection of a wealthy oil investor who just loves machines of all kinds.

You can read more about the collection here.

I have more photos than I can reasonably upload so even split into a few parts, I'm really showing about half of the good ones. Since we were so excited by the machines I didn't spend a lot of time doing the proper photography thing, so these photos are purely about the object and not about the photographic art itself. 

A steampunk's dream, a lot of this stuff we had no idea what it was or what it was intended for. We did know that it was brass and gorgeously assembled. 

All in all, actually, I surprised myself with the things I did know. Lots of obscure things that you don't think about on a day to day basis but when you see them you just know what it's used for and sometimes what it's called. 

We saw a blacksmithing demonstration which was really cool. We've seen blacksmithing before, as we have various teachers around the school who do teach it, but it's neat to see it done on the big traditional coke fire instead of the modern, practical propane furnaces. 

There were a few things that seemed surreal, like Disneyland. Like behind the walls is just fake, that things were placed there as props or something. We have those historic days and things that show how the settlers lived and so you see fake machines worked on by fake blacksmiths and it's just interesting the contrast - this is a collection of real objects meticulously restored and repaired using 100% real blacksmithing and machining. 

I'm a really modern sort of person, but I definitely appreciate things that can be fixed and adjusted and replaced by people. Not sent back for warranty, not fixed by some specialist, these are craftsmen who can build virtually any piece they can imagine to fix an item. It's just pure, I guess. Honest. Good design is honest. 

Check below for part two!