Google Arts & Culture has launched a project called Beyond the Tracks, in partnership with the United Kingdom’s National Railway Museum and the Science Museum Group, to bring two centuries of railway heritage to a global audience. By digitizing almost 1,000 historical artifacts—locomotives, documents, models, and more—the initiative makes a vast and visually rich legacy available online.
A key part of the project is the use of AI via Google Arts & Culture’s Metadata Enhancement Service. This tool helps transcribe handwritten documents and enrich archive metadata, making old manuscripts, engineering notes, and museum collections more searchable and accessible than ever before.
The digital experience also includes immersive 360° virtual tours of the Locomotion Museum in Shildon, UK. Visitors can walk through the massive halls, see historic engines up close, and even follow parts of the original railway line, like the Brusselton Incline, from their screens.
Beyond the machines, Beyond the Tracks tells the human stories that shaped modern society. Through over a dozen illustrated narratives and interactive “Pocket Galleries,” the project explores how the railway revolutionized travel, labor, engineering, and culture — and features rare items like Queen Victoria’s funeral train artifacts, vintage posters, and handwritten notebooks from early railway pioneers.
