The East Anglia Transport Museum is an open-air transport museum, with numerous historic public transport vehicles (including many in full working order). It is located in

Carlton Colville Carlton Colville is a civil parish and suburb of Lowestoft in the English county of Suffolk. It is south-west of the centre of the town, in the East Suffolk (district), East Suffolk district. The area lies along the A146 road, A146 Lowestoft to ...

a suburb of

Lowestoft Lowestoft ( ) is a coastal town and civil parish in the East Suffolk district of Suffolk, England.OS Explorer Map OL40: The Broads: (1:25 000) : . As the most easterly UK settlement, it is north-east of London, north-east of Ipswich and sou ...

Suffolk Suffolk () is a ceremonial county of England in East Anglia. It borders Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south; the North Sea lies to the east. The county town is Ipswich; other important towns include Lowes ...

. It is the only museum in the country where visitors can ride on

bus A bus (contracted from omnibus, with variants multibus, motorbus, autobus, etc.) is a road vehicle that carries significantly more passengers than an average car or van. It is most commonly used in public transport, but is also in use for cha ...

es,

tram A tram (called a streetcar or trolley in North America) is a rail vehicle that travels on tramway tracks on public urban streets; some include segments on segregated right-of-way. The tramlines or networks operated as public transport are ...

s and

trolleybus A trolleybus (also known as trolley bus, trolley coach, trackless trolley, trackless tramin the 1910s and 1920sJoyce, J.; King, J. S.; and Newman, A. G. (1986). ''British Trolleybus Systems'', pp. 9, 12. London: Ian Allan Publishing. .or troll ...

es, as well as a

narrow-gauge railway A narrow-gauge railway (narrow-gauge railroad in the US) is a railway with a track gauge narrower than standard-gauge railway, standard . Most narrow-gauge railways are between and . Since narrow-gauge railways are usually built with Minimum r ...

What the Museum offers

The museum has many exhibits ranging from a 1904 Lowestoft Corporation tram to a 1985

Sinclair C5 The Sinclair C5 is a small one-person battery electric recumbent tricycle, technically an "electrically assisted pedal cycle". It was the culmination of Sir Clive Sinclair's long-running interest in electric vehicles. Although widely described ...

. Tram rides are available on a route passing the museum's trolleybus depot and up to a terminus at Woodside. Originally, the trolleybus route extended as far as the trolleybus depot where passengers could change for a ride on the museum's 2 ft gauge railway to Chapel Road (the other end of the tram route), or they could stay on the trolleybus whilst it performed a 3-point turn and returned to the museum entrance via the same route. 12 July 2008 marked Britain's first trolleybus extension for many decades through the creation of a loop along the Back Road, linking in with the existing overhead wiring near to the museum's entrance. This follows the

tarmacadam Tarmacadam is a road surfacing material made by combining crushed stone, tar, and sand, patented by Welsh inventor Edgar Purnell Hooley in 1902. It is a more durable and dust-free enhancement of simple compacted stone macadam surfaces invented b ...

ing of the Back Road, which previously had been a muddy field, and the renaming of this to Herting Street - in honour of the gentleman whose generous donation made these works possible. Exhibits include the last trolleybus to operate under its own power in

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

, No. 1521, one of a batch of 150 L3 class vehicles built on chassis made by

Associated Equipment Company Associated Equipment Company (AEC) was a British vehicle manufacturer that built buses, motorcoaches and trucks from 1912 until 1979. The name Associated Equipment Company was hardly ever used; instead it traded under the AEC and ACLO brands. ...

(AEC) and

Metro Cammell Weymann Metro Cammell Weymann Ltd. (MCW) was once a major contributor in transportation manufacturing in the UK and Europe. It was established in 1932 by Metro-Cammell's bus bodybuilding division and Weymann Motor Bodies to produce bus bodies. M ...

in 1939–40. When it entered Fulwell Depot in the evening of 8 May 1962, it marked the end of what had been the world's largest trolleybus network.

