Museum of Transport, Greater Manchester

Spring Transport Festival sells the gifts for the Blakey in your life!

12 March 2008

This weekend (Saturday/Sunday 15/16 March), the North’s most bizarre gift fair extravaganza will see hundreds of people flocking to the Museum of Transport to buy the present for the man (or woman) who has everything – so long as it has something to do with buses.

The Museum, which has a collection of some ninety vintage buses and coaches, will move some of them to one side to make way for nearly a hundred stalls, stands and sellers offering everything from books about Wigan’s buses to genuine Stockport Corporation Transport ticket machines, and from photos of long-gone trams to real bus stops.

“It doesn’t get more unusual than this,” said Museum spokesman Paul Williams. “But many people want a little keepsake of their childhood, and that might mean a scale model of the bus they might have gone to school on, or a book about transport in the town where they live, or even a bus stop showing the route number they used to catch. With recreating childhood all the rage, we get a lot of people coming to our Spring Transport Festival to buy something for a loved one or for themselves that’s really unusual.”

An unusual shopping trip can be capped with a ride back in time, as a free vintage bus service using old double-deckers from the 1960s and 1970s will link the Museum in Boyle Street, Cheetham with Manchester’s Victoria railway station throughout both days of the event.

“A video about tram rides in Blackpool may not be everyone’s cup of tea,” admitted Paul. “But if you know someone who’s mad about anything on wheels, the Museum will definitely be the place to find it this weekend.” 

Ends

Notes to Editors

The Museum of Transport is in Boyle Street, Cheetham, Manchester and is open to the public every Wednesday, Saturday, Sunday and Bank Holiday. An admission charge applies. The Museum is a partnership between the volunteers and the Greater Manchester Transport Society and GMPTE, the public body which supports and co-ordinates public transport in Greater Manchester. Telephone 0161 205 2122 or visit www.gmts.co.uk.