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Dame Margaret Weston, who has died aged 94, was the first woman in the UK to run a national museum and a pioneer when it came to sharing cultural treasures with the entire country. While director of the Science Museum, from 1973 to 1986, she opened the National Railway Museum in York, the first national museum outside London, where today a miniature steam train used by visitors is named after her.

She ignored the grumbles of her mostly male colleagues in London to divert resources to create the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television in Bradford, which opened in 1983 and is today known as the National Science and Media Museum.

As well as creating a truly national group, which has since expanded to five museums, Weston was ambitious in her collecting during her directorship. One day her phone rang and ?the man didn?t give his name or his department. But he just said: ?Do you want Concorde 002?? ? I said: ?Well, I want to preserve it, but I have no place to put it. But yes, I?ll take it.??

The aircraft ended up at the Fleet Air Arm Museum Yeovilton in 1976. Three years later, she acquired a 220-hectare (545-acre) former airfield in Wroughton, near Swindon, to collect large objects such as planes, nuclear missiles and submarines. Now known as the National Collections Centre, it has recently expanded with a vast building to take another 300,000 items.

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