History

The museum was founded on its present site at Carlton Colville in 1965, following the rescue in 1962 by four enthusiasts of the body of an old Lowestoft tram (number 14), which had been used for a number of years as a summerhouse. The site was formerly a meadow, donated by the founder and first chairman of the Museum Society, Albert Bird. The first buildings on the site were constructed in 1966, but development work on the site took a number of years to complete, and the museum first opened to the public on 28 May 1972. Full tram and trolleybus operations began in 1981, following the construction of a suitable roadway. The Museum's narrow gauge railway, known as the East Suffolk Light Railway, opened in 1973. It was some long, running along the northern edge of the site, and the -gauge track was constructed from materials obtained from a sand quarry at Leziate, from

Canvey Island Canvey Island is a town, civil parishes in England, civil parish and reclaimed island in the Thames estuary, near Southend-on-Sea, in the Castle Point district, in the county of Essex, England. It has an area of and a population of 38,170.Office ...

and from the

Southwold Railway The Southwold Railway was a narrow gauge railway line between Halesworth and Southwold in the English county of Suffolk. long, it was narrow gauge. It opened in 1879 and closed in 1929. Intermediate stations were at Wenhaston, Blythburgh ...

. Signals were obtained from several locations in the vicinity. The museum also owns a van body which once ran on the Southwold Railway. In 2016, the museum acquired some land adjacent to the main site, and then applied to Waveney District Council to allow them to extend the museum site. The Council decided that such a move would be beneficial to the region, as the museum injected some £450,000 into the local economy in 2016, and voted to grant planning permission unanimously. The estimated cost for the development is one million pounds, which should see the tramway, the trolleybus route and the narrow gauge railway lengthened, and the total area of the site almost doubling. Plans include the construction of a new exhibition hall devoted to

Eastern Coach Works Eastern Coach WorksCompanies House extract company no 318856
...

, a major builder of bus and train bodywork, which was located in nearby

, until its closure in 1987. The plans provided for two new depots to be built, one for trams and the other for trolleybuses. At the time of the application, some 20 vehicles were kept in store at

Ellough Ellough is a civil parish in the East Suffolk district of the English county of Suffolk, located approximately south-east of Beccles. The area is sparsely populated with a mid-2005 population estimate of 40. The parish, which has an area of , b ...

near

Beccles Beccles ( ) is a market town and civil parish in the English county of Suffolk.OS Explorer Map OL40: The Broads: (1:25 000) : . The town is shown on the milestone as from London via the A145 and A12 roads, north-east of London as the crow fli ...

, and the museum aimed to move all of them to the Carlton Colville site, so that they could be seen by the public more easily. The first of the transport systems to be extended was the East Suffolk Light Railway, which originally terminated near the woodland tramway. Progress was blocked by a tramway siding, and one of the early jobs was to construct a flat crossing to allow the trains to pass over the tramway.

Exhibits

Trams

East Anglian Transport Museum - geograph

* Blackpool Corporation VAMBAC enclosed single-decker No. 11 built in 1939. Awaiting repair. *

Lowestoft Corporation Tramways Lowestoft Corporation Tramways was the operator of the electric tramway system that served Lowestoft from 22 July 1903 until 8 May 1931. History A notice was published in the London Gazette on 23 November 1900 stating the intention of Lowesto ...

open topper No. 14 built in 1904. Undergoing restoration. * Blackpool Corporation Standard Class enclosed double-decker No. 159 built in 1927. Operational. *Amsterdam Tramways enclosed single decker No. 474 built in 1929. Operational. *

Glasgow Corporation Tramways Glasgow Corporation Tramways were formerly one of the largest urban tram, tramway systems in Europe. Over 1000 municipally-owned trams served the city of Glasgow, Scotland, with over 100 route miles (160 route kilometres) by 1922. The system clo ...

enclosed double-decker No. 488 built in 1903. Undergoing restoration at the

Ffestiniog Railway The Ffestiniog Railway ( cy, Rheilffordd Ffestiniog) is a heritage railway based on narrow-gauge, located in Gwynedd, Wales. It is a major tourist attraction located mainly within the Snowdonia National Park. The railway is roughly long an ...

. *

Sheffield Corporation Sheffield City Council is the city council for the metropolitan borough of Sheffield in South Yorkshire, England. It consists of 84 councillors, elected to represent 28 wards, each with three councillors. It is currently under No Overall Contr ...

enclosed double-decker No. 513 built in 1950. Operational, on loan from

Beamish Museum Beamish Museum is the first regional open-air museum, in England, located at Beamish, near the town of Stanley, in County Durham, England. Beamish pioneered the concept of a living museum. By displaying duplicates or replaceable items, it wa ...

* London Transport enclosed double-decker No. 1858 built in 1930. Operational.

Trolleybuses

* 1 Privately owned German Trolleybus * 5 Garrett 1926

Copenhagen Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan ar ...

