This unique resource holds and conserves a large national collection of original road passenger transport industry records, photographs, publications and publicity dating back over more than 100 years, making it available for research and education. As ALAN MILLAR reports, it relies on volunteers and charitable donations.
What will happen to your lifetime’s collection of bus ephemera when you are no longer around to enjoy the photographs, books, timetables, tickets, publicity material, maybe official records and painstaking research you have amassed over the years?
Will your family or executors recognise its potential value to others and ensure that it finds a good home, or will they dismiss it as worthless junk best dumped in a skip? Some phone us seeking advice about where a late father, husband, brother, cousin or friend’s material might go and these days we will direct them to The Bus Archive, a new charity created last year by combining the collections of The Omnibus Society and the Kithead Trust, which already is the biggest single archive of original material about buses, coaches, trolleybuses and trams, and aims to become ever more comprehensive in the items it holds.
Not for nothing does it c…
