When we began the Museums in the Pandemic project, we anticipated that some museums might be forced to close permanently as a result of pandemic restrictions. What we didn’t anticipate is that so many new museums would open during this period. As far as we know, fourteen museums have opened between March 2020 and September […]
The Museum of Rail Travel is devoted to railway carriages through the ages. It is run by the Vintage Carriages Trust, formed in 1965 by a group of volunteers interested in the preservation of wooden-bodied carriages, and now has nine historic railway carriages, three small steam locomotives, a railbus and a large collection of railway […]
Devising a new subject classification system One of the aims of the Mapping Museums research is to examine trends in subject matter. We wanted to know if the rates of opening and closure varied according the subject of the museum, whether each country or region favoured museums devoted to different subjects, and if there were […]
The Bournemouth Transport Museum was a collection of public transport vehicles on display to the public each summer, probably from the late 1970s. It was later known as the Bournemouth Heritage Collection. Some of the vehicles were returned to commercial service in the early 1990s. The collection changed hands and locations a number of times […]
The Buxton Transport Museum was relatively short-lived, open for only three years. It was established in 1980 by Peter Clark, a vintage car enthusiast. The site is now occupied by Buxton Mineral Water company. Images and information via Badge Collectors Circle and Derbyshire Through Time by Margaret Buxton on Google Books.
The Dinting Railway Centre was open between 1968 and 1990. The brick engine shed was built between 1888 and 1898 for the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway. The centre was run by the Bahamas Locomotive Society, who are based at Ingrow on the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway. An old badge marks the connection between Dinting and […]
What is the connection between the 1960s pop music TV show Ready, Steady, Go! and a long-lost aircraft museum in Devon? The answer is Keith Fordyce, an ex-RAF serviceman who co-presented the show from 1963, and famously asked the Beatles if they thought they had a future. In 1971 he began restoring old aircraft, and later established […]
The Museum of British Transport opened in an old bus garage in Clapham, south London, in the 1960s. Standing in the forecourt was a replica of Rocket, the pioneering locomotive designed by Robert Stephenson. The museum housed objects and vehicles relating to London’s roads, railways and the Tube. The collection had been started in the […]
