Work to restore a 140-year-old gantry outside the Power Hall at Manchester‘s Science and Industry Museum is nearing completion.

During the coming weeks, visitors to the museum will be able to view the restored structure before the reopening of the Power Hall: The Law Family Gallery next summer.

The gantry is 72 metres long and 8 metres high and originally supported a steam-powered travelling crane that moved backwards and forwards across the top of the gantry.

It was used to transfer heavy goods on and off railway wagons and was controlled by an operator from either a platform or from a cabin above.

Work to restore the gantry included shot blasting it to remove historic weather damage, then four months for specialist teams to carefully remove each layer of corrosion and rust. This was followed by specialist conservation treatment and analysis of the paint to ensure repainting would be in line with the gantry’s original paintwork.

Located in the museum’s Upper Yard, the gantry is Grade II listed and is one of the museum’s most striking features. Running almost the full length of the Power Hall, which used to be the Shipping Shed for Manchester’s Liverpool Road station, it provides a unique sculptural feature in the city’s historic Castlefield area.

As well as restoring the gantry, essential repairs are being made to the New Warehouse’s 150-year-old roof, the 1830 viaduct and station, and the Power Hall. Funding for these works has come from £14.2 million in national capital funding provided by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) to complete urgent repairs at the museum.

“Working with Buttress Architects, paint samples of the gantry were analysed to determine the colour and type of paint originally used. Samples were taken for cross-sectional analysis, which allowed us to look back though the layers of paint that had built up on the gantry through time. There were at least eight layers of paint, from the original red-brown lead oil paint to the modern dark grey oil paint. We could also see several layers of sooty deposits between the earlier 19th century layers, indicating the high levels of air pollution present in industrial Manchester. The earliest paint layers identified on the gantry all consist of dark red-brown ochre which we’ve matched as closely as possible to repaint the gantry back to its original colour.”

Sarah Baines, Curator of Engineering at the Science and Industry Museum