East Anglia Transport Museum

The East Anglia Transport Museum is an open-air transport museum, with numerous historic public transport vehicles . It is located in Carlton Colville a suburb of Lowestoft, Suffolk. It is the only museum in the country where visitors can ride on buses, trams and trolleybuses, as well as a narrow-gauge railway.What the Museum offersThe museum has many exhibits ranging from a 1904 Lowestoft Corporation tram to a 1983 Sinclair C5. 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 tarmacadaming 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.The museum has the last trolleybus to operate under its own power in London, No. 1521.OriginsThe museum was founded on its present site in 1965, following the rescue of the body of an old Lowestoft tram which had been used for a number of years as a summerhouse. The site at Carlton Colville was formerly a meadow, donated by the founder and first chairman of the Museum Society. The first buildings on the site were constructed in 1966, but it was not until 1981 that full tram and trolleybus operations could commence following the construction of a suitable roadway.