Welcome to the National Tram Museum

I spent ages looking for the Crich Transport Museum. Leaving aside for the moment the fact that they are digging up the roads in every direction from the site (thereby delaying the museum’s opening his year) I thought Crich was pretty difficult to find.

Eventually we came upon green boards with NTM on them and when we passed them for the third time, we decided that this had to be the National Tram Museum.

The present tram museum occupies an area which was the old Crich Quarry, with a sort of trackway. The site was purchased in 1959, a date which fortunately coincided with lots of towns and cities streamlining their transport systems and deciding to get rid of their old tramcars. There are trams from London, Sheffield, Blackpool, Lincoln, Cardiff and so many other places. Examples of these vehicles may be seen in the workshops being lovingly repaired and restored.

Of course what most of the visitors want to do is – go for a ride – and that is possible – all day long if you wish – for the princely sum of one penny (Don’t be fooled by that, admission to the site is around £25 !) but once inside you can go on riding until closing time. 

This week there seem to have been three trams running at all times. Of course each tram has a driver and a conductor. Both seem to be involved in making the whole thing work -bells to work, brakes to be applied, a tally to be handed over etc. I thought the staff were jolly smartly dressed, but there again perhaps that was the rule when trams roared along our streets.

What I really liked about Crich was that you could wander almost anywhere – and if there were buildings where reconstruction work was under way on vehicles, then there was a viewing gallery and often someone to explain what was going on.

At Crich there are trams as they used to be – forget the modern super-swift silent examples of many European cities, these rumble, clank and rattle just the way they always did. So when the conductor called “Hold tight please” that was indeed sound advice.

Crich is a good stop on a Derbyshire tour – just give the County Council a week or so to sort their road system out – either that or purchase an Ordnance Survey map of the area.