* 34

Sunbeam A sunbeam, in meteorological optics, is a beam of sunlight that appears to radiate from the position of the Sun. Shining through openings in clouds or between other objects such as mountains and buildings, these beams of particle-scattered sunl ...

1947 Hastings Corporation * 52 BUT 9611T 1953 Maidstone Corporation Transport * 87

BUT 9612T The BUT 9612T was a two-axle double deck trolleybus chassis manufactured by British United Traction in 1955/56. A total of 70 were manufactured by Crossley Motors' Stockport factory; 62 for Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater ...

1956 Ashton-Under-Lyne Corporation * 202 Sunbeam 1935 Bournemouth Corporation * 224 Sunbeam 1953 Derby Corporation (away from museum undergoing restoration) * 237 Sunbeam 1960 Derby Corporation (Privately Owned) * 246 Sunbeam 1958

Belfast Corporation Belfast City Council ( ga, Comhairle Cathrach Bhéal Feirste) is the local authority with responsibility for part of the city of Belfast, the capital and largest city of Northern Ireland. The Council serves an estimated population of (), the l ...

* 260 AEC 1936 London Transport * 286 Sunbeam 1959 Bournemouth Corporation * 313 BUT 1951 Portsmouth Corporation * 628 BUT 1950 Newcastle Corporation * 1201 Leyland 1938 London Transport * 1521 Chassisless Construction by

Metro-Cammell Metro-Cammell, formally the Metropolitan Cammell Carriage and Wagon Company (MCCW), was an English manufacturer of railway carriages, locomotives and railway wagons, based in Saltley, and subsequently Washwood Heath, in Birmingham. Purchased ...

using AEC components 1940 London Transport

Motorbuses

* 21

AEC Regent II The AEC Regent II was a front-engined double-decker bus built by AEC from 1945 to 1947. Despite officially being a new type it was very similar to the 1929 Regent. The Regent IIs were all documented as being new with the A173 (also known as t ...

1947 Lowestoft Corporation * LL408 Bristol 1948 Eastern Counties * RTL 1050 Leyland Titan 1950 London Transport * LFL57

Bristol Lodekka The Bristol Lodekka was a half-cab low-height step-free double-decker bus built by Bristol Commercial Vehicles in England. It was the first production bus design to have no step up from the passenger entrance throughout the lower deck; alth ...

1962 Eastern Counties * 4

AEC Swift The AEC Swift was a rear-engined step entrance single-decker bus chassis manufactured by AEC between 1964 and 1980. The chassis design was closely related to the Leyland Panther. It was available in and lengths, with an AEC AH505 or AH691 e ...

1969 Lowestoft corporation * 85

AEC Reliance The AEC Reliance was a mid-underfloor mounted engined single-decker bus and coach chassis manufactured by AEC between 1953 and 1979. The name had previously been used between 1928 and 1931 for another single-decker bus chassis. History Two p ...

1964 Great Yarmouth * 4

1969 Lowestoft Corporation * VR385

Bristol VR The Bristol VR was a rear-engined double-decker bus chassis which was manufactured by Bristol Commercial Vehicles as a competitor to the Leyland Atlantean and Daimler Fleetline. Development The Bristol VR was originally designed for s ...

1972 Eastern Counties * 13 Mercedes-Benz 608D 1987 Lincolnshire Road Car * 66 Leyland PD2/1 1949 Great Yarmouth Corporation * 62

Dennis Dart The Dennis Dart is a rear-engined single-decker midibus chassis that was introduced by Dennis Specialist Vehicles of Guildford, England in 1989, replacing the Dennis Domino. Initially built as a high-floor design, In 1996 the low-floor second ...

1995 Great Yarmouth Transport

Locomotives

There are four locomotives which operate on the gauge East Suffolk Light Railway. All of them have four-wheel chassis, with diesel engines and mechanical transmission. One was made by

Ruston and Hornsby Ruston & Hornsby was an industrial equipment manufacturer in Lincoln, England founded in 1918. The company is best known as a manufacturer of narrow and standard gauge diesel locomotives and also of steam shovels. Other products included cars ...

of Lincoln and three were made by

Motor Rail Motor Rail was a British locomotive-building company, originally based in Lewes, Sussex, they moved in 1916 to Bedford. In 1987 loco manufacture ceased, and the business line sold to Alan Keef Ltd of Ross-on-Wye, who continue to provide spar ...

of Bedford. The frames of a fourth Motor Rail locomotive were used to form the chassis of a brakevan.