Birmingham & Midland Museum of Transport
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ll facets of the museum are staffed by volunteers. We are open to casual visitors between 11 a.m. and 4.30 p.m. each Saturday and Sunday between March and the end of November when you are able to see volunteers restoring and maintaining the collection. Throughout the year we have themed Event Days when museum buses offer rides, a delightful ride-on miniature steam railway operates, and the cafeteria and shop are open, the latter selling transport models, books, magazines and videos. The Birmingham and Midland Motor Omnibus Trust was formed in 1977 as a registered educational charity and the museum site, based in Chapel Lane, Wythall, was acquired in February 1978. There are now three halls which accommodate one of the most significant collections of preserved buses in the country. It has the largest collection of preserved Midland Red buses and can probably make the same claim for Birmingham City Transport. Midland Red is particularly important because it built its own buses for half a century and, whilst the term 'home made' may imply primitive, in fact its products were regularly at the leading edge of bus design. Designers and engineers, however, were tempted away by better pay and conditions in car factories so production ceased in 1970. Midland Red served many thinly populated rural areas which led to severe financial difficulties and it was broken up into smaller companies in 1981. These were privatised in the 1980s and passed into separate ownerships. Birmingham City Transport represented the very best in municipal buses but vanished in 1969 when it was merged with other neighbouring municipal bus operators to form the West Midlands Passenger Transport Executive - better known to some as Wumpty! Buses from all these merged fleets as well as the WMPTE itself can be found at Wythall (the Conservative government's privatisation plans meant that Wumpty's buses passed in 1986 to what is now known as Travel West Midlands). The museum has buses and coaches from many other operators, generally either built or operated in the Midlands, although a small London Transport collection represents the capital. The museum believes it has the finest collection of restored battery electric vehicles in the world. These vehicles are ideal for stop-start house to house work and are still familiarly seen as milk floats. However bakeries used to deliver door to door within the living memory of most of us and their vehicles are also represented. Amongst other vehicles are two Birmingham fire engines. The delightful miniature steam railway has been constructed and operated by the Elmdon Model Engineering Society. It can be run with rolling stock built to three track gauges. To find out more about the railway, click here to visit the separate Elmdon Model Engineering Society web-site. In May 2007 the 'Power Hall', our exciting new display hall largely funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund was opened to the public for the first time. The hall showcases in a colourful and enjoyable manner why the bus manufacturing and operating industries evolved in the way they have, including the outside pressures on them. Imaginative displays link the buses and artefacts on show, and there is audio-visual facilities and assembly areas for groups and school parties. | |||||||||||||||||||||||