On Sunday and Bank Holiday Monday there's the added bonus of getting a free ride on London's only steam railway. Today I was on the "Wren" class locomotive Thomas Wicksteed, which is apprarently typical of a waterworks engine. More trains here, here and here.
Back to Steampunk - there's an awe inspiring collecton of masks, costumes, jewellery, posters and props which all hint at what science fiction in the Victorian age could have been like. It's very similar to the some of the futurology in the Sense and the City exhibition at London Transport's Museum, except Steampunk is an imagined futurology of the past (still with me) where modern writers and thinkers imagine what Victorian science fiction writers like HG Wells and Jules Verne could have been writing, if they'd have known a lot of the things we know now.
So you get wonderful Victorian imaginings of K9
Cyborg-looking fighter pilots in copper masks:
And people taking part in Tea Duelling competitions. (One of the weirdest games I've seen in my life).
It basically involves a pair of duellers who each select a biscuit, then dunk it in tea. They then have to hold it upright for a long as possible, before it goes floppy and then eat just before it's about to drop. The person who can hold out the longest and not eat before the other, wins.
And lots of people making jewellery and other small things that are all part of what Steampunk means
The full set of Flickr Photos are here (including more trains) and I look foward to seeing any comments or thoughts you may have.
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