Note: This page is still under construction, Sorry 
 
 

The park is designed around the archaeological remains of the Summerlee Ironworks which emerged from under six metres of slag and industrial waste.
Summerlee Ironworks was put into blast in 1837.  It was served by a branch of the Monklands canal which was originally built as the "Gartsherrie Cut" to Baird's Gartsherrie Iron Works in 1829 and has has now been restored.  Howes Basin - built for shipping coal from the railway to the canal - has been uncovered. Part of the site had been used since the 1950s by a crane manufacturer - Hydrocon Cranes -the framework of their factory was stripped, repaired and reclad to form the Museum's impressive Exhibition Hall.

Summerlee has been described as "Scotland's Noisiest Museum" and the massive exhibition hall houses a large collection of historic machinery operating daily!.  Whenever possible, Summerlee's engineers provide public demonstrations of machinery and traditional skills whilst making parts for other restoration projects.  Permanent exhibitions include reconstructed working environments such as a Tinsmiths Shop, a Brass Foundry, Brassfinishers Shop, Spade Forge.   Other exhibits include a Co-op Shop, a Bicycle and Radio Shop,  a Photographers Studio. Summerlee Ironworks in the 1880s is reconstructed to scale - showing the blast furnace structure with a viewing balcony.
The most interesting part of the Museum is the excavated "remains" of the Ironworks - its all outdoors and shows the foundations of the furnaces and the heating kilns. The Ironworks was demolished in the late 1930's and some six feet of soil had to be removed to find the old iron workings.

Tramway
Summerlee operates an electric tramway on over half a kilometre of track..  A number of trams are operational on a daily basis including one from Austria and one from Belgium.  An open topped Lanarkshire Tram was first unveiled to the general public in 1995. Many of the trams are both driven and restored by the Summerlee Transport Group.

Historic Vehicles
Dotted around the museum are a number of stationery vehicles including, two steam cranes and a bulldozer c1930. There are some vintage or classic cars including a Model T van and an Austin A40 pickup van.

Mines and Miners Row
Local mines once fired the furnaces of ironworks such as Summerlee.  A small mine has been re-created where you can experience the miner's dark, damp and cramped  working conditions as they battled to win a day's pay for their families.  The nearby row of miners cottages shows a little of how they lived.  They take you from the basic living conditions of the 1860's to the relative comforts of the 1960's.

Railways and Locomotives
The railway history of the area is not one of the museum's strong features (maybe they could do with a good researcher!!), but there are some interesting items including the following locomotives.

1) National Coal Board 0-6-0 tank locomotive No.19, formerly used at Bedlay Colliery. See Bedlay page for photographs of this locomotive in working service

2) Vertical-boilered Sentinel 0-4-0T "Robin" one of four locomotives of this type employed to transfer steel rolls between the Meadow Works and Whifflet Foundry of R.B. Tennants.
The other three were named "Ranald", "Dennis" and "John", all of which were preserved, "Ranald" and "Dennis" at the headquarters of the SRPS at Bo'ness. The whereabouts of  "John", which was for a while placed on a plinth at the entrance to Dick Engineering in Coatbridge, is in doubt as it is no longer to be seen
 

Three views of "Robin" in action just to the North of the Calder Street Overbridge.  The bottom left photograph would appear to show the locomotive hauling a freshly cast steel roll before returning later with the finished machined roll in the top and bottom right photographs. Photograph taken and used with permission of Geoff Cryer. Please visit http://www.geoffspages.co.uk - Geoff's Rail Pages and Photo Pages for more excellent railway photography

3) Barclay(?) 0-4-0 diesel

4) The last known surviving  locomotive built in Airdrie by Gibb & Hogg, an 0-4-0T which on retirement from the NCB in Fife had been put on display in Pittencrief Park in Dunfermline.

5) Not actually part of the Summerlee collection but stored on site on behalf of Springburn Museum is the Giant Garret. built be the North British Railway Company for use on the 3'-6" gauge system in South Africa.

Inside the main museum building is an interesting mural (below) showing an arial view of Glenboig.  Close inspection of the mural shows the Caledonian main line running along the top of the photograph with the original Monkland and Kirkintilloch in the foreground.  An NBR 0-6-0 can be seen heading a coal train towards Garnqueen South Junction.

There are also a number of Locomotive plates, including the one below for Locomotive No1 at Clydesdale Tubeworks at Mossend