The East Anglia Transport Museum

Monday 19 August 2002. So far on this day we had been to Lowestoft and Oulton Broad, where we had lunch and we had now driven the short distance to Carlton Colville, where the East Anglia Transport Museum can be found.

This is a working museum and usually has a couple of trams running on a road circuit. Today it was the turn of the Blackpool Standard tramcar No.159, which had been one of two such tramcars in Blackpool that had been decked with exterior lamps in a decorative design to be used during the resort's famous Illuminations every autumn. They were retired in the 1960s. In the centre is an Amsterdam tramcar, No.474 and bringing up the line of vehicles is an ex-London trolleybus, which has a road circuit of its own with a added loop, necessary in it's case because you can't drive trolley buses from the rear end...

So of course we made a dive for the good old Blackpool tram, coming as we did then from Blackpool. This model of tram had been replaced on the Blackpool Promenade route by the double-decked "Balloon" trams in the 1930s when pretty much all of Blackpool's trams, both single and double-decked were replaced. The replacements became some of the oldest public transport vehicles in continuous service and were not replaced themselves until 2012. Some of them still run as part of a Heritage Tram service along Blackpool's seafront.

Inside the Blackpool tram. Ornate lampshades, wooden decking and a row of seats backed to the windows with twin seats along the other side of the tram whose backs tilted either way so that passengers could sit facing the direction of travel whichever way the tram was being driven.

Along the ceiling ran a cable that operated the bell to request the driver to stop at the next tramstop. Whilst the tram was driven by electricity this cable was merely attached to a lever which dinged the bell at the back of the driver's cockpit - at either end of the tram!

Blackpool Standard 159 on the road circuit. This model of tramcar was built between 1923-1929. In Blackpool they were regularly used on the routes inland, known as the Marton route named for a district of Blackpool.

As the tram returned to its starting point we hopped off and straight onto the Dutch tram from Amsterdam. This had required a bit of work to convert it to be able to be driven from either end. Routes in Amsterdam have terminus loops allowing the tramcars to turn to face the other way whilst always being driven from the same end and in keeping with most UK tram systems, the one at Carlton Colville required the tramcar to swivel the pole round on the overhead wire and be driven from the "rear" end.

The Amsterdam tram had some sideways seating and also plain wooden single seats arranged to face each other along the central part of the tram cabin. Straps allowed taller standing passengers to remain upright during hard braking or sharp bends whilst children and short people could practice their rolling landing techniques...

There was also a little narrow-gauge railiway that you could ride on, drawn by a diesel locomotive seemingly built by some engineer who hated beauty in all its forms... Possibly it started life working deep underground in a mine or something.

There were a few sheds, packed with nostalgic items dimly remembered from my youth. Like this Flit spray. Before the days of aerosols this is how you sprayed those pesky bugs. With a hand pump. Flit was made by Esso which made me wonder could you just give a decent squirt in the general direction of a bug and then strike a match to scorch the thing at a distance?

In another shed I found a small collection of electric battery-driven milk floats. We still have one that comes down our road once a week. It sometimes goes downhill so slowly we wonder whether it will make it back up and we don't live on any steep gradient. I remember as a lad it was a regular sight to see one being pulled back to the depot by a horse or in later years, a van.

Not that they were ever designed to go like the clappers... In the 1950s milk came in glass bottles and 24 bottles came in metal crates so they had to carry a fair bit of weight. Batteries were a lot less efficient then and themselves added a fair bit of weight. Controls were minimal. Steering wheel and two pedals - one for forwards and one for reverse with another pedal or a lever to set a parking brake.

The London trolleybus. I can just about remember going on trolleybuses in Manchester, though it would only be as a special treat, as buses between home and Manchester were ordinary diesel engined buses. The quiet due to lack of engine noise was strange but the best part about seeing them was waiting for sparks as they passed under the supports holding the twin wires up.

Great Yarmouth 2002 Index

Found Photos, 35mm 828 Format Film Negatives

We recently suffered a death in the family and it's fallen to my brother and I to sort out the estate and possessions. My Uncle Geoff had been a keen photographer in the past and whilst few have surfaced so far, I was rather hoping to come across a collection of old photos of family and views showing elements of social life no longer with us.

The other day I found a tiny metal canister and it turned out to have a roll of black and white negatives in it. The film was 35mm wide but with only a single sprocket hole for each frame along the bottom edge of the strip. There were no sprocket holes at all along the top edge. A bit of research tells me this is 828 format film, created by Kodak in 1935 for their Bantam range of cameras.

The image format was 40x28mm, a touch bigger than the standard 35mm film, which itself had only been introduced the previous year in 1934. This is a full-frame from one of the photos. Locomotive 4478, named Hermit was built for LNER at Doncaster, entering service in July 1923.

I've no way of dating these photos but guess they are from the late 1940s or early 1950s. There appears to be evidence of an itchy trigger finger...! Winding on the film would not be as simple as a single action of a lever and would certainly not be motor-driven!

Whilst 35mm film came in its own canister which went into the camera, 828 film was a roll film with backing paper. The spool of film had to be held tight to stop light from getting to it as you loaded it into the camera and then threaded the loose end of the film onto an empty take-up spool - which had come from the previous film to have been shot. Depending on the camera either you wound the film on after taking a shot until the single sprocket encountered a pin that stopped any more film advancing, or you wound it on until the next frame number, printed on the back of the backing paper, showed through a tiny red plastic window in the back of the camera.

The remaining shots are of bands parading through Manchester town centre.

This is Manchester in the immediate post-war years. Gaps in streets are evidence of the work of Hitler's Luftwaffe. Bomb sites in and around Manchester remained common through until the end of the 1960s and sporadically even afterwards.

In the area of Piccadilly Gardens this shot has the Littlewoods department store in the background.

I quite like this shot though as it shows some of Manchester's trolleybuses. I can just about remember riding on them as a child. Manchester had nine routes covered by a total of 189 trolleybuses. Introduced in 1938 the last trolleybuses were withdrawn on 31 December 1966.

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East Anglia Transport Museum

Sunday 30 September 2012. We left the Aviation Museum at lunchtime and headed for... a transport museum!

We have visited the East Anglia Transport Museum several times before at Carlton Colville near Lowestoft and it always delivers a good afternoon.

There are both trolleybuses and trams to ride on and here's one of the trolley buses - a London one, or a Leyland one depending on whether you are talking about the place it worked or the make... Yes, alright, I'm being too clever for my own good... Note the double wheels at the back.

London was well represented as one of its trams was trundling about as well. The other tram shown here is from Amsterdam and had to be slightly modified with a reversible turning pole. The tramway in Amsterdam has loops at either end so the tram poles are fixed and the trams can only be driven from one end. To run this at the museum not only did a reversible pole have to be fitted but a second driving position at the back of the tram!

This is an ex-Derby Sunbeam F4A Roe trolleybus. It was our first ride of the afternoon and once we got off it, it was reversed to a parking position and the London bus took over.

This was taken from the lower deck looking towards the rear of the bus and the entrance and exit platform.

There are a couple of Blackpool trams there as well. One is a Standard tram of which Blackpool still runs at least one as part of its heritage fleet. The other is this one. Although it looks familiar it is fairly rare as it is a Vambac tram. The mechanism was a bit troublesome on these and they had a relatively (for Blackpool: a very!) short life.

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