Andrew Waddington reports on the East Anglian Transport Museum at Carlton Colville...

The East Anglia Transport Museum at Carlton Colville, near Lowestoft, is home to an impressive and varied collection of transport. Vehicles in the collection include steam rollers, old fashioned cars, trains, buses, trolleybuses - and of course, a fleet of six tramcars. Of these, four are in operational condition, one is expected to join them in the future, and the other one is barely recognisable as a tram at all! I visited EATM for the third time recently, and the following article gives a brief impression of what visitors can expect.

The museum aims to show a range of historic vehicles, and on opening days, rides are normally offered on the trams, as well as a trolleybus and the museum's narrow gauge railway. As it is quite a small museum, the tram ride is fairly short, but it is still a very pleasant journey. Trams and trolleybuses can be boarded close to the museum entrance, and the ride takes you along a cobbled street past the various depots and a small mock-up shop facade, as well as some other items of street furniture. Trolleybuses turn back here, whereas the trams then turn into a wooded area, and continue along here for a short distance until reaching a passing loop, where there is a picnic area.

The star of the tram fleet right now is surely Blackpool 11 - the only surviving VAMBAC Railcoach, and one of just three trams in the UK still equipped with this infamous equipment (the others being at Crich and Blackpool). This tram has been undergoing restoration for many years, and it has been a very long hard slog, but the car was finally launched at Easter 2005, and what a beauty she is! Despite having seen photographs of the completed car, I was still amazed to see it, it is so wonderfully shiny, and looks just as good as anything to have ever come out of the Crich workshop. Internally the car looks superb - and as is always the case with VAMBACs, car 11 is a joy to ride on. The only downside is that it would be great if the tram could really stretch its legs, so to speak... although probably very unlikely, it would be lovely if it could run in Blackpool again, if only for a brief time.

Despite Blackpool 11 being back in the active fleet, the enthusiasts who worked incredibly hard on it are definitly not resting on their laurels. The next project is to restore Lowestoft 14 to running order - despite being the first acquisition by the founders of the museum, it has never run there. The tram has already been restored for static display, but getting it to actually work will be a much bigger job! Good progress has already been made, and a replacement truck for the car has been prepared, with the motors also complete. Basically everything from the underframe down has already been tackled, but the real challenge will be stripping down the body and finding out just how bad it is. However, I am already looking forward to being able to ride on a Lowestoft tram for the first time in my life!

For many years tram rides have been given by three cars. London 1858 was operating on the day of my visit, along with Blackpool Standard 159, which has recently been repainted in the normal green and cream livery. Amsterdam 474 was in the tram depot, but both this tram and the VAMBAC were extracted from the depot at the end of the day, during a shunting exercise which was required to get 474 out for service on another day, as car 11 was blocking it in. This is actually a fairly big job - EATM does not have the luxury of overhead wires in its depot, so the trams have to be pulled out by a small tractor, then connected to the wire above once out. This gave me my first chance to see car 11 out in daylight, but it wasn't the last... as I was fortunate enough to be on holiday at a nearby resort, I was able to visit the museum again later in the week, and this allowed me to experience a ride on a Blackpool VAMBAC tram for the first time!!

Observant readers may have picked up on the fact that I've only mentioned five of the six trams at the museum so far. The sixth is by far the most unusual - it is another Lowestoft car, but whereas 14 is an open top double decker, this one is an enclosed single decker, or rather, it was. The body of the tram has survived well despite being kept outdoors thanks to it having a tiled roof put on it - at first glance it may look like a building that has been painted to resemble a tram, but it is actually a tram that has been used as a building! Today, the car body rests outside close to the tram terminus, and houses various photographs and displays illustrating the history of trams in Britain. Perhaps one day it could be restored and run again, but for now, the main thing is that this tram is one of the most bizarre survivors around today.

So, in a nutshell, that is the East Anglia Transport Museum for you. I must add that I have the greatest respect for everyone involved with the running of this museum - the fact that they keep it running at all is impressive, in view of the limited resources (both people and financial) that they have, but they also somehow manage to produce some very impressive major restorations on a variety of vehicles. Of course, the fact that vehicles other than trams are kept does sometimes mean that the trams may be pushed to one side for a while, but the start of work on Lowestoft 14 is most encouraging. It will, however, take an awful lot of time and money to return this car to service - and I very much hope that this article may encourage some readers of this site to do something to help. Donations can be put into a specific fund for this particular tram, so rest assured, if you do give money it will not go towards restoring a bus! Even by visiting this small but special museum, you are helping out, and a friendly welcome will definitly be waiting for you there.